Features

At 7pm on the first night of Atoms For Peace’s London residency, the Amok Drawing Room has already sold out of commemorative mugs. The Enterprise pub across the road from the Roundhouse has been rebranded in expressionist monochrome, and an upstairs room has been upholstered in Stanley Donwood wallpaper, the better to sell exquisite £500 prints, t-shirts screenprinted while-you-wait, and a pointedly apocalyptic jigsaw puzzle.

For Steve Coogan, Alan Partridge’s big screen debut represents a pivotal moment in the actor’s relationship with his most famous creation.

Gearing up for the Atoms For Peace show tonight with this lot: please note (and in some cases listen to) new Forest Swords, Feral Ohms (another Ethan Miller band, this one very much in the Comets On Fire zone) and a reissue for Robbie Basho’s long-unavailable first Windham Hill album. The Desert Heat record sounds better with every play, too…

One of the projects we have just finished working on for the next issue of Uncut, on sale next week, was a special promotional feature we have produced in association with hmv, which is newly returned to robust high street health after recent rough times.

Yesterday's news that the Stones have released an album of material drawn from their recent Hyde Park shows reminded me to dust down this interview I did last year with Mick Jagger, which ran in our December 2012 issue. I had 25 minutes with Mick - about as long an interview as he'll do these days - ostensibly to chat about Crossfire Hurricane and GRRR!, which were both about to be released. Along the way, we chatted about fighting in train carriages, writing with Keith and whether or not Mick is comfortable watching himself on television...

From Uncut’s archive, the legendary singer-songwriter talks us through his greatest albums

No, unfortunately “Bright Phoebus” isn’t being reissued. But what prompted me to dig it out this week was the news of Bright Phoebus Revisited, a concert tour this autumn that promises the album recreated live by every Waterson they could find, along with various guests including Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley. The dates are London Barbican (11), Warwick Arts Centre (12), Liverpool Philharmonic Hall (14), Brighton Dome (15) and Bristol Colston Hall (16). Could be interesting: amazing record.

God bless Rod Stewart Not even creepy celebrity horse-whisperer Alan Yentob could wholly ruin last week’s highly entertaining BBC Arena special on Rod Stewart. His contributions were laughably witless all the same. “You look just like brothers!” he exclaimed excitedly of Rod and long-time mucker Ronnie Woods, which may have been true 40 years ago. These days they don’t even look like cousins.

When unpleasant right-wing governments seize control by one means or another, a lot of wishful thinking often goes on among radical artists. Hard times, they speculate, will encourage a new counterculture; angry political art will flourish in the face of oppression. We heard a lot of this rhetoric from dissenters trying to put a positive gloss on the election of David Cameron in 2010. But as yet, a provocative cultural revolt against the Tories, if there is one, remains too underground to register on most radar.

We find ourselves in the wrong bar by mistake. Arriving at Hyde Park for this second London show on the Stones' 50 & Counting tour, we're issued with numerous coloured plastic wristbands that are intended to identify where we can travel around the site. There is this bar, that tier, this restaurant, these toilets... one of the first questions we're asked as we enter the site is whether we have a dinner reservation.