South London photographer Alex Bartsch spent years researching and documenting Reggae album covers, resulting in his time capsule hardback Covers, now available for anyone to time travel through reggae on their own! Focusing on Reggae record sleeves between 1967-1988, Alex worked in close collaboration with Al Newman, scouting the location of 50+ sleeves whilst tracing […]
What makes a great horror soundtrack? Well, there is always tension; usually between innocent melodies and the menacing sounds that slowly envelop them. There are esoteric instruments galore – never has the theremin gotten so much love. You’ll find microtonal pitch changes on almost every horror soundtrack on this list. Dissonant chords, of course, are […]
Instagram can be a dreadful and hopeless place oftentimes. Mindlessly scrolling through other people’s holidays, inspirational quotes, and whatever-challenge-is-trending-right-now posts can turn a normal, sane human being into a sociopath. Trust us on that one. But sometimes, somehow, a quick visit to this social network can spark joy in our hearts. This is exactly what […]
Part I: Preface It began with a list. Scratch that: it began ten years prior with a box of late 70’s / early 80’s VG arena rock in a good friend’s bedroom and what I thought was going to be an at best vaguely listenable local Christian folk record. When we brought it back to […]
What’s this? Arabic music? Underground 12”s? A 3” record? July clearly was a breath of fresh air. This list is chock full of amazing gems from this past summer and definitely worth digging into. For once in a very long time this list was hard to finish as I just kept getting sucked into listening […]
Nostalgia is a wild beast. In the few last months, we have written about how different formats and genres are currently experiencing a revival. In addition to the now well-established vinyl revival, we recently established clear trends of increasing prices in the markets for high-end cassettes and expensive CDs. And we’re not only speaking about […]
The Scottish capital is simply stunning, from medieval lanes to mountainous surrounds shadowed by the beautiful Edinburgh Castle. Beneath Edinburgh’s historically drenched touristic wow-factor lies a diggers treasure trove, with a plethora of record shops scattered across the city that will keep all types of collectors busy. Last week we went on an Irn-Bru powered […]
It’s hard to deny the huge influence that poetry has on songwriting. In 2016, Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Patti Smith has come to be known as the “punk poet laureate”. Performance poet, John Cooper Clarke was buoyed by […]
Why read an album review when you can stream it on release day and make up your own mind? Why read an interview in a magazine when you can @ pretty much anyone and ask them anything — or just scroll through their Twitter feed? Why seek out a gig guide when you can click […]
While at a record fair in Cologne late last year, we met Frederic Stader, a Mastering and Vinyl Cutting Engineer from Germany who had worked on one of the best selling releases on Discogs in 2017, a reissue of Through The Looking Glass by Midori Takada. After talking to Frederic we were left with a […]
