After building a home studio the SMD musician and Arctic Monkeys and Depeche Mode producer James Ford picked up no less than 18 instruments – and a microphone – in order to make his beguiling debut LP. Words by Jeremy Allen. All portraits by Pip Bourdillon
Simian Mobile Disco's second live album offers an oblique answer to a series of questions about live dance music. Chad Parkhill presses the duo of James Ford and Jas Shaw about their motives in releasing this document of their show
As she prepares to release her new EP with Simian Mobile Disco, Luke Turner sits down with Beth Ditto and finds that, a million record sales down the line from that song, Gossip's singer is still an unreformed Arkansas punk. Just with a better mattress
With the UK leg of their European tour drawing to a close with sets in Bristol tonight and on the Quietus' Desertfest stage tomorrow, Lee Buford of the none-bleaker American sludge duo picks out 13 all-time top records and pens us his own Baker's Dozen
Facilitator for some of the most influential names in music, and one of the most overlooked forces in left-field British sound, Annie Hogan picks out the seven-inch records that shaped her childhood, and sowed the seeds for a remarkable career