Deep
Cuts
Long reads. Essential listening. Vinyl culture without the rush.
ECM: The Sound Next to Silence
Cologne, 24 January 1975. The wrong piano, an exhausted pianist. From that night Manfred Eicher built an aesthetic no one has managed to copy.
Read → ECM: The Sound Next to Silence
Cologne, 24 January 1975. The wrong piano, an exhausted pianist. From that night Manfred Eicher built an aesthetic no one has managed to...
Stax Records: The Day It All Ended
Memphis, November 1975. Union Planters Bank padlocks the door on McLemore Avenue. The greatest soul label in American history closes this...
Prefab Sprout: Pop's Great Underrated Recluse
Paddy McAloon wrote some of the finest songs in English pop, then vanished. The story of Prefab Sprout, his writing, and the albums he never...
Masters of Their Own Sound: Strata-East, Tribe and Black Jazz
In the 1970s spiritual-jazz musicians built their own labels to own their music. Today those records sell for four-figure sums. A late,...
Understanding Krautrock: Can, Neu!, Kraftwerk
Can, Neu! and Kraftwerk: three German answers to one question. The story of krautrock, the motorik beat, and how West Germany rebuilt rock...
Nick Drake: Three Albums, No Stage, a Posthumous Afterlife
Three records, barely any sales, no touring. Then a car commercial turns the quietest folk singer of his era into a permanent fixture.
Understanding Folk: The Voice Before the Amplifier
The history and culture of folk music: from Woody Guthrie to Greenwich Village, from Nick Drake and Fairport Convention to De André and...
The Velvet Underground and the Banana
500 copies sold on release. Millions of bands born after. The story of the most influential rock album ever made.
Blue Note Records: 85 Years of Sound That Never Ages
Alfred Lion, Van Gelder, Reid Miles and the Tone Poet Series. 85 years of jazz on vinyl.
