Ahmed mahmoud

Happy New Year, everyone, and many thanks for all your responses to the Bruce Springsteen and Favourite Albums Of The Year blogs I posted just before Christmas.

Belgian fusionists embark on an immersive electronic voyage

The Texas trio’s fourth is rooted in Houston, but channelling a planet of genre-fluid grooves

A quick look at eight of my favourite recent releases

Following on from Friday’s blog, another round-up today of some records that’ve taken me an embarrassingly long time to write up.

Not to stereotype us in any way, but marvellous though Club Uncut is, not much dancing has traditionally gone on there. As a one-stop shop for American songwriters of a certain stripe, we’ve done pretty well. But last night’s show by Fool’s Gold is something else entirely.

A surprising amount of good post was waiting for us at the office yesterday, which means a lot of stuff we've played thus far this year has been brand new. There are a handful of disappointments on the list which follows, but the undisputed favourite at the moment is the new Stephen Malkmus album. I'll try and write something more substantial about the Jicks' monumental jams in the next few days. In the meantime, here's the rundown:

Nice to see on the responses to my comeback blog that a few of you are sharing the love for the Ethiopiques comps. The Yegelle Tezeta and Girma Beyene tracks mentioned by Citizensound and Tunetourist aren’t on the "Very Best Of Ethiopiques" set, but thanks for the recommendations for Volumes 8 and 9.