CATEGORIES
PAN PEOPLE
Delphina James, whose homage to Kraftwerk is a new entry in the RRPG, tells lan Shirley about arranging electronic music for steel bands and her new project, playing the music of modern composer Ludovico Einaudi
The Collector
Sonic Youth RC reader Al Harwood
NUMB ANGEL
Lewis Taylor was a contender, hailed by the critics and name-dropped by everyone from Paul Weller to Elton John. Following attempts to sell him as a soul boy when he was more a UK Tame Impala - less Acid Jazz than acid and jazz he made a few dazzling records, then disappeared. Rumours circulated that he'd absented himself from social media and the music industry in general and was living as a recluse. But, after nearly two decades away, he's released a new album, NUMB, which shows him in as rude vocal and compositional health as ever, and finally ready to explain where he's been. It's madness: Matt Phillips
"YOU GET UNDER MY SKIN...”
The Only Ones were the new wave-era band with one foot in the pre-punk, rock classicist past. They recorded three albums of erratic flaming beauty, but it was a single of theirs, three minutes of ragged insinuating perfection, that really helped them make a mark. Here, adapted from Simon Wright's new book on the band's debut LP, is the story of Another Girl, Another Planet.
LET'S SHOP
There's nothing more that Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys and The Arcs likes more than a good few hours spent digging through the crates at his favourite UK record store. Which is why we join him by the racks at London's Stranger Than Paradise. Chris Catchpole witnesses the vinyl love.
CHAIRMAN OF THE KEYBOARD
With a new illustrated account of his life, Keith Emerson, out now, the partner of ELP's keyboard virtuoso, Mari Kawaguchi, and his son, Aaron Emerson, tell us his story via 12 key images from the book, all the way from 1966 right up to his death in 2016.
Full Moon
As much of their classic as you buy, beg, borrow or steal.
33½ minutes with...Francis Rossi
"Quo's last record got 3.5m streams... which is apparently fuck-all"
Alan Parsons – "It Was Pure Convenience"
So Alan Parsons tells Jo Kendall, looking back on the opportunity that took him from EMI lab lackey to Abbey Road engineering icon. But his production work with The Beatles, Hollies, Pink Floyd, Pilot, Al Stewart, Ambrosia and more wasn't the end of the story. When Parsons met musician and producer Eric Woolfson, his creativity translated into the enormously successful Alan Parsons Project, and a long-lasting solo career to sit alongside his Art & Science Of Sound Recording educational programme and occasional forays as not just a technical wizard, but a real life one, too. Oh, oh, oh, it's magic, you know...
AUTEUR TO AUTHOR
Luke Haines writes the shuk out of rock'n'roll Cale'n'arty
THE ENGINE ROOM
The unsung heroes who helped forge modern music
UNDER THE RADAR
Artists, bands, and labels meriting more attention
Attack Mode
Nottingham duo broaden their musical horizons without losing their edge on masterful 12th.
Flights Of Fancy
Frenchman's expansive ninth album wistfully yearns for the 20th century.
Of The Highest Disorder
Parenthood and politics interweave with ace pop as a revered talent re-engages.
Memory Lane
Northern Irish icon has a blast reworking the music of his teens.
DAVID QUANTICK LIKES
To write a column for Record Collector. Yay He's gonna dress you up in his love
MACON BLACK
Ian McCann plays old sounds to new ears
MUSIC TO VISIT
Bob Stanley carries pop's baggage everywhere. In search of the King's forgotten 45s.
Not Forgotten
Tom Verlaine and Lisa Marie Presley are fondly recalled
Diggin' For GOLD
Our regular look at the more arcane corners of record collecting. Includes Label Of Love
VALUE ADDED FACTS
\"RELAXED, IMPROVISED MUSIC, DEFYING CATEGORY\"
The Collector
Retired plumber Stephen George tells us, \"My aunt first encouraged me to collect records 62 years ago and I never stopped.
Flashback
With a 17-album retrospective on the shelves, Daryl Easlea catches up with Leee John, the flamboyant leader of glossy 80s pop-soul act Imagination whose camp aesthetic shouldn't preclude their entry to the post-Chic pantheon.
Living Doll
Sam Brown, the singer-songwriter behind 1989 Top 5 hit (and attendant LP of the same title) Stop!, is back with a new album despite having lost the ability to sing in 2007. She tells Charles Donovan how she managed it.
SNAP!
At the height of The Jam's success, the band commissioned 21-year-old freelance photographer Neil \"Twink\" Tinning to follow them around both in the studio and on the road and take reportage photos. The resulting shots appear in Rick Buckler and Zoe Howe's new book, The Jam 1982, which documents a year when the band were arguably the biggest in Britain, their splenetically intense gigs attended by a fanatical fanbase. Before an autumn tour taking in five Wembley Arena shows in December of that year, Paul Weller, 24, announced the band would split as \"I'd hate us to end up old and embarrassing like so many other groups do\". Here, Rick Buckler (left) takes us through a selection of Twink's best shots from a year when The Jam seemed to rule the Modern World.
Tales Of The Unexpected
Luke Haines' 90s infamy revisited.
Colin MacIntyre – No man is an island
Mull Historical Society mainstay Colin MacIntyre lifts the lid on his vinyl reissues and box set
Iggy Pop – "I Can Take a Punch"
There are die-hard totemic musicians, and there's Iggy Pop, so reflective of rock's primal urges and irrepressible energies he could write the book and supply most of the images. His "ribald ruffian" of a new album, Every Loser, shows an artist still willing to take risks and not succumb, aged 75, to notions of growing old gracefully. Five decades since Raw Power, The World's Greatest Living Rock'N'Roll Star (TM) talks about that feral classic, working with Bowie then and, four years later, in Berlin, his surprise visit from Robert Plant, the nature of addiction, inventing punk, the impermanence of existence, oh, and his beloved cockatoo... "At certain points there are flare-ups," he warns Chris Roberts
Iggy Pop Special: Funtime
Credited to Iggy & The Stooges, Raw Power is, to some ears (usually bleeding), the greatest rock album of the early 70s, sheer sonic violence further enlivened by bids to "search and destroy". More than The Stooges' previous two albums, it captures the puressence of rock'n'roll while setting fire to the rulebook. With a little help from James Williamson, their guitarist, Johnnie Johnstone tells the story of its brief yet volatile making and impact following its release a half-century ago this month. And then, on p88, RC is granted an audience with the mighty Iggy Pop in which he traces his career from the band's 1973 landmark to his new solo album, Every Loser, concluding with a Stooges/Pop discography on p97. All aboard.