Issue 102

With her debut solo album rocketing into the UK Top 10 on the week of its release, we are delighted to have Alison Goldfrapp on the cover of the new Electronic Sound. We have a fantastic red vinyl seven-inch by the always stylish and often elusive singer to accompany the issue too. 

After nearly 20 years fronting the massively successful electronic duo Goldfrapp, delivering Kraftwerk-meets-glam stomps such as ‘Strict Machine’ and ‘Ooh La La', Alison's ‘The Love Invention’ is very much an album on her own terms. This is majestic synthpop with added oomph and a confident statement of intent. “As an artist, I think it’s important to feel excited about what you're doing – and I’m incredibly excited about what I’m doing,” she declares in our cover feature. There's every reason for the rest of us to feel excited as well. ‘The Love Invention’ is a big, bold and gloriously effervescent record that looks set to soundtrack the summer months ahead. 

On the subject of the summer, make sure you also check out our preview of Bluedot 2023, which takes place at the end of next month. The Radiophonic Workshop's Dick Mills and Peter Howell, Creep Show’s John Grant and Stephen Mallinder, and Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus are among those we've put under the spotlight, plus we have interviews with Moby, Nabihah Iqbal, Kid Koala, Harald Grosskopf, Will Sergeant, A Man Called Adam and Richard X elsewhere in the issue. Mr X is one of the co-producers of the Alison Goldfrapp album, by the way, which is a nice piece of synchronicity. You know how we like to keep things neat and tidy.

We have an exclusive red vinyl seven-inch by Alison Goldfrapp to accompany the latest issue of Electronic Sound. The record features two tracks from 'The Love Invention', her awesome new album, starting with 'So Hard So Hot', a smouldering synthpop banger with radiant vocals and an irresistible groove. Recorded during last summer's heatwave in the UK, she says the song is "a comment on the climate, but it has a sexual connotation too". The flip side of the single is the slinky and hypnotic 'Gatto Gelato', a track with an Italian title – it means 'Ice Cream Cat' – built around Alison singing the repeated line, "I can make you feel it". And she most certainly does.

As with all of our music releases, this record is strictly limited and only available to readers of Electronic Sound, so be sure you get your copy straight away.