Long Reads

By the mid-1980s, the threat of nuclear annihilation was dominating British culture. Actor Reece Dinsdale and film editor John Cary look back at their contributions to two keystones of the Cold War aesthetic – ‘Threads’ and ‘When The Wind Blows’

Factory Records insider and founding member of Die Unbekannten, Mark Reeder arrived in West Berlin in 1978. His Cold War life in the divided city, smuggling music into the East like a dangerous subversive, reads like a post-punk spy yarn 

Created in 1947, the Doomsday Clock is a terrifying visual representation of how near we are to the end of the world. The closer that the hands get to midnight, the closer we get to oblivion

In 1975, the Central Office of Information secretly produced the chilling ‘Protect And Survive’ series of public information films, to be broadcast on British TV in the event of an imminent nuclear war. And the composer of its jingle, potentially the final piece of music the country would ever hear? The BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s Roger Limb

Five synth-driven gems from the 1980s that captured the paranoia and effervescent pop of the nuclear age – tales of tension, technology, hope and fear, as told by the artists themselves

William Basinski’s ‘The Disintegration Loops’ has attained legendary status. As an expansive new reissue drops, this dark ambient masterpiece drifts back into focus, shimmering with haunted reverie

Anarchic art-poppers Chicks On Speed are back with a career-spanning boxset and typically provocative new material. Co-founder Alex Murray-Leslie discusses witches, creative rebirths and trying to “break music”

With a killer electroclash compilation just released, Nag Nag Nag founder and DJ Jonny Slut lifts the lid on wild club nights, his Human League fixation and the time Cilla Black got down to some seriously filthy tunes

Thirteen years since his last solo outing, Adrian Sherwood’s new work finds the dub visionary pushing his indomitable, low-end sound into exhilarating new territory