Features

Been meaning to post this piece for a while, since the whole clandestine operation around the new Boards Of Canada album, “Tomorrow’s Harvest”, began. It’s an interview I did with the duo in February 2002, around the release of “Geogaddi”. NME billed it erroneously as “Boards Of Canada’s first ever interview” at the time, which was pushing it a bit…

The last time I had occasion to write about my old friend BP Fallon in Uncut was in March, 2010, when he’d just released his debut single, produced by Jack White and released by Jack’s Third Man Records as the first in the label’s new Spoken Word-Instructional record Series. “Fame #9” was backed with “BP Fallon Interview By Jack White” and “I Believe In Elvis Presley”, on which White played some viperish slide guitar, with The Raconteurs’ Patrick Keeler on drums. There was also a video, featuring some of BP’s many friends, including Kevin Shields, Bobby Gillespie and Gemma Hayes.

Blueshammer! Autobahn! Wyld Stallyns!

Jackson Browne features heavily in Uncut’s piece on the making of the Eagles’ Desperado – in the new issue, dated June 2013 and out now – and here, in this archive feature, originally from August 2010’s Uncut (Take 159), Browne takes us through the creation of his greatest albums. Interview: Bud Scoppa ____________________

Seeing as how Matthew E White and his band are on tour in the UK this week (I’m seeing him play in London tomorrow), it seemed a good time to post the feature about my visit to Richmond a couple of months ago. I’ve put a few links to stuff in here, too, so you can get a taste of the really interesting music coming out of the scene that revolves around White. Long read, this one…

Not sure how many of you braved the scrums of Ebay dealers on Record Store Day, but one of the more interesting things to come out of the whole business this year was the surreptitious return of Boards Of Canada.

As you come up the escalator at Leicester Square underground station, you might notice the posters lining the walls advertising Mamma Mia!, Viva Forever! and We Will Rock You. You could be forgiven for wondering what place Dexys have in the heart of West End theatreland, especially here among these big karaoke musicals.

It’s Record Store Day on Saturday; a kind of weird, but necessary I guess, annual event that’s become a critical point in release schedules. I’ve been going through the lists of releases at recordstoreday.com and thought it might be worth picking out a few things that are worth looking out for. Increasingly, a fair amount of the day’s business is built on canny catalogue management aimed at collectors (especially vinyl fetishists), and there are a bunch of things here that fall roughly into that sector:

Strange juxtapositions and all that, but please have a listen to the Date Palms track and, in the unlikely event you haven’t been near the internet for the past few days, the Daft Punk clip. Nile Rodgers’ expression is a thing of joy, among other things.

For the next issue of Uncut, I've reviewed Season 1 of Veep. In case you're not familiar with the show, it's basically Armando Iannucci's attempt to relocate The Thick Of It to the White House.