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Monograph Prog
Magma
Theusz Hamtaahk
Twenty-nine years. Then thirty-nine. Then forty-two. That's how long Magma's three longest compositions took to reach a record in one piece, and it is why the band's discography tells you almost nothing.
Monograph New wave
Wire
Pink Flag
Three albums in three years, and no two of them sound alike. This isn't a band growing up. It's a band setting itself a ban, keeping it to the end, then swapping it for another one. The tracklists tell the story better than any adjective could.
Selection World
Colombian cumbia
Ten tracks
The running order ignores the years and follows the melody instead, instrument by instrument. Cane flutes and drums first, then an accordion that crossed an ocean by mistake, then a brass section. One title turns up twice, at number one and at number seven.
Selection Prog
English prog
Ten records
Ten English records from 1969 to 1972, lined up by how much company stood behind them. At the top there's a multinational's catalogue number on the label. At the bottom a band paid for the pressing themselves: sixty-four copies, thirty-four pounds and sixty-eight pence.
Selection R&B
New jack swing
Ten tracks
A screenwriter handed the genre its name, and the swing came from a hand: Teddy Riley didn't program his drums, he played them straight down with the quantise off. Ten records in release order, and in five years the sound travels from a bathroom used as a reverb chamber to an Epic album.
Selection World
Fado
Ten tracks
A fado title comes in two halves: the song, and then in brackets the tune it sits on. Ten tracks lined up from the tunes nobody owns to the ones carrying a name, with proof in the middle that the same melody comes back under different words.
Genre New wave
Steve Levine
LinnDrum
Before the metronome in the headphones, bands ran faster towards the end, and not by accident: they pushed on the choruses. A study of 255 Billboard singles pins down the year the drift died, and a British producer explains the night his machine drifted instead.
Genre Electronic
Alfredo Fiorito
Amnesia
The turntables at Amnesia had no pitch control, the DJ could not beatmatch, and the room was empty. Alfredo Fiorito moved the opening to dawn. What came out of it, England took home.
Genre Library
Jonny Trunk
Trunk Records
Jonny Trunk picked up a Bosworth LP by accident, knocked on the company's door in Soho, and ended up running a label. Thirty years later, a study built on a billion listening events explains why records like that one stay invisible to a recommender.
Selection Jazz
Acid jazz
Eight albums
Eight British records from 1987 to 1993, grouped by the label that issued them. The name began as a joke at acid house's expense, and inside six years that joke had worked its way from a small independent to EMI's jazz vault and a Sony imprint.
Selection Disco
Cosmic
Eight records
The cosmic was Italian. The records weren't. Eight tracks Daniele Baldelli played at Cosmic between 1979 and 1984, all named by him, coming from England, New York, Germany and Bologna, and held together by nothing except a booth on Lake Garda.
Genre Indie
Hamburger Schule
L'Age d'Or
A concert series in Altona turns into a record label at the end of the eighties. Around L'Age d'Or a generation goes back to singing in German, then spends ten years arguing with the name somebody else gave them.
Selection Electronic
Detroit techno
Nine records
Nine records lined up by descent rather than by year: who taught whom, and who put out whom. Sorted that way they show something the dates hide, and one of the labels has it written into its catalogue prefix.
Selection Indie
Grunge
Nine records
Nine records made between 1986 and 1991, lined up by session date rather than release date. Sorted that way they show something the sleeves keep quiet about: nearly all of them came out of one room, a triangular building in Seattle that used to be a grocery shop.
Selection Electronic
Musique concrète
Seven records
Seven French records from a single series, Philips's Prospective 21e Siècle, lined up by catalogue number. Read that way they give away what the sleeve dates hide: the works and the records are not the same age.
Genre Dub
Spring reverb
Hammond Type 4
A spring inside a cabinet, put there to make a living room sound like a church. Knock the cabinet and the speakers went off like thunder, and for twenty years that thunder was a fault to be fixed.
Selection Indie
Shoegaze
Ten records
Ten English records released between 1990 and 1993, grouped by label instead of by year. Sorted that way they show something the titles hide on their own: half the scene came out of one office, and the catalogue numbers prove it.
Selection New wave
Post-punk
Ten records
Ten British records from 1979 to 1981, grouped by the town the band came out of rather than by year. Counted that way they say something the London version of the story leaves out: only one of the ten is from London.
Selection Hip hop
Turntablism
Ten records
Ten American records from 1995 to 2000, grouped by the label that issued them. Read from the catalogue numbers they give away what the sleeves don't: several of them aren't albums at all, and four of the ten we can't find on Spotify.
Selection Jazz
Blue Note
Ten records
Ten records cut between 1957 and 1965, lined up by address. On one side the living room of Rudy Van Gelder's parents in Hackensack, on the other the studio he had built for the job at Englewood Cliffs. Nineteen days separate them.
Selection Prog
Italian prog
Ten records
Ten records released between 1971 and 1974, in the order they came out, each with its label and catalogue number. Lined up like this they tell you something no single record does: who was pressing them, and how little independence was involved.
Selection Disco
City pop
Ten albums
Ten Japanese records from 1980 to 1986, in date order. Read from their catalogue entries they say two things the sleeves don't: not one was pressed outside Japan, and three of them we can't find on Spotify.
Selection Prog
Krautrock
Ten records
Ten German records from 1970 to 1974, grouped by the label that issued them rather than by year. Can, Neu! and Kraftwerk stay out. Read that way, the catalogue numbers give away something the sleeves do not: three of the four imprints answered to one man.
Selection Electronic
Trip hop
Ten albums
Ten British records from 1990 to 1998, arranged around one date. In June 1994 a London magazine coined the words trip hop to review an American twelve-inch. Three of these records were already in the shops.
Artist pick Funk
The Budos Band
VII
In June 2025 Bandcamp Daily asked The Budos Band what they listen to. The band plays heavy instrumental funk and presents itself with horror-film titles: the trumpet player answered with a list of acoustic records, and stated the thread holding them together himself.
album IDM
Autechre
Confield
In 1994 Autechre said they left a new machine alone for six months before using it. In 2001 they came out with nine tracks where they no longer program the beats: they program the thing that produces them, and then steer it by ear with faders.
Song French touch
I:Cube
Disco Cubizm
In 1996 Nicolas Chaix's first record came out in Paris, on a label that had just been started off the back of a cassette posted to a radio station. On the twelve-inch there is also a remix by two people who were not famous yet. French touch from the room, not the party.
Selection Disco
Walter Gibbons
Mixed with Love
In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old DJ walked into a studio with three hours and a razor blade, and walked out with the first twelve-inch single ever put on sale. Five of his mixes in date order, with what the producers whose records he took apart had to say.
Genre R&B
Soulquarians
Electric Lady Studios
From 1996 the studio Jimi Hendrix had built for himself in the Village was occupied for years by a group of musicians who recorded to tape, did no mixing for twelve months, and passed songs from one album to another. How the work went inside those three rooms.
Narrative Funk
Clyde Stubblefield
Funky Drummer
In August 1991 the drummer of "Funky Drummer" sets up his kit in a Wisconsin club for the Monday night he hosts. In those same weeks his break is on the radio all over the world inside other people's records, and nothing has reached him.
Song Hip hop
Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
Mecca and the Soul Brother
The 1992 track everyone knows as hip hop's elegy comes from a 1967 saxophone record picked up on spec in a Village shop by another producer, who had already used that loop on a remix released earlier. How it changed hands, and who it was written for.
Artist pick R&B
Yaya Bey
Ten Fold
In May 2024 Bandcamp Daily asked Yaya Bey what she was listening to. The answer was six names who are all friends of hers, and she stated the criterion herself: her relationship with music is communal, not a matter of taste. Four of the picks, and two that are not on Spotify.
Artist pick New wave
David Bowie
Confessions of a Vinyl Junkie
In 2003 Vanity Fair asked him for the records of his life. He had two and a half thousand LPs and no method, so he invented one: pull a record out blind, and if it is too obvious put it back. Four of the twenty-five that came out, each with the reason he wrote for it.
Artist pick Jazz
Alan Braufman
Infinite Love, Infinite Tears
In May 2024 Bandcamp Daily asked a saxophonist who in 1973 shared a loft with David S. Ware what he was listening to now. Four of his picks, with the reason he gave for each, and one that is not on Spotify.
Genre World
Ethiopiques
Buda Musique
A record brought back from a trip in 1984, the original masters found in Athens in 1997, and a series that was meant to run to twelve volumes and reached twenty-seven. How a French CD collection put twenty years of Addis Ababa music back into circulation.
Genre French touch
Alan Braxe
SP-1200 and Alesis 3630
A twelve-channel Mackie desk, a sampler with ten seconds of memory and a cheap rack compressor: that is what made the most famous French record of the nineties. Alan Braxe has listed the machines inside it, one by one.
Genre Library
De Wolfe and KPM
Music to catalogue
In the autumn of 1973 the best selling record in Britain was the theme to a television detective series, credited to a composer who did not exist. Behind it sits a trade already sixty years old: writing music to catalogue for whoever needs it, and never putting it on sale.
Artist pick Hip hop
Madlib
Shades of Blue
In 2003 Blue Note sent him the original tapes and let him get on with it. He did not only choose the tunes: he chose the takes, and the minutes where the studio is just people talking. Four records he pulled out of that archive, and what he heard in them.
Genre World
Rail Band
Buffet Hôtel de la Gare
After independence in 1960, orchestras in Mali were founded by the president. The players were public employees, the instruments belonged to the state, and the best band of the lot worked the buffet of the railway station hotel in Bamako.
Selection Disco
Napoli Segreta
NG Records
Neapolitan disco and funk from between 1977 and 1982, pressed in tiny runs and then gone. Three selectors went looking for them in flea markets and put nine per volume back into circulation: four of those, and the work it took to be allowed to release them.
Song New wave
Kate Bush
Running Up That Hill
In 1985 it peaked at three and spent eleven weeks on the chart. In June 2022, after four episodes of a Netflix series, it entered at number eight and two weeks later it was number one. In between sit three records and a catalogue nobody controls any more.
Artist pick Electronic
Ryuichi Sakamoto
The Kajitsu playlist
He wrote to the chef that the food was as beautiful as Katsura Rikyu and the music was like Trump Tower. Then he offered to choose it himself, for free, and left every one of his own records out of it. Four tracks from that selection, and the rule holding them together.
Artist pick Dub
Kevin Richard Martin
The Bug
In 2019 Bandcamp asked him what he was listening to. Kevin Richard Martin came back with ten releases sorted into four headings: beats, riffs, drones, heavenly voices. Four of those picks, with the reason he gave, and one that barely exists anywhere else.
Monograph Library
Piero Umiliani
Sound Work Shop
On 27 December 1968 he bought a few rooms in the Trionfale district of Rome and filled them with a Hammond C-3, ten Neumann U87s and the first synthesisers shipped in from the United States. Out of that room came up to twelve records a year, pressed in three hundred copies and signed with names that were not his.
Monograph Hip hop
545
EPILOGUE
Four turntables shut in a room, five days, five songs. That is the deal the group is named after. Across five albums it never came out at five, and in July 2026 the run closed.
album R&B
Evenson
EVE
Ten tracks in thirty-five minutes, out on 21 July 2026 after four singles in four months. A record about identity, family and masculinity, and one that doubles back on itself at the centre.
Selection New wave
Kate Bush
The Dreaming
In 1980 a new word turns up in the credits of her records, and it takes five years before she is there alone. In the same stretch a sampler enters her albums, and the first two times somebody else is playing it. Five tracks that follow the move to the other side of the glass.
Selection Jazz
Azymuth
Light as a Feather
Before they were a band they were the backing group for half of Brazil. Then they started rehearsing at the keyboard player's house at weekends, and out of those rehearsals came a hybrid they called crazy samba. Five tracks to understand them, and Jazz Carnival is only the way in.
Genre Dub
British dub
Sound systems and home studios
In London dub did not arrive as a genre to import but as a trade to rebuild at home: first on the sound systems of the neighbourhoods, then in a front room in Thornton Heath with a second-hand tape machine.
Genre Disco
Italo disco
Before the name
For nearly ten years Italy produced dance music for export that had no name in Italy. A German distributor named it while looking at his shelves, and today that name means the opposite of what it meant then.
Genre Jazz
Strata-East and Black Jazz
The record stays with the player
In 1971 two jazz labels run by musicians opened in New York and Oakland. One left artists eighty-five per cent and the ownership of their tapes, the other was bankrolled by a country label. How they worked, and what stopped them.
album Indie
Thurst
Reasons To Dye A Log
Eleven songs written in 2017, released on 17 February 2026. Back in 2017 Thurst were three people with a studio in Topanga and three reviews in one week. The new record's credit line has two names in it.
Monograph Electronic
Mohamed Bourouissa
LILA
He spent twenty years posing the people of the Paris outskirts like figures in a history painting. His first record does the same thing with sound, and cuts every portrait down to two letters.
Selection Dub
Scientist vs Prince Jammy
Between 1979 and 1982 a run of Jamaican records put two engineers against each other on the sleeve. The duel was the least reliable part, and the real prize was whose name stayed on the label.
Song Funk
The Winstons
In 1969 a Washington band cut an offhand instrumental B side. Eleven years later a DJ picked it up, it landed on a compilation made for insiders, and it became the most sampled recording in the history of the record. Neither author ever collected a royalty.
Selection IDM
Boards of Canada
At ten they recorded by bouncing sound between two cassette decks set half a metre apart, and kept going until the tape was worn through. The procedure has not changed since, and in May 2026 they returned with their cleanest sounding record. Five tracks that show how an imprecise memory gets built.
Song New wave
Klaus Nomi
In the Frost Scene of King Arthur, Purcell instructs voice and strings to quaver on every note. Klaus Nomi recorded that aria in 1981, in a register that was never its own.
Song Indie
The Voidz
In 2014 the Voidz led with a single of almost eleven minutes, built on a sample of Mozart's Requiem. Underneath it is a bereavement that is never named.
album Indie
Tasha
Eleven songs written between Chicago and New York and recorded in Los Angeles. Quick!, which gave its name to the preview released three weeks earlier, is the one that closes them.
Song Electronic
Manuel Göttsching
E2-E4
One afternoon in 1981, an hour cut in a single take, and thirty years of dancefloors. The story of a piece made for a Walkman.
Genre Library
Italian library
The sonorizzazioni of Piero Umiliani and Alessandro Alessandroni, made for a catalog rather than a film, became a mine for collectors and producers worldwide.
Monograph Dub
King Tubby
How a Kingston sound engineer turned the mixing desk into an instrument, and invented a genre.
Genre IDM
Artificial Intelligence
Warp
Genre Electronic
Japanese electronic
Song Funk
Bob James
Nautilus
Selection French touch
Étienne de Crécy
Super Discount
Monograph World
Tom Zé
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