John Keenan
We Are heading back to the post-punk daze of the Futurama Festival, with promoter John Keenan telling tales of flooded venues and vomiting singers
Max Richter ‘The Blue Notebooks’
Max Richter on the making of 2004’s ‘The Blue Notebooks’, his meditative masterwork of “quiet protest”
Raymond Scott ‘Soothing Sounds For Baby Vol. 1’ (Epic, 1964)
The artists that live on the fringes, the forward (or sideways) thinkers, have always drawn me in. This fascination really kicked in at university when, in the early 2000s, I presented a radio show with Erotic Volvo of Birmingham wrong-pop band Misty’s Big Adventure. As a kind of musicologist of the weird, his selections were never predictable and often a revelation.
Summer 1978, New York’s New Wave Heatwave: Blondie
“I always kinda knew that Debbie was this fantastic thing, on many levels. so it seemed justified that she should get a lot of attention” – Chris Stein
Summer 1978, New York’s New Wave Heatwave: Talking Heads
“So we found out about CBGB’s and we found out about Patti Smith and The Ramones and Television, and we knew that there was something going on” – Chris Frantz
EMS: The Visionary
Peter Zinovieff, company founder and EMS mastermind
EMS: The Gear
EMS created nearly 30 synthesisers and other related technologies, and many more were developed that never went into production. Here are some of the highlights from a decade of innovation
Let’s Eat Grandma: Now Hear This
Marking a return to the fray with their second album, ‘I’m All Ears’, Let’s Eat Grandma dip their biscuits into waters new – musically and quite literally. We tag along for the ride…
L’Orange: Extraordinary Man
He’s deaf in one ear, makes beat-heavy music from unpromising raw material – including pre-war jazz and old radio shows – and yet Seattle’s L’Orange will change everything you think you know about hip hop…
The French ‘Local Information’ (Too Pure, 2003)
Though Hefner survive in the collective consciousness as the exemplar of an indie guitar outfit, the band deployed vintage synths and drum machines on later recordings. Which means that this, The French’s ‘Local Information’, isn’t quite the without-precedent one-off it might first appear.