Playlists

In haste again this week, but various delays in posting this have at least meant that the playlist has kept growing: 32 entries, with seven interesting things to listen to, including Neil Young and a couple of strong new artists, the pretty psych Morgan Delt and Matt Kivel, whose album reminds me a bit of the first one by Bon Iver.

A brief moment away from collating Uncut’s end of year album charts to post this: 24 records etc we’ve played over the last couple of days in the Uncut office.

After raving about the new Alasdair Roberts and White Fence albums on the past few lists, I’m pleased to have some tracks from them this week, along with really excellent new arrivals from Kevin Morby and Ryley Walker.

Page 366: Kenneth Williams. Page 437 Peter Wyngarde. Page 88 WH Auden. Page 384 Diana Dors. Page 27 JACKPOT! It's Myra Hindley!

Not much to say here, other than I think I’ve managed to embed more tracks you can actually play into this playlist than ever before. Dig in, I guess…

Something nice in the post this morning: a copy of Donald Fagen’s memoir, “Eminent Hipsters”. It’s not always the greatest idea to judge a book by its chapter titles (though I do always think that Clive James’ “A Prong In Peril” and “The Sound Of Mucus” are a good example of delivering what they promise), but definitely looking forward to “Henry Mancini’s Anomie Deluxe” and “The Cortico-Thalamic Pause: Growing Up Sci-Fi” Gonna have a wingding, or such like, at the weekend, and will report back.

Conspicuously wealthy blues collectors probably know about this by now, but a copy of Tommy Johnson’s “Alcohol And Jake Blues” has surfaced – only the second that’s ever been found – and is on sale at Ebay. It’ll be interesting to see how bidding shapes up before the auction closes around 10 tonight (UK time): at time of writing, the highest offer is $16,800.00.

Jams, folks. Please take ten minutes to watch the excellent clips below from Natural Child and Chris Forsyth. The image above is the cover of Forsyth’s tremendous forthcoming album, which I’ll try my damnedest to write about in the next day or two.

Can’t hang around today as deadline hassle mounts, but lots to listen to here: an Atoms For Peace mix, something from Nicolas Jaar’s fine new Darkside project, a precious and ancient demo from Roddy Frame, a remix from The Avalanches, and my favourite track from Light In The Attic’s New Age comp, among other things.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, a big backlog of music to work through here. And while I try and offer some fractionally different recommendations away from the usual media pile-ons (Oh look, Haim etc), this Janelle Monáe album is terrific and I totally recommend having a listen on The Guardian’s stream: very much in the zone of “The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill” (especially “Victory”).