Features

Among my post last week, I received a nice care package from Ace Records that included one quite weird Duke Ellington album ("My People"); Volume 3 of their "Where Country Meets Soul" series (I cannot recommend Ralph ''Soul'' Jackson's version of ''Jambalaya'' highly enough); and, maybe best of all, "Cracking The Cosimo Code", a collection of extraordinary music originating from Cosimo Matassa's New Orleans studio in the 1960s.

The director talks glaciers, No Wave and The Sons Of Lee Marvin

U2’s shock-released new album, Songs Of Innocence, is largely themed around the band’s childhoods and adolescence in Dublin, according to Bono. Well, here’s what came next… This is the full story, as told by those who were there, of U2’s rise from indie hopefuls to becoming the Biggest Rock Band On The Planet. Written by Stephen Dalton, and originally published in Uncut’s December 1999 issue (Take 31).

Thanks for all the nice feedback about the Liam Hayes/Plush piece I wrote earlier in the week. Lots of other good new arrivals in the list here, and you could do worse than start off by listening to the Cool Ghouls from San Francisco, especially if you're interested in the Allah-Las, the Ty Segall axis, Nuggets ad nauseam and so on.

I received an email last week from an old college friend, with a link to the Souncloud page of Liam Hayes & Plush, and an amused/irate message along the lines of, "One of your two jobs in life was meant to be to flag me when he releases anything/makes any move out of his lair."

Robert Plant on Led Zeppelin, his solo career and more...

Robert Fripp showcases the revitalised King Crimson, complete with a brand new, three-drummer lineup, at their first show in Albany, New York, on September 9. In this feature from Uncut’s July 2012 issue (Take 182), Rob Young asks Fripp and many of his former bandmates how they gave birth to a bright and extravagant series of albums and – inadvertently – to a whole new genre: prog rock. Surprising, desperate – and shocking... Even Jimi Hendrix was taken aback!

After my blog about the Aphex Twin the other week, it's a real pleasure to embed the first leaked track from "Syro" this morning. It's called "minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix]", and I think it's excellent.

The last major works by one of Hollywood's greatest modern actors.

On Sunday, Kate Bush inadvertently staged a one-woman assault on the British charts. This week, 11 records in the Official UK Albums Chart are by Bush – not bad, really, for a woman who has only really released nine new studio albums in the past 36 years.