Long Reads

Arty new wave outsiders who became unlikely pop stars, The Associates shook the 80s firmly by its lacy lapels. Three decades on, bandmates Alan Rankine and Michael Dempsey try to make some sense of it all…

There was no single unifying event for the formative UK electronica scene, no point when something suddenly clicked, no precise year zero moment. But there was a bunch of like-minded souls beavering away in what they thought was their own little void, unaware there were others just like them all over the country. We talk to seven of the artists featured on the ’Close To The Noise Floor’ box set and get their big bang stories

Take Japanese noiseniks-turned-minimalists Nisennenmondai. Add a big dollop of On-U production wizard Adrian Sherwood. The result is ‘#N/A’, an album where human frailty meets precision engineering

Welcome to the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, a gobsmacking collection of synths that is plugging Australia’s electronic music scene into the grid. Don't touch that dial!

The rise of tech and how we use it to communicate is the central focus of Karl Bartos’ debut solo album from 2003. We connect with the former Kraftwerker to talk about the welcome reissue of the record

The original folktronica trailblazer has really cranked up the ’tronica for her excellent new album, ‘Kidsticks’. Will the real Beth Orton please stand up?

DJ? Electronic recording artist? Producer? Soundtrack composer? Drawing on 60s girl groups and epic film scores, Unloved sees David Holmes combining his considerable skills into one deliciously noir-ish album

A new EP by Immersion finds Wire frontman Colin Newman and Minimal Compact basser Malka Spigel on sparkling form… but then this record has been over a decade and a half in the making

Let’s get this straight: David Bowie was the godhead of 1970s electronic music. It was through him that electronic music was understood by a mass audience. His unique ability to synthesise, in both senses of the word, opened up pop music and revealed new ways of creating it, ways which would rapidly mutate and produce beautiful (and gloriously ugly) offspring in quick succession.

From his days as the bass player in Magazine, to conjuring up imaginary soundtracks, to directing films in his own right, Barry Adamson talks us through an extraordinary career. And with a new solo album, ‘Know Where To Run’, he shows little sign of letting up