David Stubbs – Electronic Sound

12 minute read

Cold War Electronica: Wired For War

byDavid Stubbs

The birth of electronic music carried the tensions of its age – Cold War anxiety, nuclear dread and divided ideologies. From Stockhausen’s post-war Germany to musique concrète, radio labs and tape experiments, an avant-garde soundtrack emerged, documenting decades of division, secrecy and a world permanently wired for fear

LLong Reads

8 minute read

Claudia Brücken: The Dark Side

byDavid Stubbs

With her intoxicating new solo offering, ‘Night Mirror’, Claudia Brücken reaffirms her status as one of synthpop’s most enigmatic and enduring voices

LLong Reads

5 minute read

Krautrock: Golden Years

byDavid Stubbs

Having released a plethora of krautrock reissues and a stack of experimental/contemporary German music over the last two decades, Bureau B founder Gunther Buskies looks back at some of the key labels from krautrock’s formative era

LLong Reads

9 minute read

Krautrock: In Full Flow

byDavid Stubbs

Musician and author Wolfgang Seidel was a fly-on-the-wall observer during krautrock’s peak. In his new book, ‘Krautrock Eruption’, he argues that the genre was rooted in the German working class, before Berlin’s countercultural scene of psych, jazz and electronics elevated it to stratospheric realms

LLong Reads

8 minute read

Krautrock: In Good Hans

byDavid Stubbs

Cluster and Harmonia co-founder Hans-Joachim Roedelius reflects on his early life experiences and momentous 1970s work, which featured the input of a certain Brian Eno

LLong Reads

8 minute read

The Wolfgang Press: Back To The Future

byDavid Stubbs

With a sonic reinvigoration, former 4AD outfit The Wolfgang Press are making a surprise comeback with their first album in almost 30 years – a brooding and typically multidimensional return to form

LLong Reads

19 minute read

White Noise: Lightning Strikes

byDavid Stubbs

Dark, psychedelic, sensual and enticingly strange… with their trailblazing 1969 debut album ‘An Electric Storm’, White Noise – Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson and David Vorhaus – created visionary electronic music that has continued to resonate ever since. Vorhaus, Hodgson and others revisit the story behind this extraordinary record

LLong Reads

19 minute read

Air: Shoot For The Moon

byDavid Stubbs

Retro-futuristic, gorgeously languid, utterly irresistible – Air changed the sonic landscape almost overnight with the release of ‘Moon Safari’ in 1998. Taking a break from performing the album in full on a mammoth world tour, Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin reflect on their robo-romantic masterpiece

LLong Reads

20 minute read

Tangerine Dream: Paradigm Drift

byDavid Stubbs

Epic and mesmeric, sensual and influential, ‘Phaedra’ is Tangerine Dream’s definitive masterpiece. It was recorded under trying circumstances, but the album’s sequenced, otherworldly sounds – built on Mellotron and Moog synths – arguably resonate even more today than they did in 1974. To mark its 50th anniversary this month, we tell the story of an enduring cornerstone of progressive electronic music

NNews

2 minute read

RIP Neil Kulkarni

byDavid Stubbs

David Stubbs remembers music journalist and our friend Neil Kulkarni