Long Reads

In the creation of his retrospective, ‘Now Is A Timeless Present’, shoegaze obsessive and Tangerine Dream member Ulrich Schnauss has spent two years lost in his own musical past. Lessons learned? Funny you should ask…

He landed the inaugural Independent Chart’s first Number One single with Spizzenergi’s ‘Where’s Captain Kirk?’. Four decades on, the irrepressible Spizz shows little sign of slowing down… 

Not so much dancing to it, but certainly soundtracking it, Nicolas Godin’s second solo album, ‘Concrete And Glass’, pays tribute to the career he should have had if music hadn’t come calling… 

Beastie Boys’ cohort, in-house carpenter, and all-round keyboard whiz Money Mark has created a 21st century player piano that converts holes in paper rolls into MIDI data. Mark’s Keyboard Repair indeed 

The first weekly Independent Chart was published on 19 January 1980. We talk to Cherry Red’s Iain McNay and Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis, the instigator and the catalyst, about how punk rock and a garden shed ignited the indie label revolution

Releasing a mere seven albums in the last 18 months, what has made Danish DJ/producer Martin Jensen – aka The Home Current – such an unstoppable force? Among the unlikely answers are Brexit and birdwatching 

Tim Bowness and Steven Wilson are back with the first No-Man album since 2008 – and it’s a return to their electronic roots, soundtracking a tale of tragic, fractured romance

Despite the acclaim and avid fanbase, Marconi Union are strong silent types with a deathly serious outlook and a reluctance to engage about their expansive ambient soundscapes, right? As their 10th long-player drops, they blow that idea clean out of the water 

Dr David Butler at The University of Manchester has been researching the life and work of Delia Derbyshire with access to her personal archive. Here he delves into her pioneering work with visual art, and dismantles the myth of her post-BBC activity

David Vorhaus remembers how a Summer Of Love encounter with Delia Derbyshire led to their foray into the counter culture with the White Noise album ‘An Electric Storm’