When I recently showed a cassette tape to my 11-year-old daughter, she looked genuinely baffled. ‘What is it?’ she asked. My first thought was that I’d failed as a parent, but then I realised there’s

LATE-FIFTIES OIL CAN echoes are fascinating pieces of gear. Imagine a rotating disk submerged in oil and built-in pickups that work in tandem to recreate the delay. Sounds a little wacky, right? But s

‘We’re going to have a tonal centre and tap our feet, and that’s the way it is.’ Steve Reich is in full flow, talking to me from his home in New York. ‘The big break, the knife down the line, was betw

ON THE SURFACE, guitar trends in 1986 looked downright wild and perverse — a weird parade of shred-happy virtuosos, anthemic power pop heroes, dirtbag metalheads and eccentric alt-rock outsiders. But

On entering a room containing a piano, what pianist doesn’t turn white at the command, ‘You can play – let’s hear you!’ You thought you were visiting friends, not giving a performance, so of course yo

The modern-day funk maestro on Strats, creative gear solutions, and why not to be swayed by the “mystique of gear”