Hear the late Talk Talk founder’s early attempt at landing a record deal. Before forming Talk Talk in 1981, Mark Hollis was a singer and songwriter attempting, as […]
Archival
In the third issue of Synapse, a mid-1970s magazine devoted to news and features on the burgeoning field of electronic music, editors Douglas Lynner and Angela Schill offer […]
By the year 2000, various forms of electronic dance music had begun consuming global music culture, part of an evolution that began with the rise of home computers, […]
With his passing, celebrating the great drummer, singer and composer through video footage With his metronomic timing, calm vocal delivery, and movie-star good looks, musician Yukihiro Takahashi left […]
An Afrofuturist film featuring George Clinton, Juan Atkins, Goldie, DJ Spooky, and A Guy Called Gerald. Directed by British artist, writer, theorist John Akomfrah, The Last Angel of History is […]
Learn the basics of setting up a dub session from lovers rock / reggae legend Dennis Bovell. Originally published in the December, 1977 issue of London-based Sounds magazine, […]
A primer on the birth and evolution of recorded sound and the rise of high-fidelity stereo systems… Cheesy 1990s graphics? Check. Dated approach to documentary TV? Obviously. Woefully […]
Essential pre-iPhone era archival footage from dub soundsystem parties. If you’re like us and have yet to experience the legendary dub sound systems of Jah Shaka, Aba Shanti-I, […]
A collection of interviews with the late great “Astral Traveler,” Pharoah Sanders. This weekend the world lost a giant. Pharoah Sanders, whose singular approach to composition and performance […]
Phonographs, shellac discs, dusty 45’s, and archival videos curated and presented by Lance and April Ledbetter. For the past 20-plus years, the Georgia-based archival imprint Dust-to-Digital has been […]
This illuminating hour-long 1993 documentary will rewire your brain. Sometimes you come across a documentary, article, essay or DJ mix that explodes your world. Something you didn’t realize […]
Two legends of German music deliver nearly two hours of improvised bliss. In 1999, two towering figures of electronic music, Michael Rother and Dieter Moebius, stood onstage in […]
Watch an ’80s tourist promo for the legendary open-air Ibiza nightclub that rivaled Studio 54. Summer has officially arrived, and in light of all this heat and sunshine […]
Watch the seven-part surreal and transcendental TV opera by the American avant-garde giant. The complete seven acts of Robert Ashley’s celebrated visual work Perfect Lives have been uploaded […]
Hear a pair of revelatory versions featuring Brian Eno on “splintered” Minimoog. Last week two David Bowie tracks recorded during the Low sessions in 1976 showed up on […]
Step into a world of North Carolina mountain singing with music archivist Derek Piotr. A series of recordings collected by Herbert Halpert for the Library of Congress in […]
The brilliant Brazilian singer, songwriter and political activist Caetano Veloso will turn 80 in August, and given his stature, influence and shimmering output over the past 60-plus years, […]
Lovely footage of “American primitive” guitar master and Takoma records boss John Fahey. By 1969, guitarist John Fahey had released ten solo albums, founded the brilliant folk-blues label […]
A rare pre-Hats interview with The Blue Nile on Deirdre O’Donoghue’s SNAP! radio show. As avid Blue Nile fans, we’re constantly scouring the internet for anything (interview, documentary, […]
Early live versions of Souvlaki and Just for a Day. “It doesn’t seem like the crowd is aware that they’re in the presence of greatness,” notes one commenter […]
72-minutes of Stereolab live in Danbury, Connecticut. In 1994, Stereolab was hitting a creative peak. They’d just released “Mars Audiac Quintet,” their heavy-duty Krautrock-inspired fourth album, and five […]
A few selections from our favorite online archive of art, music, film, and all things esoteric. Though you’ve likely stumbled across a post or two from UbuWeb during […]
“My Definition Of Techno House Is A Shrimp.” Earlier this year, German electronic label Transmigration released the much anticipated Space Teddy Collection, a 2xLP compilation of tracks from […]
ISC closes its first week of September programing with a deep dive into the music of Arther Russell. The In Sheep’s Clothing Residency at Neuehouse Hollywood is nearing […]
Highly recommended vintage hi-fi reading from audiophile writer Hans Fantel. Though his name is nearly lost to time, starting in the 1950s the writer Hans Fantel was a […]
Building a system from the ground up? Start with the speakers. Some sage advice from a 1975 essay in High Fidelity magazine. The whole thing can be overwhelming, […]
Capturing the 70’s hi-fidelity craze in illustrations. If you were lucky enough to be a music freak who could also illustrate, in the 1960s and ‘70s you could […]
Was Rahsaan Roland Kirk the coolest person who ever lived? Rahsaan Roland Kirk unapologetically rode the edge of absurdity his entire life and regularly left audiences gobsmacked in […]
Extensive interviews and performances with the new age icon explaining the origins of his inter-dimensional music. Here is Iasos, the legendary and peculiar new age figure from the […]
Classic Marantz, Klipsch, JBL, and Garrard advertisements from the peak Hi-Fi era. Fifty years ago when magazines were the dominant source of information on listening and hi-fi culture, […]
Eno sits down with Israeli designer Ron Arad and waxes poetic about his connection to visual art and his entanglements with the art world at large. In this […]
Take a look inside Chokuritsu Enjin, a small, strictly jazz bar named after Mingus’s Pithecanthropus Erectus. Via Chasing the Sun Moments, a documentary travel series telling stories from […]
A wonderfully cheeky video from John Darko on how plants affect the sound of your listening room. If you’ve ever visited audiophile message boards, you’ll notice they’re filled […]
A rare look into the music and life of the Lovely Music Ltd. composer, musician, and teacher. Just For the Record: Conversations with and about “Blue” Gene Tyranny […]
Filmmaker Robert Mugge profiles Sun Ra, jazz musician, bandleader and self-styled poet and philosopher. “They say that history repeats itself. But history is only his story. You haven’t […]
In typical BBC4 fashion, here is Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany: A full panoramic breakdown of the rise of one of the most influential sounds from Europe. “From […]
Here’s a rare 2.5 hour recording of Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band live at the Strata Concert Gallery in Detroit. The performance opens with an incredible rendition of “Hidden […]
Making Waves is a 2019 documentary examining how visionary directors work with sound designers to create the most exciting cinematic experiences. The film follows discoveries and advances in […]
Sharing an article from the Vanity Fair archives for our favorite Star Man’s birthday today. In Vanity Fair’s November 2003 issue, David Bowie reveals, in no particular order, the […]
Essential lockdown viewing and the perfect gateway into “cool jazz” legend Chet Baker. Let’s Get Lost, Bruce Weber’s monochromatic masterpiece on “cool jazz” great Chet Baker, is a […]
Like many people around the world, we’ve been heavily listening to and remembering Daniel “MF DOOM” Dumile through his music over the last few days… One of the […]
Revisiting one of our all-time favorite music pieces today from our good friend Randall Roberts. The Lost Art of Deep Listening encapsulates the essence of the In Sheep’s […]
“The word ‘ambient’ doesn’t ring a bell with me. It’s meant to mean something but is, in fact, meaningless. It’s not relevant for me. My style is the […]
“The synthesizer the way I play it doesn’t need any manual skill. You don’t have to be clever to turn a knob. So what I’m saying is that […]
