“To make true political music,” the great American critic Greil Marcus wrote nearly 25 years ago, “you have to say what decent people don’t want to hear; that’s something that people fit for satellite benefit concerts will never understand, and that Elvis Costello understood before anyone heard his name.”

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Hopefully, you'll have seen the new edition of Uncut by now. Among many, many good things in this month's issue, there's Nick Hasted's interview with Ginger Baker.

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A fairly eclectic selection here this week, including some great proto-Takoma guitarists from the 1920s, chamber music reimaginings of the Kompakt back catalogue, that lost Romanian kosmische record you’ve always been looking for, and Prince making a stoner jam out of “Let’s Go Crazy” (which you can hear below, along with a bunch of interesting other stuff).

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Hopefully, you'll have seen the new issue of Uncut by now, which includes a terrific cover story on The Who's early ascendancy, plus Cream, Matthew E White, Jeff Lynne, Kurt Vile, and more - including a piece by Allan on Kevin Ayers.

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At the end of last week, I watched the new film by Olivier Assayas, which has been called Something In The Air in England, though its original French title – Après Mai – arguably feels a little more evocative.

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In haste, and listening to an unexpected return to music from Douglas Hart as I type. Twenty-one items on the playlist this week, mostly approved. Special attention here, I think, for the new Oh Sees album (that’s the sleeve above), which very much builds on “Purifiers II”. Increasingly keen on the James Blake, too, especially the RZA track.

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When I first started reading what used to be Melody Maker, in a time now shrouded not so much in what are usually called the mists of time as they are in a fog as dense as anything that might gather over Dogger Bank, I used to accept its weekly delivery in the manner of some kind of jackal, cur or otherwise fanged and ravenous critter.

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The IMDB lists Noah Baumbach’s credits since 2010’s Greenberg as a TV adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections and a co-write on Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.

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Three weeks and a few hours ago, I found myself on a small plane from Richmond, Virginia, to Washington DC. Most of the other passengers were members of the Harvard baseball team, who had spent the past three hours being harassed by schoolgirls making innumerable Harlem Shake videos. I, though, was sat next to a woman from Colorado, who was studying the use of horses in Gestalt therapy.

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Plenty to listen to here again this week, and less dubious content than there was in the 11th playlist. One off-the-scale stinker, though…

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