Long Reads

Celebrating the 1970s golden age of TV themes are The Kpm All Stars, whose members Alan Hawkshaw and Brian Bennett composed classics such as ‘Grange Hill’ and ‘Countdown’. thanks to their sterling work, library music is cooler than ever

Cool band, good-looking singer, major label deal, infectious tunes. the Top 40 beckoned for 1980s Glasgow outfit Secession… some 18 years after the death of frontman Peter Thomson, we tell the story of a group who shouldn’t have fallen by the wayside

From 60s R&B pop fame in Manfred Mann, to The Beatles’ Moog advisor and subversive 70s synth sorcerer, Mike Vickers is the quiet man of British electronic music

TV themes from our formative years are as much a part of our lives as the pop we cherish. With A new album of theme tune covers, Matt Berry is doing more than looking back, he’s preserving them for future generations

Female-fronted synthpop that would have ridden roughshod over the charts in the good old days. Hands up who wants to hear Sheffield’s International Teachers Of Pop?

The reclusive synth sorceress Wendy Carlos has granted very few interviews over the last 20 years. This one from 1998, to mark the release of her ‘Tales Of Heaven And Hell’ album and published here for the first time, offers a candid glimpse at her musical philosophy, her working relationship with Stanley Kubrick, what she thinks of her fellow soundtrack composers and much more…

Wendy Carlos’ pioneering soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was just as subversive as the film, debasing classical masterpieces and putting electronic music on the map. We delve into the work of the maverick musician, the singular director, and their turbulent working relationship…

They pooled their gear to record their first singles, which they then released on their own labels. Thomas Leer and Robert Rental, old friends from the town of port Glasgow on the Clyde, were the original bedroom producers and key players in the nascent diy electronic scene of the late 1970s. And they didn’t own a single synth between them

Mixing the worlds of electroncia, Indie and disco, the second long-player from Cologne’s Roosevelt has found its way onto our turntable with some regularity. That being the case, it would be rude not to have a chat with him about it, right?

‘Re:member’, the latest project from Ólafur Arnalds, finds the inventive post-classical composer sharing a stage with not one but two self-playing pianos. yup, you read that right