Yoko Ono: Approximately Infinite Universe (Apple)
Review by Ian MacDonald, NME, January 1973
INASMUCH AS the Lennons have spent four years trying to turn self-dramatisation into an art-form, the criticism of indulgence so often aimed at them seems, on ...

Eno: Of Launderettes And Lizard Girls
Interview by Nick Kent, NME, July 1973
...and things that go bump in Ladbroke Grove. Nick Kent stakes out Eno's closet ...

Henry Cow: Gerroff An' Milk It
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, August 1974
CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY wanted to call it 'How I listened to HENRY COW – and lived' ...

Robert Wyatt: Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, September 1974
EVEN THOUGH the gig was due to start at 8.30, Drury Lane had started to clog up with earnest-looking hippies nearly two hours before the event. ...

Henry Cow: In Praise of Learning
Review by Ian MacDonald, NME, June 1975
IT HAS been said that rock has lost its vision. It has also been suggested that the current drought of spectacular things to behold in the ...

Ron Geesin: Cockpit Theatre, London
Live Review by Miles, NME, January 1976
DRESSED IN RED shorts and jersey with white sneakers, Ron Geesin looks like a combination of Elton John and Alexander Solzhenitsyn but has the crazed energy ...

Annette Peacock: X-Dreams
Review by Paul Morley, NME, July 1978
WITH HER first album for six years, Annette Peacock softens the fabric. Glancing curiously and greedily at the rhythms and advantages at the tip of popular ...

Annette Peacock: A Rock & Role Alternative
Interview by Ian Penman, NME, September 1978
"I THINK what happened was, after I left New York all the anger and the toughness and the hostility seemed to dissipate – and in the ...

Brian Eno: Music For Films
Review by Ian Penman, NME, October 1978
"I'M NOT really interested in the quality of the film, what they furnish is an excuse to do some music...they're areas where I can experiment in ...

Steve Reich: Music For 18 Musicians
Review by Paul Morley, NME, November 1978
A MAJOR new work by Steve Reich, a 42-year-old composer and performer from New York. Music For 18 Musicians was conceived in May 1974 and premiered ...

The Residents: Not Available
Review by Andy Gill, NME, November 1978
MORE SO than anything else they've done, when Not Available's weirdness wears off, its "merry tunes" become an indelible stain on one's day-to-day existence. After only ...

The Residents: Not Available
Review by Peter Silverton, Sounds, November 1978
EVEN BEFORE slotting the stylus into the grooves, you're aware that this is one of the most bizarre albums ever to make it a: far as ...

Penseur in Patchy Light: David Cunningham…
Interview by Paul Morley, NME, November 1978
is either a 3-time loser looking for a way out, OR...
...An entrepreneurial polymath looking for a way in. ...

The Flying Lizards: The Flying Lizards (Virgin) **½
Review by Peter Silverton, Sounds, February 1980
SOME TIME ago, American journalist and alliterator Tom Wolfe wrote an essay, 'The Painted Word', on the world of post-war American painting. ...

Yellow Magic Orchestra: No More Hiros
Interview by Betty Page, Sounds, February 1982
BEFORE MAKING the obvious comments on such an album title as Neuromantic and collapsing into sarcastic guffaws, consider for a moment the man who coined that ...

This Heat: King's College, London
Live Review by Lynden Barber, Melody Maker, June 1982
TRAGICALLY snubbed by both press and public in this country, This Heat may have played their final gig. ...

Richard H. Kirk: Sound Tracked
Interview by Don Watson, NME, May 1984
IT DOESN'T take too long to suss that Richard Kirk's medium is The Image – here's a man who's ill at ease with The Word. ...

Art of Noise: Noise Annoys
Interview by Jack Barron, Sounds, January 1985
HOT TOWN, it's summer in the city. Basing Street, West London to be exact, the pleasure dome of ZTT records. The Art Of Noise have yet ...

Tuxedomoon: Bad Moon Rising
Interview by Jack Barron, Sounds, May 1985
"HEY! LOOK at this weird architecture," enthuses Peter Principle, surveying the sight he's just stumbled across by opening the curtain in my hotel bedroom. I squint ...

Laurie Anderson: More Blank Than Frank
Interview by Don Watson, NME, June 1986
AS SHE confides to us in her live show, Laurie Anderson was a bird in a previous incarnation. ...

The Residents: Hammersmith Palais, London
Live Review by Dele Fadele, NME, November 1986
IF YOU often wondered what fate befalls ex-members of that most teenage of teenage groups, Menudo, don't. Their hearts are left in San Francisco where one ...

Diamanda Galás' Dark Voices
Interview by Mark Dery, Elle, October 1988
WHEN DIAMANDA Galás opens her mouth, dark things come flapping out in a pandemonium of caws, screeches, and beating wings. "I feel as if I'm a ...

John Zorn, Scott Johnson, De La Soul, Negativland, The Beatnigs: The Decomposers
Overview by Mark Dery, Elle, September 1989
MAYBE IT all began in 1917 with the harmless-looking urinal "R. Mutt" entered in the Society of Independent Artists New York show. ...

Laurie Anderson: On The Jagged Edge
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, Elle, October 1989
"I'LL BET you think I'm making this up," says Laurie Anderson, her voice taut, edgy. A dramatic pause, then a grave shake of the head. "Uh-uh." ...

Back to the Future: Brian Eno
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, November 1990
The teenage keyboard pioneer with the left-field dress sense evolved into the amiable egghead in the "gardening clothes". And in between – via the avant-garde, Bowie, ...

Electronica: Electronics Anonymous
Report by Johnny Black, Q, December 1990
Swatched in dry ice, tucked behind towering banks of keyboards, they are the spiritual descendents of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, prescribing "psycho-active music to bring on ...

The Fugs: F*** Art, Let's Levitate The Pentagon
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, March 1994
DECEMBER 16, 1965. A press conference is under way at Columbia Studios, Los Angeles. Bob Dylan is holding court. One reporter throws a question: "What are ...

Incredible Strange and Highly Exotic
Essay by David Toop, The Wire, October 1994
The Incredibly Strange Music books are mondo archaeology for vinyl fetishists. They exhume a hidden world of plastic where exotic Easy Listening, modern primitives, suburban astronauts, ...

John Oswald: The Man Who Stole Michael Jackson's Face
Profile and Interview by David Gans, Wired, February 1995
John Oswald creates new works from existing sonic materials. His Plunderphonic got him in trouble with the copyright police. (It also got him gigs with the ...

Silver Apples
Interview by Phil McMullen, Ptolemaic Terrascope, 1996
"You are about to have probably the most unusual musical experience of your life. The music will enter areas of your mind never before opened until ...

Robert Wyatt
Interview by Richie Unterberger, Perfect Sound Forever, November 1996
RICHIE UNTERBERGER interviewed Robert Wyatt on November 18, 1996 for his book Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll, which profiles 60 of the most interesting cult acts of ...

Brian Eno: The Drop
Review by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, August 1997
WHERE MOST folk in this business work on instinct, rarely pondering how to maximise their talent, supposing they have any, Eno is one of a small ...

Tortoise: TNT
Review by David Stubbs, Uncut, April 1998
Test card music for the Gods. Band at vanguard of American 'post-rock' developments ...

Fables Of The Deconstruction
Essay by Edwin Pouncey, The Wire, July 1999
ONE MAY evening in 1967 at San Francisco's Matrix club, Steppenwolf's bass player Nick St Nicholas got up on stage, plugged his guitar into an amplifier ...

David Toop: Exotica: Fabricated Soundscapes In A Real World
Review by Rob Chapman, Mojo, July 1999
IF EXOTICA is, to quote a much used definition, nostalgia for places you've never visited, then the term has potentially universal application. Bearing in mind that ...

Outside the Whale: Laurie Anderson plays Moby
Live Review by Eric Weisbard, Village Voice, October 1999
Songs and Stories From Moby Dick, BAM Opera House, Through October ...

Leila: Courtesy Of Choice
Review by David Stubbs, Uncut, October 2000
ANOTHER SUPERLATIVE ambient/techno album from former Bjork ...

Jim O'Rourke: The Art Of Noise
Profile and Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, March 2002
HEAR AN EXPERIMENTAL, ELECTRONIC RECORD THESE DAYS AND CHANCES ARE IT WILL HAVE CHICAGOAN JIM O'ROURKE'S NAME ON IT. ROB HUGHES MEETS THE 21ST CENTURY BRIAN ...

Ron Geesin
Profile and Interview by Mike Barnes, The Wire, September 2003
"Ron Geesin, composer for all media, live performer and one-man record company, works from his own studio both writing for musicians and working with complex multitracking ...

Yoko Ono: The Outsider Peeks Inside
Profile and Interview by Jeff Tamarkin, Global Rhythm, January 2004
THE WOMAN'S clothing is being snipped from her body. Systematically, one by one, 200 scissors-wielding strangers – and the woman's son – silently have a go ...

Damo Suzuki: The Accidental Anarchist
Interview by Mike Barnes, The Wire, July 2004
Damo Suzuki is the legendary vocalist with German group Can, but he has been perfecting his unique mode of 'instant composition' all his life. Having survived ...

This Heat and Cold Storage: Once upon a time in Brixton
Retrospective by Mike Barnes, The Wire, August 2005
"A former meat storage room that became This Heat's rehearsal room then an 8-track studio then a 16-track studio then a 24-track studio then a bankrupt ...

Terry Riley: Royce Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles
Live Review by Steven R Rosen, Harp, October 2005
TO CELEBRATE the 70th birthday of California-born minimalist composer Terry Riley, the UCLA Live series put together a program even stranger than Riley's landmark In C ...

Brian Eno: The Big Chill
Essay by Michel Faber, The Guardian, July 2006
GLEAMING METAL DOORS slide open noiselessly at the touch of a button, and I step into the secret subterranean studio of Brian Eno. The atmosphere is ...

George Pringle: The Social, London
Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, November 2007
"JUST WAIT till my husband gets out of prison," sulks the skinny girl, poking a pinky into her mound of frothed hair. The audience titter obligingly, ...