Blogs

Something of a Robbie Basho binge in the office this morning reminded me that I’ve been sleeping on this Six Organs Of Admittance album for a few weeks now. Ben Chasny has been one of the most interesting players on the New Weird American psych/folk scene (or whatever you want to call it; chances are Chasny will try and wriggle free of any glib categories anyhow) for a few years now.

One record that’s definitely been growing on me this past couple of weeks is the debut by a Brooklyn band called Yeasayer. At first, “All Hour Cymbals” seemed to be a nice but generic close relative to the TV On The Radio albums – insofar as anything that mixes tribal thump, dreampop textures and barbershop harmonies could be referred to as generic, of course.

In February 1989, I find myself in Portland, Oregon, at the Pine Street Theatre, a venue that sounds somewhat grander than it actually is, which is not much fancier than a room above a bar where tonight I see Cowboy Junkies play for the first time.

It’s pretty embarrassing to have only finally got the point of Radiohead in 2007 but, 24 hours on, my “In Rainbows” epiphanies continue apace. Getting off the bus this morning on London Bridge, listening to the complex subtleties of “Reckoner” (a song I’d barely noticed this time yesterday), I was struck by the guns of HMS Belfast looming out of the mist on the Thames.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from Murray Lerner’s The Other Side Of The Mirror – Bob Dylan At The Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965, which I went to see last night at the BFI Southbank last night.

Up at six this morning, as usual, though the Radiohead album didn't arrive to download until, I think, about ten to seven. I played "In Rainbows" for the first time on the bus coming in to the office, and it was one of those records that seems dramatically suited to sitting in traffic on the A10, watching the commuters. Oh, the alienation!

I was talking the other day to an Uncut writer, a hip-hop expert actually, about what a disappointing year it had been for rap in general. I suppose I'm a bit of a dilettante in this area, but looking back over the year's blogs, I can find scant reference to much hip-hop at all; certainly nothing to match the Clipse and Ghostface Killah albums from last year.

Another day, another disc from the Miles Davis "On The Corner" box set, and someone (John McLaughlin?) appears to have turned up with a sitar. Most bracing. Before we embarked on this, though, we played the new Nick Cave & Warren Ellis soundtrack, a musical sequel of sorts to their score for "The Proposition" from a couple of years ago.

The third album by Om, a duo from San Francisco, took some pretty circuitous route to get to Uncut, or so it seemed: at least two copies of "Pilgrimage" disappeared en route, as I became more and more anxious to hear it.

Fairly curious listening day in the Uncut office, even by our standards, I think, which reached a pinnacle of sorts with a new Dead Kennedys 'Best Of' (how poppy they sound now) rubbing up next to a Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick reissue from 1966, I think.