Although the birth of 'indie' in the United Kingdom can be traced back to the 1970’s, with elements of the sound traceable in everything from Bowie’s Berlin period to Paul and Linda McCartney’s Ram album to Buzzcocks' hugely significant Spiral Scratch EP, it was the 1980s that is considered the true golden age of the genre.
The mod revival, new wave and post-punk movements that were spawned from the punk scene continued to evolve throughout the decade, ultimately coalescing into the cache all term of indie, in the process giving us one of the broadest, most eclectic and creatively fertile periods in British guitar music.
Whether it was borrowing from the experimental sounds of 60’s psychedelic rock, the dark, dour feel of goth, the strutting glam of Roxy Music or even the explosion of a brand-new style in acid house and electronic music, the amount of classic records released in this period is quite staggering. Here is that story in just five albums.
