Music artefacts, memorabilia, ephemera… the histories of artists, events, scenes and music trivia… what’s the point? The here and now is what’s important. The rest is just junk taking up space, surely?

Mat Flynn reluctantly visits the archive for the first time and unexpectedly finds himself on a poignant and personal trip down memory lane…

Released in Hong Kong, sung in Mandarin Chinese and Japanese by a pop star from Taiwan and marketed by a Dutch record label to transnational Chinese communities and East Asian countries, this vinyl album exemplifies the reach of Teresa Deng, one of the most successful and influential Chinese pop singers of the twentieth century.

Haekyung Um considers the stellar career, cultural legacy and enduring appeal of Teresa Deng as AI reconstruction brings her to twenty-first century audiences.

Are you In The Mood for some jazz? Perhaps a Moonlight Cocktail or two to accompany the dinner dances and wartime romances of these 1940s gramophone records…

Catherine Tackley flips through an unassuming red leather album to discover what the careful curation and stylistic diversity of the selection reveal about the original owner’s eclectic taste, the golden age of the dance band and a band leader named Geraldo.

A piece of red cloth across the eyes is the instantly recognisable image of Cui Jian, the godfather of Chinese rock music.

Changbo Duan responds to an article called 'A Superstar in Turbulent China', reflecting on the evolution of rock music in China, the continuing influence of Cui Jian, Western-influenced indie music practices and how the corporate phenomenon of television talent shows fosters individual self-expression.

Back in the 1980s it wasn’t unusual to be on a roadside somewhere and see a mass of what looked like brown seaweed rustling in the breeze... a mini environmental disaster usually caused by a furious driver throwing a cassette from a car window after the stereo had ‘eaten’ it. This was a common problem: your music would comically slow down and stop, and you had to wrench the mangled tape out of the cassette player, ruining it in the process...

Richard Worth remembers format quirks, the joy of the Walkman and the pleasure of curating your own music collection.

The zebra crossing, the four people striding across, the sunny day on a London street… Look familiar? Look again. This is not the Beatles’ Abbey Road but ‘Soulful Road’ by the group New York City.

Holly Tessler delves into the wonderful world of Beatles tributes, homages, references and parodies through a close examination of this lovely example of the genre.

‘The people united will never be defeated’… This familiar chant originated in a song by the Chilean group Quilapayún, exiled during the dictatorship of 1973-1990.

Richard Smith examines the programme for a concert in support of the Chile Solidarity Campagin, at which Quilapayún performed, and finds that it prompts reflections on the role of music in political protest, the transmission of memories between generations and in people's sense of place, identity and well-being.

Acetate discs cut on a home recording system, a wartime equipment ledger repurposed as a logbook of recordings, a meticulous numbering system and a mysterious figure at the centre of it all…

Mike Jones follows the clues to encounter a bootlegger passionate about jazz and keen to share the music he loved at the height of the post-war boom.

Everybody's Free (To Feel Good) remains one of the most enduring dance music anthems from the summer of 1991. Its universal feel-good message of hope and unity continues to ignite dancefloor celebrations. Its singer Rozalla graces this February 1992 cover of Mixmag magazine, the most influential publication covering dance music globally.

Richard Anderson goes underground, exploring dance music culture, the world's first official DJ mixtape and a question posed by one of the magazine's articles: Has Dance Music Gone Pop?

The year is nineteen-seventy-eight, you are walking down Mathew Street, through a sea of leather and bright hair dye... you spot the bright lights spelling out “Eric’s Club”, where you plan to spend the night watching new local heroes Echo and The Bunnymen perform their first gig at what will be later known as one of Liverpool’s most legendary music venues…

Keryn Warner imagines the Liverpool post-punk music scene Merseysound fanzine evokes and explores how the publication captures the rebel spirit, creativity and grassroots ethos of the time. 

Stop me if you’ve heard this somewhere before… when new music is produced by reusing portions of existing sound recordings sampling is born.

Alex Lowe shares his own experience of creating remixes using sample libraries and considers their evolution from CD-ROMs like the one accompanying this 2004 magazine to online services available in 2024, as well as the development of sampling techniques and digital audio workstations over time.

"I sincerely hope that bright-eyed students…will still be dipping into the magazine a hundred years from now…A lofty, ridiculously inflated hope for a back-bedroom-produced fan magazine such as this? You decide."

So wrote John Bauldie, editor of The Telegraph Bob Dylan fanzine on the occasion of its 50^th issue in 1994. Thirty years later, bright-eyed 3^rd year undergraduate Val Capewell decides that, far from dipping, diving in is the only way to research its complex publication history.