Long Reads

Splitting up, getting back together (twice), a farewell gig that wasn’t quite goodbye… and now Soft Cell are making another welcome return. Marc Almond and Dave Ball remain as thick as thieves and ‘Happiness Not Included’, their first album for 20 years, shows why the duo are still the undisputed kings of twisted synthpop

While he might be curating an online archive for his maverick Severed Heads outfit, Tom Ellard is not a man to rest on his laurels. “Don’t you want to jump full-bodied into the future?” he asks

Recorded in a Pisa living room rather than his Forst home studio where he’s worked for five decades, ‘As Long As The Light’, Michael Rother’s collaboration with partner Vittoria Maccabruni, fizzes with life

From folk singer/songwriter to the electronic music top table, Cate Le Bon has been on quite the journey. With a new album, ‘Pompeii’, ready to roll, we find her at the peak of her powers

When lockdown drudgery stalled Bonobo’s creative process, inspiration for his new album ‘Fragments’ came in the shape of modular synths, sweeping strings, vocals galore and, well, a bagpipe choir

A spectrogram-powered Russian synth, Tibetan drums made of human skulls, and the world’s largest cowbell are just some of the weird instruments that feature on the new album from Helsinki’s Pepe Deluxé. We lift the lid on their box of delights 

Take legendary producer Tony Visconti, Bowie-obsessed academic Dr Leah Kardos, and a car boot stuffed full of Stylophones. The result? The Kingston University Stylophone Orchestra and an album bursting with buzzy delights 

Crammed Discs’ avant-garde ‘Made To Measure’ series has recently reactivated to serve up reissued classics as well as new releases. We meet Crammed boss Marc Hollander and some of the Belgian label’s always idiosyncratic artists 

His score for the TV series ‘The North Water’ is a high point in an already impressive career. Canadian ambient maestro Tim Hecker extols the joys of the cello, outlines the perils of the soundtrack composer, and explains why he prefers to make music in the winter

First meeting in Dublin during the 1980s, Microdisney’s Cathal Coughlan and uber-producer Jacknife Lee have recently reconnected. Working via a musical trans-Atlantic hook-up their new album as Telefís is a real cracker