The KLF were cool and other shock revelations from a 90s pop childhood
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10 best techstep slammers - Part two
This is part two of my ten biggest techstep slammers. You can read part one - in which I explain my relationship to techstep and talk about tunes from T...
10 best techstep slammers - Part one
I used to think that techstep ruined jungle. I love drums, perhaps more than anything else, and techstep - the loud, aggressive and (almost) uniformly dark...
Motorik madness: 10 Krautrock albums that rotated my head - part two
This is the second part of my introduction to Krautrock, aka ten Krautrock albums that rotated my head. You can read part one, which included records by Amon...
Motorik madness: 10 Krautrock albums that rotated my head - part one
Was zum Teufel ist Krautrock überhaupt? Or: what the hell is Krautrock, anyway? This is a question that surely comes to all right-thinking music fans at some...
DJ Gregory - the accidental house hero
DJ Gregory, aka Grégory Darsa, is one of the most unusual producers in French House. This is not so much for his sound, which is far from the absurd sonic...
10 dub albums that changed my world (Part two)
Welcome to part two of my list of 10 dub (or dub-adjacent) albums that changed my world, in some way. You can read part one, here. In part two, things get...
10 dub albums that changed my world (Part one)
In my recent post about Loidis' One Day - TL:DR I don’t much like it - I had a whine about the producer’s description of his music as “dub mnml emo tech”,...
Life’s a GAS with Wolfgang Voigt
It seems appropriate for an artist named GAS that you can never quite tie down the music of Wolfgang Voigt and his long-standing psychedelic / ambient /...
Line Noise podcast is 200 episodes old
Philip Sherburne and I started the Line Noise podcast back in January 2016. The idea was, if I recall rightly, to do something like the New York Times...
Wolfgang Flür: on joy, Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, Times and more
Wolfgang Flür in 2025 is everything that Kraftwerk, his former band, are not: friendly, communicative and shot through with a vivid sense of humour. He’s...
Who killed 2-Step? MJ Cole and UKG’s second album syndrome
UK Garage was, at least for a few months in 2000, a far bigger deal in the British charts than jungle had ever been. But UKG never really had the same global...
The bread in a Bruce sandwich
I wasn’t initially planing to write about Bruce. I had interviewed him for the Line Noise podcast and I thought that would be that. The more I thought about...
Yello: musique concrète, sampling and (not) the Alpine Kraftwerk
Swiss electronic band Yello are the answer to a question not often posed, namely: what would Kraftwerk be like with a moustachioed bon viveur on vocals and a...
Chrystabell on David Lynch
Last year I interviewed American singer Chrystabell ahead of the release of Cellophane Memories, her third album in collaboration with David Lynch. After the...
Let’s dance? David Bowie’s diverse history with electronic music
January 2025 marks the ninth anniversary of the Line Noise podcast and also the ninth anniversary of David Bowie’s death, two things which always come...
Why don’t more rock bands make 2-Step? aka The Beta Band appreciation post
Guitar music wasn’t up to much in the year 2000. The comprehensive kickstart that The Strokes eventually brought wouldn’t arrive until the release of their...
10 records that prove 2024 was even better than you thought
There were lots of fantastic records released in 2024 and I got to write about many of them, an opportunity for which I am eternally grateful. Sometimes,...
The 10 biggest Line Noise posts + podcasts of 2024 (and the reaction to them)
As 2024 rolls wearily to an end, I thought I would take the opportunity to look back over the 10 most popular Line Noise Substack pieces and the 10 most...
Nexus 21 - from Stafford to Altern-8, via Detroit
On December 12 2024 Mind Machines, the second album by British techno duo Nexus 21 - aka Mark Archer and Chris Peat - was finally released, some 33 years...
Music From The Merch Desk - a true reflection of Aphex’s chaotic genius
AKA striking the Aphex anvil while it’s good and hot Music From The Merch Desk (2016-2023) is by no means the best Aphex Twin album. It’s not even close. But...
Xylitol’s Anemones is the Line Noise album of the year
I’ve been watching the new (ish) version of Nick Hornby’s record-shop romedy High Fidelity this month and it has reminded me how much I love lists. Which,...
For Loidis’ sake let 2025 be maximal
It's not like 2024 has been without its share of bad news. But, amid the ongoing shower of political / environmental / imperial shit, one piece of musical...
10 tracks that prove hip house didn’t die in 1988
Hip house is the musical genre that dares not say its name, a flash-in-the-pan sensation at the end of the 1980s, when hip hop and house were briefly getting...
Heartless Crew: where Garage met grime and got on outrageously
Plus Blawan, Sónar 2025 and more In the early 2000s one of the reasons that many Americans (especially but not uniquely) had such a hard time getting their...
Weird 90s - Summers Magic / Kyiv’s resistance
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Sabres of Paradise’s Haunted Dancehall: Weatherall’s unearthly masterpiece
When Andrew Weatherall died in February 2020, most obituaries made more of his status as a DJ and remixer than his work as a producer of original music. And...
On Jeff Mills, Tomorrow Comes The Harvest and musical freedom
I’ve always seen electronic music as representing a kind of freedom. On the one hand, there is the musical freedom that comes from using instruments like...
DJ Mehdi: a misunderstood artist comes into focus
One of the few things generally known about DJ Mehdi - the French producer whose renown has only increased since his tragic death in 2011 - is that he...
A tribute to Cassius, the good-time boys of the French Touch
If Daft Punk were the innovators of the French Touch and Air the dreamers, then Cassius were the good-time boys, their songs full of uncomplicated fun, house...
10 songs to know Aphrodite, jump up innovator and supreme rabble rouser
In the mid 90s, I was friends with a group of amiable ravers who liked to go to happy hardcore and acid techno nights. They were lovely people but we didn’t...
Weird 90s - LFO’s LFO or Bleep goes mainstream
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Da Mongoloids explained: or how AV8, Jr. Sanchez, Daft Punk + more didn’t make the 36 Chambers of house
In the 90s, hip hop and house music had a very lopsided relationship. Hip hop artists didn’t have much time for house, on the whole; but there were a number...
Jamie xx, history and the LOLification of dance music
How much does history matter to dance music? Is it really important if a song earns its place in your affections, when you are swaying happily to its hi hats...
10 songs to go further into Todd Edwards - Part two
This is part two of my list of 10 tracks to go further into New Jersey garage experimentalist Todd Edwards. You can read part one here. 6) Todd Edwards -...
10 tracks to go further into Todd Edwards - Part one
New Jersey garage experimentalist Todd Edwards is best known to the world as a Daft Punk collaborator, having worked with the French duo on two songs: Face...
10 songs to know MK - Part two
This is part two of my ode of Marc “MK” Kinchen, the Detroit house don and production innovator. 6) MK featuring Alana - Love Changes (Masters At Work - MK...
10 songs to know MK - Part one
There was a time, roughly 10 years ago, when half the songs in the UK’s pop chart sounded like the work of Marc “MK” Kinchen, after the Detroit producer’s...
Fine margins of genius: a Photek interview - part two
This is part two of my interview with Photek (aka Rupert Parkes), from 2019. You can read part one here. The interview first went out in October 2019, around...
Fine margins of genius: A Photek interview - part one
I’ve been thinking about how to cover Photek on this newsletter for a while. Rupert Parkes is one of my favourite artists, a producer of seemingly limitless...
A temperate sway: why Mood II Swing are house royalty
In a world of musical flash and blabber, Mood II Swing are the perfectly greased cog that keeps everything moving: not eye-catching, fashionable or...
4-Hero are jungle legends: part two of two
This is part two of my homage to 4-Hero. Part one can be read here. Last time out, we got to Parallel Universe, in 1994. After Parallel Universe, there...
4-Hero are jungle legends: part one of two
Not many musicians can claim to have been at the heart of a new style of music, still fewer to be integral to two; and basically only 4-Hero can say they...
Green Velvet: bad for the soul, good for the heart
There comes a time in most clubbers’ lives, typically about a couple of months into the nightlife honeymoon, when you realise that there is a dark, surreal...
A salute to Salute and their pop house True Magic
You know what kind of music no one makes any more? Pop house. By which I mean, obviously hundreds of thousands of producers make pop house but no one likes...
Some overlooked records from the first half of 2024
And so the first half of 2024 finishes and we drag our weary carcasses into the second half of the year. To celebrate, I wanted to look back on some of the...
30 years on: the secret history of Basement Jaxx and underground house
Basement Jaxx are one of the most misunderstood acts in the history of house music. in 2024 they are probably best known known for their bells, whistles and...
Young, dumb and full of drums: Lessons learned from Sónar 2024
ASIANDOPEBOYS were really something The more percussion, the merrier Back in the 1990s, when I first started going to clubs, the idea of DJ + percussionist...
Legends, locals and dance locura - a Sónar 2024 preview
The Hospital de Sant Joan Baptista in Sitges Just two weeks after Primavera Sound shredded my soul - in a good way, I think - it’s back to the festivals for...
Peggy Gou’s I Hear You: not under; not over…. just… ground?
To the left, that’s me in action at Primavera sound, alongside Johann Wald. Picture by Cecilia Díaz Betz As one of the first electronic music genres to...