Heartbreaker

Pink Floyd's ground-breaking album The Dark Side of the Moon was the result of a long creative process that began around 1968. A Saucerful of Secrets (the main track from the eponymous album) was, for Nick Mason at least, where it all began. Their next album Ummagumma (1969) gave each band member the opportunity to create a solo piece, though they would have to combine their talents if they wanted to hit the jackpot. Pink Floyd continued to search for the perfect record with Meddle, an album which highlighted their skills in the studio, and Atom Heart Mother, before they reached nirvana with The Dark Side of the Moon. And the album’s perfection hasn’t faded one bit.

Kraftwerk, the most influential electro group in history, founded by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, who died of cancer on May 6, 2020, have always been ahead of their time. Ahead of technology, composition and stage performance, the Germans proved to the public that robots were also capable of emotion and paved the way for techno, new wave and even hip-hop.

How does one Mancunian group move from perhaps the gloomiest band of the punk era to a master of the dance-floor? In the early eighties, straight out of Joy Division’s ashes, New Order marked one of the first successful unions of rock’n’roll and dance music. A perfect soundtrack for a morose, Thatcherite England.