Features

Hans-Peter Lindstrøm is someone I’ve written a fair bit about this year, for his Krautnoodle disco marathon with Prins Thomas, “II”, and especially for his amazing remix of “Ant 10” by the Boredoms on “Super Roots 10”.

Today: the Uncut Music Award judges on Dirty Projectors' "Bitte Orca".

First off this week, a quick reminder that we’ve just announced Tinariwen as the winner of our annual Uncut Music Award. I’ve started posting transcripts of the judges’ discussions on the Uncut Music Award blog, beginning with their opinions on Tinariwen and Animal Collective. Kings of Leon, Bob Dylan, Wilco, The Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear and The Low Anthem will be coming up over the next week or so.

Following on from yesterday's post about Tinariwen, here's a transcript of the Uncut Music Award judges discussing Animal Collective's "Merriweather Post Pavilion".

Over the next few days, we'll be running full transcripts of the judges' meeting to decide the winner of 2009's Uncut Music Award. Today we begin with their thouhts on the winner, Tinariwen's "Imidiwan: Companions".

I imagine that when Dave Grohl, John Paul Jones and Josh Homme talk about Them Crooked Vultures (and there’s the first interview in tomorrow’s NME, apparently), there’ll be much talk of a creative partnership, a meeting of equals and so on.

A strange experience this morning. As I write, I’m listening to what seems to be a perfect recording of the Mountains show I saw last night at Club Uncut. As with a previous tour, which resulted in the superb “Etching” album, Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp rehearsed a new piece for the tour, recorded an early take on it, then produced CD-Rs to sell after each show.

I heard the other day that a brand new Animal Collective single was purportedly on its way, which samples Phil Lesh’s mighty “Unbroken Chain” one of my favourite Dead songs. First, though, there’s a reissue of 2003’s ghostly “Campfire Songs”; an album which, I guess, may come as something of a shock to people who’ve only been exposed to Animal Collective’s last couple of albums.

Back from a week away, then, to discover that a few records have managed to limp through – at least digitally – in the face of the postal strike. Prominent here I guess are that rarity, something promised by Neil Young that actually turns up, and Them Crooked Vultures, with Josh Homme playing Alpha Male with John Paul Jones and Dave Grohl.

Reading the odd review of BBC’s Electric Proms the other week, and the default concept of chucking in orchestra/choir to create an “event”, I started wondering whether the pairing of Grizzly Bear with the London Symphony Orchestra was such a good idea. After all, the songs on “Veckatimest”, even the ones with strings, are so airy and lacking in bombast. Sometimes, I find myself barely noticing the instrumentation, with the focus so intently on those ornate vocal melodies.