Clay Pipe Music

As Bentley Rhythm Ace prepare to mark the 20th anniversary of their self-titled debut album, Richard March recalls the early days of the band and reveals there was actually a (sort of) method to their (extreme) madness

In 1958, a mysterious electronic music studio was established at the BBC’s Maida Vale building. sixty years on, an intimate gathering of alumni celebrates the anniversary of The Radiophonic Workshop with a live performance and a post-gig get-together. We pick up the bar tab…

Hard as it is to fathom, the gold lamé and grand orchestral pop of Sheffield’s ABC developed out of post-punk experimentalist outfit Vice Versa. What were they putting in the water up there in South Yorkshire?

“It was a fact of life as a little kid,” recalls Alexander Hacke, musician, producer, filmmaker and long-time Einstürzende Neubauten member, born and raised in Berlin and a major participant in the city’s post-punk, pre-rave scene in the 1980s. “I’d go out on the street and play, go around one more corner, and there would be a wall.”

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…