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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Towards the end of the V&A’s terrific David Bowie Is… exhibition, tucked away on a wall next to the handwritten lyrics for “Heroes” and a postcard from Christopher Isherwood, are a set of door keys that have evidently seen better days.

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On their fine "Light Up Gold" album from the end of last year, Parquet Courts often come across like a kind of self-mythologising, self-effacing Brooklynish hipster band, allbeit one who are, of course, a) disdainful of the term 'hipster'; b) focused on a rather old-fashioned hipster sound that, until they became hip, was probably too hip, or not hip enough, for hipsters; c) snarky about self-mythologising, self-effacing Brooklynish hipsters; d) probably reflexively quite snarky about themselves.

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Reading about the South By Southwest festival tends to produce, in me at least, a mix of empathetic fatigue and terrible envy, and last week’s bombardment of tweets, blogs, news stories was no different.

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I suppose Alan Partridge is the, uh, albatross round Steve Coogan’s neck.

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The distraction of a Laura Marling blog yesterday has had the knock-on effect of making this week’s playlist longer than usual: 27 tracks/albums in all.

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It’s easy – and probably useful, sometimes – to lambast major labels for what looks from the outside like chronic short-termism. The climate is, understandably I guess, a neurotic one, and those days are long gone when labels would work long-term with a select group of trophy artists, whose usefulness to the company was more silvery and nebulous, more about cachet than quick profit.

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Shameless plug coming your way! This Thursday, March 14, the next in our ongoing series of Ultimate Music Guides hits the shops. This one is dedicated to The Smiths.

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Rather a long time after the event, I thought it worthwhile posting my live review of Kraftwerk at the Tate Modern (it was published in Uncut's print edition a couple of weeks ago). It was Trans Europe Express night, by the way...

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It’s a busy day in the Uncut office, but I’ve just time to post about the line-up that’s just been confirmed for this year’s Sundance London festival.

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