10 reccomended entry points into an artist’s back catalogue
After 35 years of reinventing British pop, Saint Etienne’s Bob, Pete and Sarah are hanging up their samples, synthesisers, feather boas and football strips for good. Jude Rogers offers 10 ways into their always surprising, genre-splicing back catalogue, from their early days with C86 bands and Andrew Weatherall to their final, star-filled album
After providing Severance with the soundtrack to its "defiant jazz" scene, the endlessly explorative work of legendary multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee is enjoying a moment of rare mainstream crossover. With a new taster compilation coming this autumn, Stewart Smith provides 10 points of entry into his sprawling discography
For 40 years, Jon Spencer has been playing a mutant strain of rock & roll. Here he offers Mark Andrews 10 entry points to his vast back catalogue, from his earliest days in Pussy Galore, through the Blues Explosion all the way up to his still-nameless new band
Franz Treichler guides David Stubbs through the archives of the Swiss trio who repurposed the sampler to give rock a new, industrial lease of life in the 1980s, before venturing into space influenced by ambient and techno. Portrait by Charlotte Walker
With Heart Of The Original, his radical treatise on creativity, back in print and new novel The Book Lovers out last December, cult author Steve Aylett is ripe for discovery. Aug Stone talks to him and offers ten points of entry into his back catalogue
As Andy Bell prepares to release his finest solo album to date, he guides Luke Turner through his Strange World, from his relationship to Erasure's hits, remixing Vince Clarke, touring with Cyndi Lauper, singing with Debbie Harry and a one-man play about a randy vampire.
Following the recent release of a ten-disc compilation and a ferocious sequel to his 2002 record Sheer Hellish Miasma, Kevin Drumm speaks to Daryl Worthington about key releases in his three-decade spanning catalogue, covering music from the almost absent to the blisteringly present
From demon-riffing drone-lords Bong to gruelling, piledriver punks Drunk In Hell, power trident-pronged psych outfit Blown Out, experimental soundtracking with Artifacts & Uranium, the atomic noise rock of Melting Hand and the crushing cosmic doom of 11Paranoias, plus a plethora of collaborations with luminaries from the Japanese psych underground, Mike Vest’s discography over the last decade is as dizzying as it gets. Ryan Walker attempts to deliver a guide to the 10 best points of entry
On the release of a new compilation of Lou Reed’s 1960s compositions at Pickwick Records, Wayne Gooderham surveys the sprawling solo career that was to come later, and picks out ten key tracks that serve as guides to an intimidating post-Velvets discography
From making groundbreaking electro to working with Whitney Houston via boozy sessions with Motörhead, plus avant explorations of thrash, drum & bass, grindcore, gnawa and disco, Bill Laswell has been on more great records than you've had hot dinners. Zachary Lipez offers ten points of entry to his bewilderingly vast back catalogue
Despite the predictably & performatively negative reaction the Japanese artist inspires in some critical quarters, it is clear she has been responsible for a cavalcade of bangers over the decades. With a new retrospective at the Tate Modern, Jeremy Allen explores her back catalogue
The Icarus Line is dead, but Joe Cardamone lives on. Ahead of his appearance at Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht, he tells Stevie Chick about his searing new multimedia project, making art in the era of Trump, and how he survived the end of the greatest rock & roll band of his generation. Videos NSFW
In the sixteenth full-length recording from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Luke Turner finds perhaps their most perfect musical expression of horror, its realism and sense of inevitability overpowering usual tendencies toward the baroque, and a powerful lesson in empathy