Steve Sutherland

Steve Sutherland  |  Jan 20, 2023  |  0 comments
For the group's tenth album, Roger Waters put his own spin on George Orwell's famous parable. The result was 'nobody's favourite Pink Floyd LP', says Steve Sutherland

Kate Bush had her Bronte. And her Joyce. The Doors had their Blake via Huxley. Dire Straits had their Shakespeare. Led Zeppelin had their Tolkien. The Police had their Nabokov. It seems like since time immemorial rock and pops stars have plundered literature for lyrical inspiration. Even Ozzy had his Crowley. And Pink Floyd were no exception.

Steve Sutherland  |  Jan 13, 2023  |  0 comments
From Dusty to Deep Purple, The Beatles and The Stones, in the '60s and '70s this studio quickly became home to pop and rock's leading lights. Steve Sutherland has the story

So, here's how you do it. Take two synchronised tape copies of a finished recording and play them simultaneously into a third master recorder, all the while manually retarding the rotation of one of the two tape reels by pressing on the flanges, manipulating the phase difference between the two sources. Easy-peasy. Now you can flange.

Steve Sutherland  |  Dec 23, 2022  |  0 comments
This uplifting R&B and gospel album from the family band was the highlight of a long career, evangelises Steve Sutherland as he hears the 180g reissue

One of last year's musical highlights was the release of Summer Of Soul, the documentary lovingly assembled by Questlove about the Cultural Festival that took place on six Sundays between June the 29th and August the 24th 1969 at Mount Morris Park in Harlem, New York.

Steve Sutherland  |  Dec 09, 2022  |  0 comments
Built originally for pop sensations ABBA, this studio inside a disused cinema has rocked to the sounds of Genesis, The Ramones and Led Zep. Steve Sutherland has the story

There were four in the group but most of the time only two made it to the studio. One absentee was holed up in a nearby hotel attempting to kick a drug habit. The other was an alcoholic who could hardly get out of bed and would die soon enough, choking while passed out in a stupor.

Steve Sutherland  |  Nov 11, 2022  |  0 comments
With its roots in a demo facility in downtown Stockport, this studio would later pump out hits from the likes of 10cc and The Smiths. Steve Sutherland takes up the story

Neither of the two musicians had been in a studio before. The closest they'd come was messing about doing demos on a knackered four-track Teac in an ex-manager's garage. So stepping into Strawberry, all swish and gleaming and stacked with mod cons, they were stunned. And not a little scared.

Steve Sutherland  |  Nov 04, 2022  |  0 comments
Cobbled together by Malcolm McLaren to bring the 'Burundi beat' to the masses, this New Wave group made a brief but memorable impression on Steve Sutherland

Anyone remember SFX? Anyone? No? Nobody? Not to worry. It didn't live that long. SFX was a music magazine launched in November 1981, and which died on the vine in the Summer of '82. It was edited by ex-NME writer Max Bell and the twist was that all the content was on a cassette tape, not printed on paper. Billed as 'The only music magazine on C-60', there were about 19 issues in all, sold in the shops mounted on cardboard.

Steve Sutherland  |  Oct 14, 2022  |  0 comments
On the 60th anniversary of the hit 'Telstar', Steve Sutherland tells the tale of the man behind the music and his pioneering home studio above a shop in North London

You may have read recently about the discovery of a British warship that sank in 1682 off our eastern coast which is being hailed by those who know as the 'most significant historic maritime discovery since the raising of the Mary Rose in 1982'. Well, happy as I am for Her Majesty's hyped-up historians, there's another treasure trove currently being examined that, for me, knocks that watery wreck into a cocked hat.

Steve Sutherland  |  Oct 07, 2022  |  0 comments
A great TV or movie soundtrack can introduce you to long-forgotten music – and nothing does it better than this eclectic double LP on 180g, says Steve Sutherland

Say hello to Jesus Malverde. He may or may not have actually existed, apparently sported a handsome moustache, and today he's Mexico's patron saint of drug smugglers. Yup, you read that right. Mexico is such a marvellously messed-up place that it remains highly religious but simultaneously economically reliant on the dope trade.

Steve Sutherland  |  Sep 09, 2022  |  0 comments
Marc Bolan gave kids of the '70s a new exciting sound with this chart-topping LP, now reissued on 180g vinyl. Steve Sutherland celebrates the 'rock 'n' roll poet'

It might not have been as seismic, say, as Judas dobbing Jesus in to Pontius Pilot, or Bob Dylan hitching his wagon to The Band and suddenly turning electric, but a betrayal's a betrayal, right?

Steve Sutherland  |  Sep 06, 2022  |  0 comments
The brainchild of Richard Branson, this studio in Oxfordshire was where Tubular Bells was laid to tape and Tangerine Dream created Phaedra. Steve Sutherland tells the tale

I'll let you into a little secret. Before no-one else did, and our world became all credit cards and phone taps, the rich stayed rich by never carrying cash. The Queen, for instance, was famous for never having any moolah on her at all, except on a Sunday when, if she was going to church, she'd have a tenner folded and ironed into a neat square so she could discretely slip it into the collection box.

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