Long Reads

In early 1969, you could count the world’s synthesiser companies on the fingers of one hand after an unfortunate fireworks accident...

With just a few rickety machines, Paranoid London are taking a new broom to the DIY spirit of acid house. On their latest album, abetted by Alan Vega and Arthur Baker, they’re bringing sleaze back to dance music

United by their passion for dub, funk and a certain Miles Davis record, legendary bassists Jah Wobble and Bill Laswell have again combined forces for an extraordinary new project

A true electronic pioneer, Italian composer Doris Norton tells us about her prog rock beginnings, Apple-sponsored early solo work, IBM experiments and 90s dancefloor bangers…

The myth of Delia Derbyshire grows by the year, but her archive reveals that all is not quite as it seems, offering a fascinating insight into her sound-obsessed childhood and her work after leaving the radiophonic workshop

Learning the ropes from Stockhausen, La MoNte young and Terry Riley and showing the way forward to Eno and Byrne, Jon Hassell is an electronic music colossus. Seems that at 81, he’s just getting started

A surprise soundtrack album, an untimely death, a chance opportunity and a Hawaiian full moon… peak inside the Red Room of Johnny Jewel

First published in New Musical Express on 2 February 1980 under the title ‘The Emaciated Line Between Art And Ambience’, we’re heading into the eye of the Factory Records storm… or in Tony Wilson’s car on our way to meet The Durutti Column’s Vini Reilly.

In his first volume of memoirs, Stephen Morris tackles growing up in Macclesfield and how he ended up as the drummer in Joy Division.  We talk to him about the idea of independence, why it was embraced  in 1970s Manchester and how Factory’s version ended up on top

Way ahead of their time, Section 25 were one of Factory’s most inspired signings. Drummer Vin Cassidy looks back on the early years of the label and how his band came into its orbit