Failure

• Up two flights of stairs, the music machinery on offer includes brands such as Moog and Buchla, as well as modern euro-racks.
• (From Michael’s fieldnotes)
  I finally locate the legendary Schneiders Buero, a shop selling analogue synthesizers in Berlin’s Kotti neighbourhood.
• Up two flights of stairs, the music machinery on offer includes brands such as Moog and Buchla, as well as modern euro-racks.
• (From Michael’s fieldnotes) As academics who rarely go a day without playing or making music, we have spent the past decade examining the extraordinary revival of analogue technology.
• This means there are now more analogue options available than at any time since the 1970s, the heyday of the modular format.

The appeal of the slow

• So we dived in.
• Eventually, these forays became our formal research project, which has included visiting record fairs and conventions around the world, going on photowalks and attending listening evenings, and meeting an array of diehard analogue communities both on and off line.

• The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.
• And we expect interest in such experiences to rise exponentially in coming years.
• Recognising our existential need to occasionally slow down can be the basis for winning consumer strategies.
• Recognising our existential need to occasionally slow down can be the basis for winning consumer strategies.

Saved from demolition

• Rather than nostalgia, they are turning to film because of its aesthetic values and a greater sense of creative control over their photos.
• In response, venerable brands including Kodak, Polaroid and Leica have re-emerged – in some cases, almost from the dead.
• We literally saved it from demolition at the very last second in 2008.
• We literally saved it from demolition at the very last second in 2008.
• He said luxury brands such as Gucci are particularly keen on using film photography as this gives their promotional material a different look.

Work, effort, meaning

• When it was conceded that digital probably was better for wildlife photography, James cut in:
  That’s to miss the point!
• The sound might be better but you miss seeing the work that went into the performance, the effort of the players and their crew.
• Work, effort, meaning – these ideas are all interconnected for users and consumers of analogue technology.
• However, when asked to compare the two, they talk about the greater weight and meaning they give to their analogue experiences.
• I think it is the quality of the human voice; it does feel more like someone’s speaking to me.

• And part of what makes this possible is the process of analogue recording, in which all the sounds being made, including the unscripted noise of the recording process itself, are captured in the final track.
• To facilitate this sound, some musicians have even started setting up their own pressing plants, such as Jack White’s Third Man Pressing in Detroit.

The joy of happy accidents

• Half of what you do trying to make music is like a happy accident that ends up sounding better than what you intended.
• When we started, we didn’t have that technology, so we made mistakes and some of them were happy accidents, resulting in iconic tracks.
• When we started, we didn’t have that technology, so we made mistakes and some of them were happy accidents, resulting in iconic tracks.
• It’s these happy accidents that we love.
• It’s these happy accidents that we love.
• For example, the opening bass part of Cannonball, the 1993 song by US Indie band the Breeders, accidentally starts in a different key.
• Bass player Josephine Wiggs began playing the riff one step down, then fixed it when the drums came in.

Digital technology is de-skilling us

• Over the decade or so of our research, explanations for the analogue revival have shifted from nostalgia, to the desire for something physical in a digital age, to the sense that analogue technology is creatively preferable.
• Is digital technology de-skilling consumers, leading to a sense of alienation?
• Using analogue technology is another way consumers can feed this desire to re-skill.
• Rob told us how his love of music had turned sour with the “sheer ease” of digital, starting with CDs and the MP3 player – and how vinyl had reinvigorated him.
• For him, the problem came when listening on digital devices without the “sides” of vinyl albums, and then on music streaming platforms whose digital algorithms preference popular tracks.

‘This song sucks’

• These are the people who want to stretch and break the rules and trigger the happy accidents that create something altogether new.
• For example, photographers who seek more creative expressions by pre-soaking or “souping” their camera film in lemon juice, coffee, beer, or even burning it.
• And among this group, connecting digital and analogue technology is also common – combining two completely different systems to generate even more possibilities.
• Film director Denis Villeneuve’s first instalment of Dune (2021) was initially shot on digital, then transferred to film, before being re-digitised.
• By combining the two, Villeneuve got a film that, in his words, has a “more timeless, painterly feel”.

For you: more from our Insights series:
How music heals us, even when it’s sad – by a neuroscientist leading a new study of musical therapy

The artist formerly known as Camille – Prince’s lost album ‘comes out’

Beatrix Potter’s famous tales are rooted in stories told by enslaved Africans – but she was very quiet about their origins

To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. Subscribe to our newsletter.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Back then only 36% of all South Africans had electricity in their homes.
• The development programme promised to double that number by electrifying an additional 2.5 million homes by 2000.
• This seemed achievable – during the 1980s, the state-owned power utility Eskom’s build programme was so aggressive it had surplus electricity.
• By 1994, South Africa’s coal industry was generating high quality coal which was exported mainly to Europe.

What went wrong

• Eskom tried to convince the government to allow it to build more power stations.
• But under the macroeconomic policy, the government decided that new power stations must be built by Black empowered businesses.
• For that to work, the prices of electricity needed to increase to make it financially viable for the businesses.
• The White Paper was accurate in predicting when the country would run out of power.
• If the Eskom CEOs had signed the power purchase agreements, it would have brought online 5GW of renewables.

The current dilemma

• This provided for a very large increase in the number of renewables and the closure of several coal-fired power stations.
• But Mantashe later delayed the procurement of renewables, deepening the crisis at Eskom.
• Dividing the utility up was approved in 2019 but the National Transmission Company was only set up in 2024.
• Ramaphosa appointed an electricity minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, and released the Energy Action Plan to end power cuts.

Solutions

• It dramatically increases the emphasis on gas – it is a gas infrastructure plan and South Africa doesn’t have much gas.
• The country will have to import gas and pay in US dollars, thus increasing its dependence on the dollar.
• Instead, South Africa needs to transition to renewable energy plus backup, which is batteries and a substantial gas reserve.

Mark Swilling is a Non-Executive Director of the Eskom National Transmission Company of South Africa. He writes in his academic capacity. He has received funding for his research from National Research Foundation, VW Foundation, Open Society Foundation and European Climate Fund.

• Stock market development and familiarity (language and distance) are considered key determinants for home bias.
• The literature neglects however that investors often invest in foreign funds domiciled in financial centers.

• In the Trough of Nickel Cycle: Value Regress Perceived in Lygend Resources (2245.HK)
  Nickel prices remained at a low position in 2023, posing a serious challenge to the global industrial chain.
• Nickel Asia Corporation, a nickel producer from the Philippines, reported a decrease of 53% YoY in net profits in fiscal year 2023.
• The general downturn of the nickel industry in 2023 reflects the fact that the global oversupply of nickel has not changed in the past two years.
• On the other, the nickel supply-demand situation has seen predictions for marginal improvement, and this will surely boost nickel price.