Stories

When the first notes of a shoegaze track emerge, listeners often describe the feeling as being held underwater or wrapped in fog. The genre, which crystallised…

There's a strange thing that happens to musicians between records. The debut arrives like a kind of invitation: you've gathered your strongest songs over a…

I had been listening to this songwriter's records for the better part of two decades before I ever set eyes on him in the same room. The first time came on a…

When I tell someone my favourite obscure genre is Swedish death metal, the look I get usually lands somewhere between polite confusion and a slow step…

It started, like a lot of important musical lessons for me, with a borrowed CD. A flatmate in our share house in Fitzroy had propped the compilation against…

Jazz improvisation can sound like magic from a distance: a saxophone takes flight, a rhythm section shifts beneath it, and a solo seems to arrive fully formed.…

Carole King’s songs have a way of arriving without making a fuss. They do not need a grand entrance, a complicated concept, or a vocal performance built around…

When a producer presses play on a battered copy of a 1970s funk record and hears a snare fill that sounds like it's begging to be looped, something starts…

I did not set out with a grand collecting strategy. My first 7-inch single from the 1970s was an inexpensive second-hand find with a worn paper sleeve, a…

Some guitar sounds announce themselves with volume, distortion and a wall of effects. Mark Knopfler’s tone works differently. It can arrive quietly, almost…