A great write-up on the Bleep sound of Sheffield that had an important place in the history of dance music. I still remember the first time I heard LFO, I was blown away. Luckily, my speakers were not.
Rob Gordon, Warp co-founder and a supremely talented and important producer and engineer in the bleep story, remixed The Theme for its Virgin rerelease as his “bass statement” but no mastering engineers would touch it. One did, Geoff Pesche, but in order to fully capture the sheer depth of sub-bass on the record, he crawled under the mixing desk to remove its limiters. Letters of complaint flooded to Virgin, as ill-prepared speaker systems were blown and destroyed across the UK.
An 8-bit accordion made from two Commodore 64s and some floppy disks. It sounds amazing.
As someone who used to hang out in all these strange and exciting places, I'm happy to know it's all still happening despite the mainstream takeover.
The story of the Liverbirds, Liverpool's first female rock band that came up behind the beatles and had quite a run. Amazing and moving story. (via Kottke)
Genre was once a practical tool for organizing record shops and programming radio stations, but it seems unlikely to remain one in an era in which all music feels like a hybrid, and listeners are no longer encouraged (or incentivized) to choose a single area of interest.
An interesting take on the historical categorisation and the continuous flux of musical genres as well as the disappearance of group identification.
I like to listen to random tracks on streaming services for serendipity. I also have a visceral hate of autotuned vocals which creep up on me regularly while doing this. I will throw money at the first service to implement a filter so I don't have to reach for the skip button in terror every time this happens. It'll probably save me money on therapy bills down the line too.
