Long Reads

Field recordings, drones, tape loops, dreampop and mystery are the key ingredients for the startling debut album from sound artist e.m.arson. What is it that lights her fire?

The Beatles, but not as you know them. On ‘Mystic Liverpool’, legendary bassist Jah Wobble teams up with Tian Qiyi to warp the Fab Four’s most psychedelic moments into a swirl of duB, tripped-out textures and Eastern instrumentation

Championed by the likes of John Peel and Steve Lamacq back in the late 1990s, Jesse Hartman makes an unexpected but very welcome return with his synthpop alter ego Laptop – all thanks to a Vince Clarke and Neil Arthur cover version

In 1992, Canadian sound artist Michael Brook recorded ‘Cobalt Blue’ and ‘Live At The Aquarium’. As these immersive world music albums are reissued by 4AD, he looks back fondly on a fertile creative period spent working with Brian Eno, the “Infinite Guitar” and a tank filled with hungry sharks

Pop production heavyweights Jim Eliot and Pascal Gabriel find a new creative freedom as ace analogue synthpop duo The Peace Race

Once upon a time, audio tape was so ubiquitous that most households had enough of the stuff to wrap around several football pitches. Now it’s an obsolete curio of a sonically explosive era. Loop back with us as we follow the Möbius strip of sound itself from Victorian Paris to a vast subterranean maze

Think tape loops are a thing of the past? Think again. From familiar names to under-the-radar innovators, here are 30 contemporary artists pushing tape loops into new, strange and unexpected places

Finders Keepers co-founder and DJ Doug Shipton hand-picks 20 indispensable tape music albums, charting the medium’s extraordinary journey from studio novelty to revolutionary instrument

After almost 15 years, Luke Vibert revives his enigmatic Plug alias with ‘Variety Magic’, a curated stockpile of unreleased, mid-90s jungle and drum ’n’ bass – left-field cuts built for club pressure and deep listening