Long Reads

Established in 1988, The Orb were instrumental in a scene whose ripples are still very much felt on these pages today. Where did it all start, and how has it come to be such a vital part of our world? What you need is a potted history of chill-out…

Depending on your vintage, you’ll know him from Gong, or as the big cheese of The Steve Hillage Band, or maybe he’s arch Orb collaborator and System 7 kingpin. As a boxset of Gong’s Virgin years emerges, we enjoy a free-range chat with the multi-faceted Steve Hillage

From blind machine fury to rip-roaring bass monsters and ear-bending synthesis, Tom Jenkinson is always pushing boundaries, no matter what shape. With the release of a new album, we find him in reflective mood… can it be that Squarepusher is mellowing?

A friendship forged in Tasmania, cemented in Sydney and immortalised in two two epic, yet intimate albums. Stewart Lawler and Jonathan Elliott are Kl(aüs) and they have something important to say about umlauts

The tragic tale of the original pop Svengali would be fantastic enough even without the black magic, gangland threats and a pill-popping climax of paranoia, rapidly declining fortunes and murder… through a series of interviews, conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s, many with collaborators, artists and assistants who have since died, we tell the incredible tale of Joe Meek 

The French disco don returns with a new album that both stretches back to his dancefloor beginnings and reaches into the future. Cerrone talks sampling, Soho and Studio 54… 

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