Features archive

February 2025

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28 articles

February 27
- “Some people might think it's a waste, but it's fun for me. Isn't that what matters?”: Why there’s nothing wrong with collecting gear as a hobby - even if you don’t use it
- “For those about to rock… best try another genre”: New stats show that bands are dead, solo and collabs are the way to go and rock has well and truly rolled…
February 26
- "Quincy told her, 'Ro, don't sing that doggone song no more until you record it'": A music professor breaks down Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly with His Song
February 25
- “I saw this big hand come over with loads of rings on it and just stop the record. That was like my stamp of approval”: Adam F on making '90s DnB classic Colours – and why he’s re-recording it for 2025
- “The lyrics talk about machines writing music, and that’s actually happened. All things considered, it was a very prophetic song”: The iconic track that sparked the MTV generation also predicted the entire future of music
February 24
- Spotify fights back: Think that artists aren’t getting enough cash? Spotify says there's a good reason for that
- “If this guitar had come out of one of our other facilities saying Fender no one would be having this conversation”: Fender’s Justin Norvell on the $599 Standard Series, how it was made, and why it is not a Squier with a different decal on the headstock
February 21
- “Imagine not knowing Eric Johnson, Vai and Satriani and seeing this for the first time? It literally blows your mind”: Matteo Mancuso – 10 albums that changed my life
February 20
- “I sent this to Strandberg to get the wiring done and when they sent it back they included this”: Plini shows us his modded signature Strandberg Boden – but what’s that hiding in the tremolo springs?
- “He would lead you down the garden path with quite a bog-standard chord structure and then suddenly go AWOL”: From David Bowie to Radiohead and Steely Dan, here’s some of popular music’s most outlandish theory choices
February 19
- Is pop music really being dumbed down? A music professor explains what the science really says
February 17
- How we test electronic drum sets
- “Even 300 million streams don’t guarantee a sustainable career”: How Lola Young built on the viral success of Messy - and what musicians can learn from her journey
February 15
- "The next generation of Moog products will push boundaries while remaining deeply rooted in the craftsmanship and creativity that defines the brand": Moog at 60, from the ladder filter to the Labyrinth
February 14
- “I don’t like to categorise my tracks by genre - I do it by vibe”: Dr Dubplate's 5 DJ tips
- “I see songwriting as having to do with experience - the more you've experienced, the better it is”: How the Rolling Stones drew on their own - and imagined - lives for songwriting inspiration
February 13
- “This was the first amp modeller that I’ve tried that feels like a real amp”: Vower’s Joe Gosney and Rabea Massaad reveal their festival Quad Cortex setups – and why there's a Zappa-inspired “harmonic exciter” on the 'board
- "It's probably closer to the real hardware than anything out there": 5 of the coolest free plugins we discovered this month
February 12
- “I started getting messages from strangers asking if I knew about this other product”: A tale of two mini-synths
- “Our decision to use some electronic instruments is not some kind of lifestyle choice. You use the instrument to help you get across a certain thing”: How Radiohead’s most controversial shift proves that music-makers shouldn’t be restricted by genre
February 10
- “And then, out of nowhere, this crazy boy just started singing this song”: How Elvis Presley spontaneously altered the course of music history
February 7
- “It dawned on me, ‘Wow! I think that we’re learning how to do this just how Bob learned how to play’”: How Timothée Chalamet went from a complete guitar novice to become Bob Dylan onscreen
- “The first time I heard a Buchla synthesizer, something clicked. It felt like a fantasy”: Maria Teriaeva on the Buchla 200e, olfactory album art and vocoded breakup songs
- “We were making a new hybrid music, we were something different”: How futurepop brought the sound of tomorrow to the dawn of a new century
February 6
- "This makes no sense at all in terms of functional harmony. So why does it sound so good?: A music professor breaks down Doechii's Denial Is a River and Boiled Peanuts
February 5
- "They inhabited the future of their time, but they sound historical to me now": A music professor breaks down the theory behind Kraftwerk's Autobahn
February 4
- "In the studio, everyone is a sad, tragic animal that has no idea what they’re doing - no matter how successful they are": Mogwai producer John Congleton
- “When I came up with the guitar part, Krist looked at me and said, ‘That is so ridiculous’. I made the band play it for an hour and a half”: It defined the '90s, yet Nirvana’s biggest anthem started out as a self-confessed rip-off