Sounds spent two decades, from ‘71 to ‘91 promoting music in its own inimitable style. It remained distinct enough from its main rivals, the NME and Melody Maker but was not so outlandish that writers like Vivien Goldman could not flit between them all at some stage.

On the 10th of October 2016, 45 years after Sounds was first launched, a group of music enthusiasts got together to relaunch the Sounds Magazine website. The site is both an homage to the spirit of the original Sounds and a recognition that such a spirit is just as pertinent today as it was in the 1970s.

We run entirely on a voluntary basis, seeking to promote old and new music and the long form journalism, photography and video that celebrates musicians’ work. If we can retain some vigour that past Sounds writers, like Geoff Barton, Dave Lewis and Vivien Goldman brought, we’ll be on the right path, but we also seek to present a platform for new writers, who get to the essence of what it’s like to feel the thunderous riffs from Royal Blood seep through your psyche, or to be infected by David August’s take on Syl Johnson’s ‘Is it because I’m black?’.

Wherever music springs from, we’ll seek to get there and report back, be it from a dingy back room of a pub in Pendle or a sponsored arena in North London; it’s not the status of the gig that interests us, but the music.