The secret Nu Shooz cool test is, if they come up and sing the bassline, they're cool. If they sing the barking seal, they're less cool.

I interviewed Jonathan Sterne for Pitchfork about his new book. While conducting the interview, I thought Pitchfork readers would like to know about how AT&T’s capitalistic policies in the 1910s and 1920s laid the groundwork for those compressed bits of data currently clogging their hard drives, and other gentle, science-laden facts about the mp3’s history. I was wrong. But not to worry! Here are the cut bits.

‘An oral history of the British experimental rock act's remarkable Five EPs.’