Electronic Sound Magazine

9 August 2018

While this month’s cover story revolves around New York 1978, the tale actually begins a year earlier during a summer that The Big Apple wasn’t going to forget in a hurry, marked as it was by the serial killer Son of Sam, a city-wide power cut, rioting and looting and to top it all off, there was a monstrous heatwave. It was these conditions that led to the extraordinary run of releases by Devo, Talking Heads, Blondie and Suicide, all of which are celebrated in our Summer Special issue! Elsewhere we pay a visit to the Moog Sound Lab, a not-so-top-secret lab that lives at Surrey University and is stocked with a fabulous array of synths by the Moog mothership, while the ever-inventive east London unit Sculpture turn the dial up to 11 with their audio-visual delights. Supporting cast? We got it. Factory Floor’s Gabe Gurnsey reveals the tale behind his debut solo album, the new record from dancehall MC Miss Red stops us in our tracks, and we join music journalist, author and Electronic Sound contributor, David Stubbs, for an extract from his excellent new book, ‘Mars By 1980’, which tells the history of electronic music.