How to Make an Analogue Album

Sept. 11, 2026, 3:03 p.m.

What does it mean for a sound to be "analogue" in 2026? The vast majority of the musical sound that you hear day to day has been processed digitally in some way. Unless you are listening to tape or vinyl, the final product has been stored and reproduced digitally, whether that's coming from your phone, over the speakers in the supermarket, listening to the car radio, etc. However, even when you're listening to those analogue media, the means by which they were created may have involved converting the sound to digital and back. Digital sound is ubiquitous to the point where hearing actual analogue sound - as in a live acoustic performance or listening to an old vinyl record - is an increasingly special experience.

A few years ago, the rock group My Bloody Valentine re-released their famous album Loveless on vinyl. Part of the advertising for this (and it still says this on the sticker that accompanies the record on recent printings) that this was a "fully analogue" remaster: that is to say, the master record was cut using a tape recording rather than a digital file. The implication is that signal chain from Kevin Shield's fingers all the way to your ears is a non-stop analogue ride. This is an interesting statement partly because digital instruments - namely the Akai S1000 sampler - featured heavily on Loveless. Much of the washy-reversed-guitar-with-shimmer-reverb pad sound was generated by Kevin Shields sampling his guitar and playing it back, or playing it through digital reverb pedals such as the Yamaha SPX900. So even the Loveless vinyl rerelease is in some sense a digital record.

What would it mean to try and create a fully analogue electronic album in 2026? Is it even possible to create a substantially layered piece and transmit it to the ears of listeners without it passing through any sort of digital processing? Going from the very start, let's look at every hurdle we would have to pass to get from point A to point B:

1. The generation of rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic ideas. This could either be done using the human brain or using any number of digital devices, from randomisers to arpeggiators or more sophisticated programs. Here we can stick with just what we can imagine, but since this doesn't actually involve the sound signal yet, we'll say that arpeggiators or randomisation are permitted.
2. The storage and reproduction of the above musical ideas. This can be done in three ways: by writing it down on paper; by storing them in memory; or by storing them as digital musical information, namely MIDI. Let us assume for now that MIDI is permissible since again this doesn't affect the actual sound signal.
3. The generation of sound. For example, oscillators on a synthesizer can be digital or analogue; the filters applied to them can similarly be either, and hybrid synthesizers such as the Novation Peak have an analogue filter stage after digital oscillators. Obviously, acoustic sounds are analogue, so those are fine.
4. The recording of the individual musical sounds. This would be the storage of the initial sound either after some analogue effects processing, or a completely dry sound with the intent of further processing. Either way we only have one option here: we're going to have to use a multi-track tape machine.
5. The processing of the sound. Here I really mean effects, since we'll be handling EQ and mixing in the next step. Most effects now are digital, whether on a DAW or a pedal, or rack-mounted unit. We would have to be strict here about not using digital reverb although technically this accompanies the dry signal and so doesn't completely break the analogue chain.
6. The mixing process. Here we need to work on an analogue mixing desk, and resist the temptation of the digital effects it might include.
7. The storage of the mixed pre-master. Once out of the DAW or mixing desk, the track has to be stored again as a premaster. Historically this would be on tape, later digital audio tape, and today almost ubiquitously held as a digital file. We'll go with tape again.
8. The mastering process. Assuming that the mastering engineer has been passed a mix stored to tape, this could at this point be rendered to digital for processing, and back again. This isn't allowed.
9. Cutting the master: this is normally done from the above WAV file, so we would need a pressing plant happy to work from tape or, more likely, a third-party cutting engineer.
10. The final consumer storage and playback medium. This bit is easy to understand: it's either a digital file, CD, cassette tape, or vinyl record. The latter two are fine.
11. The broadcast and playback method. Here I'm really thinking of radio, which is largely a digital medium now in the UK. So even if the radio DJ is playing from vinyl, the radio signal reaching your car stereo in a digital form. Similarly, many vinyl players now have bluetooth.

Steps 1 and 2 could maybe be discounted for the purposes of the "end to end analogue experience", since they aren't to do with sound generation but rather the creation and storage of musical instructions. However I think it's interesting to keep them in for illustrative purposes. What I want to point out here though is just how many steps there are in creating a record which are now digital in a way which is really hard to get around in 2026. In your studio, you would need a full bank of analogue instruments and good microphones, a multitrack tape machine, a mixing desk, analogue effects, and a second tape machine for the master. Who has space for that?

I want to give an example of a synthesizer-based album on my shelf which is, by the above criteria, absolutely and completely analogue from end to end and was also definitely created at home: Wendy Carlos' Switched on Bach from 1967, which I purchased from a second-hand record store on Park Row in Bristol in 2022, so I know it's an original pressing. Due to Wendy's extensive writing on her website we have some good documentation of how this was made. Analysing it according to the steps outlined above, we can track all of the sounds from one end of the process to the other:

1. The music was written by J.S. Bach in the 17th century and, as such, did not use any digital components in the generation of musical ideas.
2. The musical ideas were written on paper and were subsequently reproduced by Wendy, who was a classical keyboard player.
3. The main instrument was a unique, modular Moog synthesizer. The oscillators and filters were fully analogue. The instruments were not sequenced but played by hand, individually, as monophonic lines.
4. Effects wise, the main thing here is reverb, which was provided by a EMT 140st stereo reverb plate (https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/back-to-bach/5533)
5. The sound was recorded to an 8-track recorder in Wendy's personal studio: according to her personal site it was "recorded originally on a custom 8-track 1" (Ampex 300/351) tape machine". (https://www.wendycarlos.com/+wts.html)
6. The mix was also done by Wendy in the same studio and seemingly rendered to tape there: it was "mixed to stereo premasters using a two-track 1/4" Ampex".
7. The mastering process was also handled by Wendy at home as well: "The mixes were edited and transferred using equalization and level optimization to the final masters, using Dolby A." (The Dolby technology plays a role in noise reduction.)
8. The record was passed to Columbia for cutting with a lathe, although this is something Wendy could have done herself had she wanted to: we know that she "was a cutting engineer for some years in the late 60's" (https://www.wendycarlos.com/open4.html)
9. The final consumer product was stamped from this master.
10. Here I take the disc and play it on my Audio Technica record player
11. Unfortunately I break the chain right at the end of the process: my vinyl player sends a bluetooth signal to my TV, where it connects to a soundbar.

So even this analogue record, having travelled for decades to land in my record collection, at the very last second goes through a digital conversion process before reaching my ears. This just goes to show how rare analogue listening is, and how difficult it is to set up even when the "difficult" bits have been handled already.

What would the opposite look like - a fully digital composition with no analogue recording, even samples? I think much music in this vein has been created in the EDM world since the late 2000s, although drum sounds do tend to have analogue origins. (Modern techno might be a good example.) Taking this one step further, we now have AI generated music where everything from the initial conception of ideas to the creation of the mastered product is handled in one seamless digital process. This is increasing the value of analogue processes substantially and will, I think, push these to the fore over the next few years.

Hopefully this gives an impression of the difficulty that a producer would face in wanting to deliver an analogue experience to listeners. For example, if I wanted to create a Geoglyph record which is end-to-end analogue, what technologies would I need to dig up, both past and present, to get this to happen? I would need a number of collaborators with the right skills working within the analogue domain, especially at the point of mastering. Even the pressing plant would need to be a certain sort to take on this project, since many plants today would expect a digital file from which to create the master plate.

The end result would probably have to be a single or EP-length disc due to the hurdles involved, but the challenge might be interesting enough to make it worthwhile.