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Cat. no.IKD

Post-punk, goth and darkwave as recorded objects.

G

Every page, in catalogue order

The whole catalogue, twelve entries in four series

This is the dense list the front page deliberately is not. Series letter, number, title and what the page argues.

A

Same guitar, same drum kit, three arguments

Series A — What separated the three.
No.	Title	Length
A 01	Three genres came out of the same four years and refused to be the same thing Post-punk was a method — the same instruments, a refusal of the same arrangement — and goth and darkwave are what happened when parts of it turned toward atmosphere.	long
A 02	Same guitar, same drum kit, three arguments The instrumentation barely changed; what changed was what each scene decided the middle of a record was for.	long
A 03	Four songs in, one nine-minute take out Bela Lugosi’s Dead was recorded in a single pass in 1979, and the length is the point rather than an accident.	short

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B

Hannett took the guitars out of the middle

Series B — Production as the subject.
No.	Title	Length
B 01	Hannett took the guitars out of the middle and left the space where they had been Martin Hannett’s production put silence and distance where a rock producer would have put density, and that decision defines the era’s sound.	long
B 02	What a plate reverb actually does A sheet of steel in a box, and the reason those records sound like a large cold room nobody was standing in.	short
B 03	Recorded flat, then ruined on purpose Gating, compression and tape delay applied after the take rather than during it.	medium

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C

Then the drum machine got cheap

Series C — What the box changed.
No.	Title	Length
C 01	Then the drum machine got cheap Once a box could keep time for the price of a guitar pedal, a band no longer needed to agree with a drummer about anything.	long
C 02	It did not replace the drummer. It replaced the argument. The machine’s real effect was social: it removed a negotiation from the rehearsal room and changed what a band could be.	long
C 03	A chorus pedal, a cheap machine and a plate reverb Three inexpensive things account for most of what people mean when they name the genre by ear.	medium

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D

What was in the room

Series D — Factory, 4AD, Mute and the catalogue.
No.	Title	Length
D 01	What was in the room Factory numbered everything it touched, 4AD decided how the records looked, and Mute carried the synthesiser lineage.	long
D 02	The only part of a pressed record that carries a person’s handwriting Matrix numbers and scratched messages in the runout are the closest thing these records have to a signature.	short
D 03	The sleeve decided what it was Design did as much genre-defining as the music, and it is the part most easily described without reproducing anything.	medium

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