issue 74

From sleepy seaside town to thrumming back streets of East London, East India Youth’s follow-up to his Mercury-nominated debut is seeped in the sounds of the city – and it’s a sonic stunner

The underground Tape Scene of early 1980s Germany produced countless DIY artists whose exciting and experimental work sounds as fresh today as it did then. And at its heart was electronic pioneer Felix Kubin, curator of the tape-tastic ‘Science Fiction Park Bundesrepublik’ compilation 

Stereolab man Tim Gane has spent the last few months trawling through the archives of Sky Records, the quintessential late-phase krautrock label. The result is ‘Kollection 01’, the first in an exciting new series of German music compilation albums

Few bands survive being swallowed whole by the music industry, but south London’s ever-inventive sonic tinkerers ROC are thankfully made of sterner stuff

Commercial failures, artistic triumphs and overdue celebrations… On the eve of two exclusive live shows, Andy McCluskey discusses ‘Dazzle Ships’, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s often overlooked 1983 masterpiece

The 20th anniversary of Britpop has been exercising the nation recently, but there was another UK scene emerging around the same time that we believe should be celebrated. A lot of the artists hated the name, but the music press called it Trip Hop…

To mark the release of a special deluxe vinyl edition of ‘Soul Mining’, Matt Johnson reveals the inside story of the classic The The album – the drug highs, the wrecked hotel rooms, the fist fights, the dumped tracks, the works… 

He’s one of the funniest men on telly. He’s also an extremely talented musician. And with the woozy synthscapes of ‘Music For Insomniacs’, he’s paying homage to his big hero, Jean Michel Jarre.

Electronic and experimental music legend Jochen Irmler talks about his work with pioneering krautrockers Faust in the 1970s and his recent series of collaborations, the latest of which is an astonishingly powerful album with Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit