Topic

London

A capital that has been the largest city in Europe, and then not, repeatedly.

10: in music
12:36: average
126 min: in total
12: across the network

London across the network →

All briefs10

9:00

Parklife

Blur · 1994

Parklife is Blur’s third studio album, recorded quickly at Maison Rouge studio in August 1993—except for 'This Is a Low'. Damon Albarn described it as a loosely linked concept album about the travels of a 'mystical lager-eater' who observes and comments on the world. Martin Amis’s novel London Fields was a major influence. The songs span multiple genres including synthpop, instrumental waltz, punk rock, spacey Syd Barrett-esque, and new wave. Some songs—including 'To the End' and 'Badhead'—lie in a more personal space than the album’s broader bittersweet portrayal of the UK's human patchwork. Stephen Street produced all tracks except 'To the End', which was produced by Stephen Hague with additional engineering.

13:00

Abbey Road

The Beatles · 1969

Recorded mainly across April, July and August 1969 at Abbey Road and other London studios, Abbey Road was the Beatles' final recorded album, made under producer George Martin on the condition that the group work with the discipline of their earlier records. Built around McCartney's push for a continuous medley on side two and Harrison's two strongest contributions to the catalogue, it closed the group's studio career with the Moog synthesiser and a solid-state mixing desk giving it a different texture from anything they had made before.

13:00

Are You Experienced

The Jimi Hendrix Experience · 1967

Are You Experienced is the debut studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, built from sixteen sessions across three London studios over five months in 1966 and 1967. Produced by former Animals bassist Chas Chandler, who deliberately kept the band's newer members out of creative decisions, it introduced Hendrix's guitar playing and songwriting to Britain first, then America, and has stayed a fixture of best-album lists ever since.

13:00

Axis: Bold as Love

The Jimi Hendrix Experience · 1967

Axis: Bold as Love followed the Jimi Hendrix Experience's debut by only seven months, moving from De Lane Lea and Olympic Studios in London through a disastrous side-one master left in the back of a taxi. Recorded with producer Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer, it trades some of the debut's raw force for looser, more melodic songwriting, and remains most closely associated with two tracks Hendrix kept playing live for the rest of his career.

13:00

Fela's London Scene

Fela Kuti, Nigeria 70 · 1971

Made on tour in London rather than at home in Lagos, Fela's London Scene pairs Fela Kuti and Nigeria 70 with a second drummer, Ginger Baker, for five extended tracks built on horn riffs and dense percussion. Lighter on political narrative than Kuti's mid-seventies work, it is best heard as the sound of a band finding the architecture it would spend the rest of the decade refining.

13:00

Hunky Dory

David Bowie · 1971

Made after his backing band and management both fell away, Hunky Dory finds David Bowie composing on piano for the first time, tipping between domestic tenderness and grand artistic reinvention across eleven songs recorded at Trident Studios.

13:00

London Calling

The Clash · 1979

London Calling is the Clash's third album, an eighteen-song double LP recorded at Wessex Sound Studios over roughly six weeks in 1979 under producer Guy Stevens, with Bill Price engineering. After a year of writer's block, the band rehearsed in a Pimlico garage and returned with material stretched across reggae, rockabilly, ska and American R&B rather than straight punk. Released in December 1979 in Britain, it sold at the price of a single record and has since sold several million copies worldwide.

13:00

Revolver

The Beatles · 1966

Made in the months after the Beatles stepped back from touring, this seventh album turns Abbey Road into an instrument in its own right — tape loops, a string octet, a sitar-led raga and songs about death, taxes and transcendence sit side by side across a lean thirty-five minutes.

13:00

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Beatles · 1967

Recorded across five months after the Beatles gave up live performance for good, this eighth album frames itself as a set by an imaginary Edwardian troupe, mixing music-hall whimsy, Indian classical instrumentation and orchestral overdubs into a record that helped establish the album, rather than the single, as pop's serious form.

13:00

Untrue

Burial · 2007

Made alone with the software Sound Forge rather than a studio, Untrue pulls apart vocal samples and phone recordings into androgynous, half-familiar fragments set over skipping garage-inflected beats. It turned a London producer's private, late-night working method into one of the more significant electronic records of its decade.