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October 2026

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67 articles

October 31
- “Porcupine Tree is still an ongoing concern. We are writing another album”: Gavin Harrison on the future of Porcupine Tree and King Crimson – plus his tips for miking drums and getting through 17-minute songs without collapsing
October 30
- “You have to understand what that band sounded like in that room. Duane Allman. Dickey Betts. Gregg Allman. Berry Oakley. Butch Trucks. Jaimoe. The energy was incredible”: The magical chemistry of The Allman Brothers Band – as witnessed by Al Di Meola
- “It was me realising that Lindsey was going to haunt me for the rest of my life. And he has”: How Stevie Nicks created the classic break-up anthem that was cut from Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours – and resurrected 20 years later as a live tour de force
- Quiz this love? It's MusicRadar's Quiz of the Week #28!
- Expressive E’s Ctrl-e: one expressive ecosystem, multiple synthesis worlds and a sound universe that keeps growing
October 27
- “Keep on rockin’ in the free world!”: The classic Neil Young song that started with a joke and has now led to Young suing Donald Trump for $10m
October 26
- “I’ve been working with Phil Oakey on music for the first time in 45 years”: We catch up with Heaven 17 and Human League trailblazer Martyn Ware
October 25
- “I tried to describe with the song what it was like to feel that rush, that elation, and then the awful sleep that comes with that drug, and then scream, ‘I'm wide awake!’”: How U2 created the experimental anti-drug song that lit up Live Aid
- “When I first saw the Strokes performing in New York, I was much more interested in the band that opened up for them”: Gordon Raphael tells us about his first meeting with The Strokes
- “He didn’t just make an album – he opened a door that a generation of artists walked through”: How Frank Ocean broke the hip-hop rulebook with his 2016 magnum opus
- “I told Prince, ‘I didn’t go behind your back. They called me!’”: How guitarist Levi Seacer Jr became the Prince Whisperer – and how The Purple One delivered a classic hit at the drop of a hat
October 24
- “I’d never heard anyone or anything like Johnny before. It was unique – he sounded like four guitarists all at once”: The story of The Smiths’ buoyant breakthrough hit
- “It makes you feel like the first time, as a young person, hearing Reign In Blood. That right there is the feeling that we wanted to capture”: Polyphia's radical guitar gospel according to Tim Henson and Scott LePage
- “The title came up as a joke at first, but it fitted the song so perfectly – we just had to use it”: How Massive Attack created the groundbreaking ’90s hit that propelled Bristol’s unique music scene into the global spotlight
- “I said to the band, ‘The good news is that we’ve got a hit, but the bad news is that you’re not on it!'”: The surprising story of the Blow Monkeys’ AIDS crisis-inspired Digging Your Scene, with new insight from its writer
- “Jaco was unbelievable. He didn’t think like a traditional bass player. He heard melody, harmony and rhythm all at the same time”: Guitar genius Al Di Meola recalls his collaborations with Jaco Pastorius, Phil Collins, Steve Gadd, John McLaughlin and more
October 23
- “It’s a standard, really – everyone looks like they’re absolutely loving hearing it”: The band behind a 24-carat indie classic tell us how it was made
- “It’s very hard to write three-chord songs on a piano. So I get this synthesizer, which sounds like a guitar, and I can write three-chord songs all of a sudden”: How Elton John reinvented his sound and resurrected his career with I’m Still Standing
- Solid Gold Quizzy Action: It's MusicRadar's Quiz of the Week #27!
October 21
- “He is like the Shakespeare of rock ‘n’ roll isn’t he?”: His Lordship’s James Walbourne on the importance of Chuck Berry, and being a Pretender for 18 years
October 20
- “We were denigrated for the fact that it was machines on the records, whereas New Order made Blue Monday and were hailed as the best thing since sliced bread”: Watching The Wildlife: The failure of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Liverpool, 40 years on
October 19
- “I used the wrong vocals… I just thought that Kim Basinger sounded like Madonna”: The incredible story of the track Madonna never wanted you to hear
October 17
- Hardware on a budget: 4 affordable, beginner-friendly setups for any genre
- “In Radio Ga Ga there are some very difficult chords – I don't know what they're called, but it doesn't matter”: The making of Queen’s crowd-stirring ode to the radio
October 16
- “He ended up with a fully-fledged, pro studio - it just happened to have an engine and some wheels underneath”: David Gilmour, The Rolling Stones, Timbaland, Depeche Mode and more in nine of the weirdest recording studios ever built
- “I watched the look on their faces, their jaws hit the floor – they’d heard something they couldn’t believe”: Rob Cavallo tells us about the thrill of producing Green Day’s most celebrated albums, and the anniversary of MCR’s The Black Parade
- “I've a trick that I do with it – there’s a workaround if you experiment with the patching capabilities. You can get some pretty amazing, deep, cranium-quaking bass from it!”: A classic studio tour with Erol Alkan
- Synchro Arts at Recording Week 2026: 5 essential vocal mixing plugins in 2026
- From Heritage to Reference: The Story Behind Neumann's New KH Monitors
October 15
- Inside Fender's 80-year battle against the nemesis of single-coil guitars: “We’ve been working at this issue for decades, literally”
- “I never have had a shortage of riffs because I don't place all the weight on them. I place it on the storytelling”: We enter the studio of soundtrack overlord Tyler Bates
- “You get the full blast of Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and myself. This would always be the track that I would refer to as being The One”: Carl Palmer reveals his all-time greatest ELP song – and it’s not Fanfare!
- “I got the impression that Gary didn’t want to move from a safe place – he wanted to do stuff the way he’d always done it”: Art rock guitarist and producer Bill Nelson reflects on trying to push Gary Numan out of his comfort zone
- “I went to the premiere of the movie and it opens with the shoes dancing and the song comes on. I turned to my wife and said, ‘This is a home run!’ It was so good”: The inside story of a classic ’80s hit – Footloose by Kenny Loggins
- “I said, 'Dad, what you did with The Beatles was kind of amazing, wasn’t it?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Not as amazing as Brian Wilson’”: Giles Martin on the overwhelming talent of Brian Wilson
October 14
- “If you buy one piece of music software this month, make it this one”: 5 new plugins you need to know about, from bonkers multi-effects to fat saturators
- Why we still have a bit of a thing for hardware outboard gear: “Why would you want to clean up a signal that sounds so lovely?”
- 6 ways to keep your synths and keyboards looking box-fresh – and why it's more important than you might think
- How to reamp synths and drum machines to build power and presence: “The whole thing has this real sense of space, a sense that something happened in a room and I recorded it, rather than some guy with a mouse”
- "Nobody sat me down and said, 'I need this kind of song from you.' There was more of a subtle, nuanced… withholding”: The story of Sara Bareilles' Love Song, the anti-major label strop with nuance
October 13
- “Capital H, capital M heavy metal. That’s the mission statement”: Ben Hutcherson and Phil Pendergast of Colorado doom champs Khemmis on what tone purists get wrong and why metal is a “sacred art form”
- How Beck and Nigel Godrich’s “simple and clean” philosophy produced one of the best-sounding albums of the 21st century: “When he opens his mouth, a canyonesque vibration comes out. It’s quite remarkable”
- “I was asleep in the jungle when the awards happened and got all these calls at four in the morning”: Oli Barton-Wood on being the MPG's Breakthrough Producer of the Year and the spontaneous joy of Ezra Collective
October 12
- “The next morning, we woke up, and were like, ‘We have to make a disco song’”: Digging into the Dua Lipa smash that triggered a disco revival
- “The label wanted to hear the song that the video was actually for… I said, ‘Oh, I'll bring it on Monday morning’”: How Thomas Dolby speedily created his biggest hit over a weekend
- If you have endless cash, these are the mics to buy: “It became known as the Beatles Mic as it was famously used at the Cavern Club”
- Sennheiser at Recording Week 2026: Get accurate low-end and supreme comfort for professional recording and monitoring with Sennheiser's HD 480 PRO closed-back headphones
- Mastering The Mix at Recording Week 2026: Announcing CARBON Q: A connected EQ and volume balance plugin that balances your vocals, music, drums and bass – all from a single window
- Kali Audio at Recording Week 2026: From desktops to soundstages: Which Kali studio monitor is right for you?
- Genelec at Recording Week 2026: How do you listen to music? Let us know and grab your chance to win Genelec 8010A studio monitors
- Focusrite at Recording Week 2026: From Scarlett to the new ISA C8X, Focusrite has your drums covered
October 10
- “It was like the Wild West. We were the fastest guns in town and there was always some young punk who wanted to take you down”: The dramatic rise and tragic fall of Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy
October 9
- “Mick and I went out in the car after David played it for us the first time, and we were already singing it, having only heard it only once”: How one of David Bowie’s greatest songs had a life-changing impact on a new generation of musicians
- “He stopped me in the middle of the song and asked me what it was. I said, ‘Nothing.’ He said, ‘You have to finish that.’ So I finished the song that Saturday night in an hour”: How Vanessa Carlton created her classic hit A Thousand Miles
- Who Wants To Live Forever?: It's MusicRadar's Quiz of the Week #25!
October 7
- “Jerry Finn actually suggested re-routing Mark’s pickups to flip them because of the way he plays – he has this really interesting downstroke. I haven’t seen anyone play that way”: John Feldmann on the secrets of Blink-182’s buoyant sound
- “It’s funny because there’s a lot of heavy rock but also yodelling to the point where it’s almost half opera”: Guitarist Jan Akkerman recalls the creation of a truly bizarre ’70s rock classic – Hocus Pocus by Focus!
- “I broke six ribs, and three of them were broken on both sides, so I had floating ribs – they had to put titanium plates on those. The pain was just insane”: How a broken body let Scott Holiday’s mind run free on his trippy solo debut
- “Toxic was probably like one out of 15 ideas that I had that day”: Galantis shares his memories of co-writing Britney Spears’ Toxic
- “It turned out kind of wimpy. I wish we could have recorded it a lot heavier”: How Nirvana took an obscure ’60s psych-rock song and turned it into their debut single
October 6
- “It was a wild time. We mixed the album in two days on the most primitive console you could imagine”: How Led Zeppelin created the masterpiece that hit No 1 on both sides of the Atlantic and defined a new form of heavy rock music
October 5
- “The most beautiful piece of music ever written”: Why Dave Grohl adores a soft rock classic from the ’70s that also inspired an Eagles hit and was rumoured to have featured Freddie Mercury on backing vocals
- “He told him to do the solo on one string – only on one string. That was the limitation he gave him”: Mark Plati on David Bowie’s return to the avant-garde during the 1990s
October 3
- “They thought it was going to be the biggest flop ever – but there were two guys thinking, ‘This might just change the face of music’”: How Paul Hardcastle created his sample-driven masterpiece 19
October 2
- “The faster you work, the more it resonates with listeners”: 808 Prince on the vintage drum machines and spontaneous energy behind his new self-titled project
- “I had no plans to join Queen. But I knew we were on to something when we rehearsed three songs together and the TV crew, all hardened old pros, gave us a standing ovation”: Why legendary singer Paul Rodgers joined forces with Brian May and Roger Taylor
- Who Let The Bears Out?: It's MusicRadar's Quiz of the Week #24!