Issue 50 / 24 January 2025
Your essential DIY electronic music beano – Track Of The Week: The Moonlandingz + Good Stuff: Fields We Found, Tunng, Adi Newton's TAGC, Two Way Mirrors, Billy Nomates + much more
It’s like we’ve never been away isn’t it? As fast as Christmas arrived it has disappeared in the rear-view mirror and here we are staring down the arrival of February next weekend. Blimey eh? The release schedule has really kicked up a gear this week too. I’m already chasing my tail and I’ve only been back a fortnight! Which is great, and by the looks of my inbox that is only set to continue. This is a scene in very rude health.
It seems that BNDCMPR, which I use for sharing a playlist each week, is still totally broken. It’s amazing that it’s the only place where you can make shareable Bandcamp playlists. Not even Bandcamp has that function, which is crazy. I loved my playlists, no idea if anyone else listened to them, but I did! So if you’re a DIY electronic music-loving developer and you fancy building a little something that does shareable Bandcamp playlists reliably, I’d love to hear from you. Can you do it by next Friday though?
Righto. That’s me then. Have a lovely day, despite the weather. And stay safe if it’s extra windy where you are.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 50 Playlist: No playlist again this week 😭😭😭
Moonbuilding Tip Jar: ko-fi.com/moonbuilding
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The Moonlandingz ‘The Sign Of A Man’ (Transgressive)
Photo: Spela
Yeah, yeah, moony moon moon. Moonlandingz in Moonbuilding. It’s like some sort of lunar conspiracy, which of course it absolutely is.
It’s hard to believe that The Moonlandingz debut album, ‘Interplanetary Class Classics’, was released in 2017. Their people describe it as “a dose of unreality equal to the unhinged times we were stumbling into”. They weren’t wrong. A lot happened since 2017. Brexit, Trump (first time), Covid, Norwich City got promoted and relegated, Liz Truss, Trump (second time). All of human life was there and it was a record that offered the perfect fist-chewing soundtrack.
You will recall that The Moonlandingz began life as a fictional band on the Eccentronic Research Council’s concept album ‘Johnny Rocket, Narcissist & Music Machine’, a salacious tale of obsession and lust told by Maixine Peake about a “cosmic synth kraut-a-billy group” from the equally fictional town of Valhalla Dale on the outskirts of Sheffield. When Friends Of Moonbuilding, Dean Honer and Adrian Flannigan, enlisted The Fat White Family’s Lias Saoudi to play Johnny Rocket, the whole thing sprouted wings and was just too good to not be real. They released the standalone ‘The Moonlandingz EP’ by the made-up band to coincide with the album and the whole thing took on a fabulous life of its own.
After a yawning chasm of a break, 2017 seems like a lifetime ago, they’re shaping up to release the follow-up ‘No Rocket Required’ with this first single, ‘The Sign Of A Man’. “The track,” they say, “is Johnny Rocket disco-ka-pow-pow-ing all over any brittle ideas of blokeness to deeply erotic and pleasantly frantic effect”. There is some epic Moonlandingzness in there. “I’ve Been to Paris,” smooth talks Johnny, “Where I eat snails / I’ve been to Cardiff / That’s in Wales”. There’s some stuff about putting the bins out too and the video is a mixture of ‘True Faith’-like dancing and making fried eggs. All business as usual for The Moonlandingz then. The album hasn’t been announced just yet, so while I’ve heard it, I can’t tell you anything about it [cough cough Iggy cough cough Spud from ‘Trainspotting’ cough cough]. Nasty cough I seem to have developed all of a sudden. Expect full details in early February. They’ve got some show-stopping guests apparently.
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Email moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
FIELDS WE FOUND ‘Resolve / Relate 01’ (quiet details)
Ok, so world domination is surely not far off for Alex Gold and his quiet details operation. This week, to his monthly quiet details release schedule, he’s added a monthly series from his Fields We Found alter ego, which means you are never more than two weeks away from new music from the qd camp. Fields We Found is how I first came across Alex. Just before I left Electronic Sound I asked readers for snaps of their modular set-ups. I ran an Opening Shot spread (ES88) with some of the best ones under the title “Readers’ Wires”, which I thought was funny even if no one else did. Alex’s set-up featured, with him telling me he was putting it together to start work on a new album, which was probably the Home Normal-released ‘Trust’ from December 2022. And it’s his Fields We Found project that’s getting a fresh lick of paint having not released anything since ‘Paths’ in May 2023. But there’s good reason the nom de plume is making a reappearance now. Alex had a pretty rough time last year. In February, he was diagnosed with lymphoma – a type of blood cancer that affects the lymphatic system, the part of our immune system that fights infection (yeah, thanks for that, Dr Moonbuilding). It can be pretty serious and like anyone faced with cancer, Alex did a lot of reflecting. As he underwent treatment, an intensive course of chemo and immunotherapy, he used the time to recalibrate, reflect and, now thankfully in remission, reboot his own solo project. He says that his thinking and listening changed during his illness and these new pieces are an evolution of that shift. There’s a Fields We Found album incoming on quiet details later this year, which will be a treat no doubt, but each month there will also be a new long-form work created for this new Resolve / Relate series. “These pieces,” offers Alex, “are the product of many durational and deep-listening sessions unfolding gradually over time and in constant flux, texturally and spatially – made to take your time with and see how your experience shifts across multiple listens.” Indeed, ‘Resolve / Relate 01’ does just that. A little over 20 minutes, it starts with a deep rumble of a tone and builds from there, oscillating gently to start with, it comes to life slowly, morphing one way and then the next while as it grows fresh shoots as the sound grows. A clever person than me (hello Zack PITP) described it at last night’s Bandcamp listening party as an “oscillating low-frequency hymnal”. With each listen, your ears focus on different aspects. I’ve had it on headphones too, where it’s a different experience again. I especially love hearing the room, the space. You can hear that electrical hum – either that or my desk monitors are shot – and there’s some delightful crackles in places too. “It’s not possible to put this fully into words,” explains Alex of the project, perhaps understandably, “so just take the music as you find it, and interpret it in your own way. It’s an expression of my reality today, and will undoubtedly grow as things move on.” Very much look forward to hearing how these pieces evolve each month. Love projects like this. All power to Alex and his bid for world dom.
GOOD STUFF #2
TUNNG ‘Love You All Over Again’ (Full Time Hobby)
Incredibly, this year is the 20th anniversary of Tunng’s debut album, ‘This Is Tunng – Magpie Bites and Other Cuts’. There is much to love about Tunng, two decades-worth in fact. On this, their eighth long-player, they’ve come sort of full circle. Mike Lindsay explains that for the record they went back to their roots, listening to their first two albums to remind themselves how they fused genres, “things like Davy Graham, Pentangle and the ‘Wicker Man’ soundtrack, all of which I was discovering back then, together with Expanding Records, whose studio space we shared. That was all going into the early records.” Expanding Records seem to be cropping up a lot recently. I always think bands are not just a sum of their parts, but a product of the people that surround them. Expanding was Ben “Benge” Edwards’ early 00s imprint, that saw some genuinely influential electronic releases pass through its doors – the likes of Maps & Diagrams, Cathode and Vessel among them. There was an amazing 17-LP boxset collecting all their releases out a while back, long sold out, but if you can find one snap it up. There’s a sampler here. That studio space they shared was in a Shoreditch basement and the tangled webs down there took in John Foxx, whose band The Maths included Hannah Peel, and Wrangler, a Phil Winter side-hustle with Benge and one Stephen Mallinder, whose old band you may have heard of. Roll all that into a ball and it’s no wonder Tunng are so great. In the first couple of minutes of the very first track here, ‘Everything Else’, they remind you of everything you love about them. That glorious boy/girl Sam Genders/Becky Jacobs duet, those electronic Phil Winter squiggles, the pop melodies, that Sam Genders/Mike Lindsay songwriting axis, it’s all here, pure, prime Tunng in under two minutes. And then they do it again with track two, ‘Didn’t Know Why’, a sweet melodic chorus that just repeats and repeats over and over as the music locks itself down like a musicbox plugged into mains power. ‘Drifting Memory Station’, the instrumental halfway point of the record, is glorious, while the bleeps and beeps of the electronic fuckery throughout ‘Deep Underneath’ and especially the deep synth squall in the outro is stand up and cheer good. The way they blend their folk-adjacent songwriting nouse with sonic exploration shouts loudly from start to finish of this fine album. And indeed across the two decades of their existence. That Phil and his boxes of tricks are always somewhere in the mix just adds more love fuel to the we love Tunng fire.
GOOD STUFF #3
TAGC ‘Iso-Erotic Calibration’ (Cold Spring)
Along with a lot of Christmas-tinged electronica, you know stuff with bells and bright tinkles, I was also listening to this quite a lot in December. Christmassy it is not. What it is is Adi Newton (off of Clock DVA) doing what Adi Newton does best, and that’s disappearing into his wild and wonderful soundworld. “Aural rituals,” Adi calls them, with The Anti Group Communications (TAGC) being a “multi-dimensional research and development project” and ‘Iso-Erotic Calibration’ “explores the potent tonic of human sexuality”. The label say that it was recorded over a three-year period and “could be considered one of their more ‘accessible’ albums”. I mean, I listen to a lot of weird stuff, this is very accessible. The opening title track sounds like a remix of the BBC News theme, you know the one. There’s some glorious dark ambient work on here too, like the drone/choral chanting of ‘Mercurius’ and the unsettlingly eroticisms of ‘Psychophonophilia’. 'Iso-Erotic Calibration' was originally released in 1994 and here Cold Spring are making it available on vinyl for the first time. The CD reissue also comes with four bonus tracks, two that were digital-only bonuses in 2013, one is from the soundtrack to the 2013 TAGC film ‘Given’ and there’s the ‘After Glow Mix’ remix of the title track. Adi’s work is always interesting. There’s lot to check out, he’s a busy man. Start here and here.
GOOD STUFF #4
TWO WAY MIRRORS ‘Endure’ (Frosti)
Like a dark ambient missile heading our way from the darkest moors of West Yorkshire Two Way Mirrors is Frosti big chief Thomas Ragsdale. Fresh from the Electronic Sound grassroots issue’s list of labels worth watching, this is Frosti’s first outing of the year. Goodness me, if this is how they’re starting the year, I’m very much looking forward to seeing what else is up his sleeve. ‘Endure’ is epic in scale, its dark, of course, but upliftingly so. It has some glorious orchestral swells, like on ‘Legacy’ which feels like wave that’s about to break but never does. And the track titles, those track titles. The lead cut and opener is called ‘They Found Your Rotting Head (In A Peat Bog)’. Nice use of brackets there. And it comes with a video, here, that looks like it’s been shot ‘Blair Witch’ style on a real video camera. And is that the influence of the Terry Riley on the equally brilliantly titled ‘Stag With Antlers Chained Together’? The repeating motive is a delight and I love the relentless build and the slurring at the ending of ‘Subtract’ as it evaporates. And the sublime drone on ‘The Woods At Home’ just seems to glisten. While this is a release that comes with no explanatory notes, you can take from the titles and the music itself a great deal. This is a release that concerns itself with the climate, I’d suggest it’s about the environment immediately around Thomas and its slow decline. You can hear it and feel it in every note. This is great stuff, looking forward to what else is coming our way on Frosti this year.
GOOD STUFF #5
BILLY NOMATES ‘Mary And The Hyenas (Original Soundtrack)’ (Invada)
This is an interesting one. Tor Maries has written a soundtrack to a new play, ‘Mary And The Hyenas’, about “the mother of feminism”, Mary Wollstonecraft, who you would be forgiven for not having heard of. Tors didn’t know about her either. “It seems history rarely embraces pioneering women,” she says of the moral and political philosopher whose 1792 book, ‘A Vindication Of The Rights of Woman’, is widely regarded as the founding document of modern feminism. She married fellow philosopher William Godwin in 1797 and died just days after the birth of their daughter, Mary Shelley, who grew up to be someone you will most definitely have heard of. Released by Invada, the soundtrack is Tor’s first new music since 2023’s brilliant ‘Cacti’ album. More to the point, it’s perhaps not quite what you might be expecting from a soundtrack album as it’s a record bursting at the seams with songs. Her lovely Fleetwood Mac-y licks are here, ‘Vindication Of The Lives Of Women’ being the most Mac-y. The play, written by Maureen Lennon who also teamed up with Tor for lyrics, introduces you to Mary And The Hyenas, “a band who will sing you the inspiring story of Mary Wollstonecraft, trailblazer, feminist and literary pioneer”. Which sounds great. It’s at Hull’s Truck Theatre 7 Feb-1 Mar and then moves to London’s Wilton’s Music Hall from 18-29 Mar. Sounds like a great night out. For more and to buy tickets, head here.
THE HANDY ROUND UP
Only last week Edvard Graham Lewis was our Track Of The Week with ‘Switch’, now comes the album, ‘Alreet?’ (Upp), from which it was taken. His people describe what he does as “majestic, experimental pop”, which it really is. The opener ‘Kinds Of Weather’ sets the scene. Rich melodies meet a proper sonic rubdown (as you’d expect from someone whose main gig is being in Wire) meets quirky baritone-y vocal. It sounds great, a proper swirl of a song, with such a growly backing track. Like I said last week, it has the same sort of sensibility as Blancmange, you’d imagine Neil Arthur and Graham Lewis getting on well, comparing notes. There’s eastern flecks in there too and throughout the album actually. You hear it again in ‘Diamond Shell’, which has an almost Bollywood feel. This is all rich, nourishing stuff.
edvardgrahamlewis.bandcamp.com
I much preferred Abul Mogard when he was a retired welder from Belgrade, or wherever it was. I got quite obsessed with his identity for a while, at one point thinking that all paths pointed to Wrangler messing with our heads. Turned out he was the alter ego of Guido Zen, an Italian musician based in Rome, which isn’t nearly as exciting. That said, the music he makes is sublime. Karen Vogt pointed me in the direction of Rafael Anton Irisarri and Abul Mogard ‘Live at Le Guess Who?’, thanks Karen. Abul you already know and we’ve written about Rafael before too, he has a label called Black Knoll Editions, which you should check out if you have a few spare moments. He’s described as a post-minimalist, but is associated with shoegaze, playing in Ghost International’s The Sight Below and working with people like Simon Scott. Anyway, the pair hooked up to compose and perform this 50-minute piece in the rather beautiful setting of the Jacobikerk church for Le Guess Who? Festival in Utrecht last November. It’s name your price on their Bandcamp and it’s 50 minutes very well spent if you ask me.
abulmogard.bandcamp.com
Talking of Home Normal, as we were with Fields We Found releasing their early material there, label boss Ian Hawgood presents ‘Savage Modern Structures’, an album of guitar and mellotron orchestrations. “The focus of these pieces was to capture the sound of my amps and tapes within the dynamics of my small studio room to absorb the reverberations as they hit me when I make music,” he writes. He goes into quite some detail on his Bandcamp page about how he achieves this, which I’m sure some of you will find very interesting indeed. Lots of talk about 1970’s Music Man guitar amp and a pair of SM57 dynamics, whatever they are. I’ve never been one for the technical detail, much preferring what people wrangle from these weird and wonderful set ups. It’s a bit like me wanting to tell you all about my process and how I go about writing all this (usually driven by panic which sets around Thursday teatime…). The results here are rather wonderful and are the precise opposite of the brutal sounding title. The whole thing is such a delicate wash of sound that you can’t do much else other than sit back and focus on what’s coming your way. There’s also a 40-minute full album mix, which is well worth clearing some space to listen to.
homenormal.bandcamp.com
One more for today. I can’t believe how quickly a pile of releases builds up. Cleared the decks last week, pretty much, and this week I’m overflowing again and fast running out of time. I’ve had Die Wilde Jagd & Metropole Orkest’s ‘Lux Tenera – A Rite To Joy’ (Bureau B) on a fair bit. It finds DWJ’s Sebastian Lee Philipp working with the Netherlands-based multi-award winning Metropole Orkest and it’s an almighty piece of work. In collaboration with British composer/arranger/conductor Simon Dobson, that Die Wilde Jagd sound, the slow builds and huge crescendos, has been supercharged with a 50-piece orchestral ensemble. It’s proper blow the doors off stuff. You almost hold your breath in places, like on ‘Kabura-ya’ as the whole thing builds and builds over 12 minutes, teetering on the brink, descending into a grumbling squall and then it just explodes. To have been in the room when this was being recorded must’ve been a treat.
diewildejagd.bandcamp.com
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I found this the other day in my, ahem, archive. I have no recollection of it at all, which is not an uncommon reaction when I’m digging around in old files. I’m often surprised by pieces I can’t remember writing.
I recall writing a piece for Melody Maker about MP3s before I really knew what they were, fortunately I can’t find that (didn’t look tooooo hard), but by the time I was at NME.COM I was well versed. I wrote a lot of house copy and this was probably something for the paper, although it is quite long so it could well have been for the website. We were the absolute experts on this stuff for a while at the turn of the century. I remember showing ‘Newsnight’ how Napster worked once, I don’t think they ran it in the end, but we were often on the telly and assorted national and local radio stations talking about this stuff.
We were obsessed with Napster. It was mindblowing that all this music was suddenly at your fingertips. Illegal as it was, we used it almost daily and would find all sorts. Famously we pieced together Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ album from live bootlegs while they were on a world tour. I say famously, the band had to announce the album earlier than they’d have liked because we’d done such a sterling job. To their credit they had the good grace to say as much.
This article also has a bunch of URLs, which I’ve left in because you might enjoy them. If any still link to live sites they’ve done rather well to weather more than one storm. Anyway, here’s your guide to MP3 from the year 2000…
I WANNA GET DOWNLOADED: AN MP3 GUIDE
A straightforward, essential guide to all the necessary information, all the pitfalls, all the insider tips... exactly how to do MP3
We could sit here and bewilder you with jargon-filled explanations of MP3, we could utterly fry your head with technical blah blah blah and make you more confused than a chicken omelette before you get to the end of this paragraph. Thing is, who cares about what MP3 stands for when it means you can get tons of free music on your desktop. And fast.
Unless you’ve been living a world where it’s compulsory to have your fingers in your ears all day while shouting “La-La-La I can’t hear you”, you’ll have at least heard mention of MP3. Put simply, MP3 is a type of sound file. It’s a way of storing music in a form compact enough to make it available through the Internet with the minimum amount of fuss. So little fuss in fact that people have embraced the format to the point that major labels probably don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Think about it in nostalgic terms: when music was just entering your life, chances are you’d spent hours gathering music from wherever you could – recording ‘TOTP’ or the Top 40, and then there’s the hours spent in a friend’s bedroom, pooling records and taping like your life depended on it. The result was you didn’t so much have a record collection as a pile of tapes on which lived a strangely wonderful world of music.
Music’s never been as simple as buying a record and listening to it and with the advent of MP3, musical boundaries have been blurred on a global scale. Imagine going round your aforementioned friend’s house for an evening of taping to find they’ve got every record you’ve ever wanted... and plenty of new ones you wouldn’t mind giving a whirl. That’s MP3.
No matter how suspicious you might be of computers and the Internet you can be listening to an MP3 of pretty much any song you’d care to think of in less time than it’ll take you to read this article.
There’s hundreds of MP3 websites offering free music from established as well as unsigned artists. Many of these sites also offer the opportunity to buy tracks for less than your bus fare to work. But before we get onto all that, a quick word about Napster.
Strictly speaking, Napster isn’t an MP3 site. All it does is allow people to share files. These files could be anything, but in Napster’s case they all contain music. Where it all gets a bit sticky is that Napster has no control over the files its users choose to share because none of them are stored at Napster HQ but rather on the individual users computer. Creating MP3 files is so simple people can quickly turn their entire record collections into MP3 files and made them available to other users through Napster. Live tracks, weird and wonderful remixes and rarities all quickly appear making it an invaluable resource for music fans and a right royal pain in the arse for record labels because those making the music available don’t own the copyright to distribute it.
The official line is clearly stated on the Napster site (www.napster.com): “Users are responsible for complying with all applicable federal and state laws applicable to such content, including copyright laws. Napster respects copyright law and expects our users to do the same.”
Unfortunately, one look at what you can get via Napster would suggest that there is little or no respect for said laws. And with user figures somewhere in the region of 50 million, it’s perhaps understandable that the site has landed itself in court Stateside. We would like to make it clear that distributing music on the Internet without permission from the copyright owner is illegal and like everything else illegal, you shouldn’t do it.
Napster aside, there are a wealth of sites where you can get music without breaking the law. First, you’ll need a computer. Almost all new computers are Internet-ready. By following some simple onscreen instructions you can be online within minutes of taking it out of the box.
If your computer is a little older, chances are it’ll still be able to cope with playing music. If it doesn’t have a soundcard or speakers – essential for listening to MP3 files –it’s not going to cost you any arms or legs to get your machine sorted. Same goes for modems. You can buy one for next to nothing and they’re a doddle to set up. Don’t get anything less than a 56k unless you want to experience the net equal of watching paint dry on growing grass when downloading.
Once you’re up and running, the first step is to get something to play your MP3s with. Essentially what you’re after is a Walkman on your desktop. There’s tons of players available for download and most offer a basic player (or “lite” version) for free. These will more than suit the beginner’s needs because to start with you’re just going to be listening so for the moment forget about the mind-boggling extras on offer with most players.
Getting your hands on a player involves getting online and downloading one. If you’re a Mac user, try Soundjam (www.soundjam.com) whose free player is a is as neat as they come. PC user? You can’t go far wrong with the hugely popular WinAmp (www.winamp.com).
There’s no hard and fast rules about which player is best. Pick one that you like, they all pretty much do the same thing so it’s all about personal preference. Once you’ve got a collection of MP3 files you may want to make your own CDs (burning) or even create your own MP3s (ripping). Again, most basic players will be able to do these things so one download should suit all your needs.
If you find yourself outgrowing your player or want it to do more tricks, download another one. Even if you have to pay for a more advanced player it’s not going to set you back more than £20-£30.
Once you decided on a player, visit the appropriate site and follow the download instructions. If you’re feeling a little lost at this point, MP3.com has an excellent online guide to the many players on offer. They also offer some excellent advice: “If it doesn’t sound perfect, trash it. If it crashes your system, trash it”. There’s plenty of other players out there.
So now you’ve got a player we can get on with the real business of the day: getting a bunch of MP3s to play. The number of sites on offer is bewildering. Again, it’s a matter of personal preference. Whatever type of music you like, there’ll be a site to suit your needs. Naturally, the Internet being the Internet you could spend the rest of your life rummaging around to find what you want. You’ll also discover fairly quickly that most MP3 sites aren’t – unfortunately – online record shops where you can find the latest big album for free.
MP3 isn’t meant to replace records, it’s a way of hearing music you’d never normally get the chance to hear. And because of the whole Napster issue you’re probably going to be swamped by unsigned acts and no-hopers, but most sites will turn up some unlikely finds. Most newly-signed or underground acts actually want to get their music heard so you’ll find that there’s a wealth of fantastic music available at the click of a mouse. And even if you’re going to pay to download an MP3 there’s usually an option to listen first.
Right, down to business. There are two ways of finding MP3s. The first is an MP3 search engine such as the one at mp3.lycos.com. Type in the name of the artist you’re looking for, hit the search button and in a matter of seconds you’ll be presented with a list of locations where you will find what you’re looking for. The downside is that many of the results will be illegal files because all the search has done is find what you’ve asked for without running it by a bigwig music lawyer first. As a result, you won’t be allowed to access some MP3s through the bigger search engines such as Lycos even though the file you want are clearly shown. It’s illegal remember.
The second way is to visit a site whose business is MP3 files. There loads of the buggers. To get you started try the likes of mp3.com, icrunch.com, epitonic.com or listen.com. Visit any of these sites and you’re likely to pick up something worthwhile for free. You’ll also find that these sites offer hugely comprehensive guides to making MP3 work for you.
Downloading is as easy as making toast. Find the track you want, click on the link and, fingers crossed, the MP3 will download to your desktop in a matter of minutes. Even on a 56k modem, a typically-sized MP3 file (between 2 and 6 megabytes) will take around five to 10 minutes to download. Once it’s downloaded, you need to open it with your player and that’s it. Music on your desktop for free.
Other than your computer’s usual bizarre quirks and crappy phone lines disconnecting you the whole time, the only problem you might experience with MP3s is that once it’s downloaded you can’t find the blasted thing. If this happens, you need to locate the default download folder to which you machine saves downloads. The easiest way is to search for .mp3, find the folder location and move it onto your desktop where you can keep your eye on it.
Maybe you want to transfer your MP3 files onto CD… naturally, for personal use only. For this you’ll need a CD burner - which is why it’s called burning – and the patience of a saint. For some reason too technical to stay awake to hear, older programs need files converting to .wav before they can be transferred to CD. However, newer programs will do that for you. A five-minute track will take around three minutes to burn.
Then there’s ripping which is copying music from a CD onto your desktop in order to turn them into MP3 files. It’s a breeze but varies from player to player. Basically though, pop the CD into your computer, open up your MP3 player, select the converter from the tool bar, drag the tracks you want into the converter box and click the convert button. Oh, and don’t distribute the tracks unless you own the copyright because, all together now, that’s illegal.
Should you want to send MP3s via email, it’s pretty easy. If you’re using a web-based email account like Hotmail you’ll find there’s a size limit on files you can send, usually around two megabytes. Even though MP3s are already compressed they usually come in around 3-4 megabytes so they need to be squeezed further to email them. For a Mac, use a program called Stuffit which is available for free from www.aladdinsys.com or if you’re a PC type go for Winzip from www.winzip.com.
Getting a little more advanced and appealing to the John Peel in all of us, it’s possible to set up an internet radio station to broadcast your MP3 collection worldwide with a couple of extra software programs, a PC (radio doesn’t work on Macs yet) and Internet access. Because the law governing Internet is still fuzzy, you can, in theory, broadcasting what you like. For more information check out www.live365 or www.shoutcast.com
And that, in a rather meandering nutshell, is MP3. We’ve deliberately not gone into bone-crunchingly tedious detail because we know just how dull it can all get. With all that free music just waiting out there, the last thing that should be dull is MP3.
NME.COM recommends:
MP3 Players
PC
WinAmp
www.winamp.com
Simply the best.
Real Jukebox
www.real.com/jukebox/
Your one-stop player.
Windows Media Player
www.windowsmedia.com
As above only from Windows.
Mac
Soundjam
www.soundjam.com
Basic as you like MP3. Does the job nicely.
Macast Lite
www.macast.com
Hugely popular player, ugly as sin though.
Audion
www.audion.com
excellent player, look great too.
MP3 sites
www.mp3.com
By no means the best but the original. Packed with all sorts.
www.icrunch.com
UK download site with plenty to sing about.
www.listen.com
If it’s not here, they’ll point you in the right direction.
www.epitonic.com
Impressive dance music site.
www.garageband.com
A recording contract every other month for the best unsigned band.
A MESSAGE FROM THE MOTHERSHIP
***MOONBUILDING ISSUE 5 IS OUT NOW***
Bloody hell! Will you look at that? MOONBUILDING, Issue 5, is a scorcher. On the cover, depicted by the untouchable Nick Taylor, is the awesome Polypores. In our free-wheeling chat we get right under the hood of Stephen James Buckley’s musical operation, offer up a listening guide to help you safely navigate his extensive back catalogue and we also have an whole new Polypores album exclusively for your ears.
Yes, we are giving you a not-available-anywhere-else new album called ‘The Album I Would Have Released In An Alternate Universe’, which happens to be the sister recording to his recent Castles In Space opus ‘There Are Other Worlds’.
Want to try before you buy? No bother. If you’d like an extract from our Polypores cover feature interview where Stephen Buckley talks about his formative influences, which probably aren’t what you’d image, you can do that here… moonbuilding.substack.com/p/issue-28a-26-july-2024
Elsewhere in the issue there’s a profile of our new favourite label Mortality Tables, Pye Corner Audio gets in on the There’s A First Time For Everything act, we round up an absolute mountain of recent releases and serve up our thoughts on the best albums from the last few months, including Loula Yorke and Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan. There’s a column from The Orb’s Alex Paterson, which starts off about Jah Wobble and ends up about Andrew Weatherall, and an all-new instalment of Steven Appleby’s brilliant Captain Star cartoon strip.
This issue also features a pile of great book reviews (that’s great books, reviewed, rather than the reviews being great, although they are pretty good). There’s a cracking chat with Justin Patrick Moore, the author of ‘The Radio Phonic Laboratory’, and a bonus chinwag with the world’s finest music journalist, Mr Simon Reynolds.
The virtual shop doors are open at moonbuilding.bandcamp.com for your purchasing pleasure. This magazine ain’t going to buy itself.
Moonbuilding Weekly is a Castles In Space publication.
Copyright © 2025 Moonbuilding
Neil, thanks so much 🙏 You've been an incredible supporter for a long time and I'm so grateful. Keep doing what you do, I love Moonbuilding and everything else so looking forward to more! Great edition as always x
Try Buy Music Club for bandcamp playlists. It’s great! https://www.buymusic.club/
Thanks for another great newsletter