Features

Like everything else, Noel Gallagher had an opinion about debut albums. “Definitely Maybe was the young, eager, wanting to get out there and fucking blow the world away album,” he told Uncut in 2000. As Gallagher claimed on many occasions, he’d been strategising a debut album, in whatever form, since his teenage years. With such apparent forethought, it’s no wonder that when Definitely Maybe appeared in August, 1994 it redrew the parameters of indie rock, filling a void left by The Stone Roses and gave Alan McGee’s Creation Records a world-class act.

A new office this week, although a good few crates remain. These, though, are the tunes that’ve sensitively assisted our transition. Special props to Bob Carpenter’s rediscovered album from ’74, very much kin to “No Other”; to the Mauritanian desert rock of Noura Mint Seymali; to the reissue of an old Imaginary Softwoods ambient set from John Elliott, ex of Emeralds; and to the enduring usefulness of Pye Corner Audio and Girma Yifrashewa.

In tribute to Glenn Frey, who died on January 18, 2016, we look back on the legend of Desperado...

The Flaming Lips play London's Brixton Academy on May 28, ahead of their full cover of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on October 28 – but back in September 2010's Uncut (Take 160), frontman Wayne Coyne revealed the strange listening experiences that have shaped his life… Neil on acid! The Beatles through one speaker! And Amy MacDonald… Interview: John Lewis ______________________ The first record I ever bought Jimi Hendrix – Crash Landing (1975)

Upside Down Mountain, Conor Oberst’s new, Jonathan Wilson-produced solo album is set for release on Monday (May 19), so it seemed time to dig out this look through the Bright Eyes singer-songwriter’s record collection from Uncut’s June 2007 issue (Take 121). Featuring sex, drugs, Pavement and Nas… Interview: Jaan Uhelszki

What the director of Easy Rider did next

Scene of some devastation this morning, as we’re surrounded by crates, packing for a move to new offices on the floor below. In haste, then: this has been the soundtrack for throwing out a load of old shit these past few days. Special attention, please, to the tremendous new Pye Corner Audio business…

In the same way that Marshall amps revolutionised rock music, allowing heavy rock and metal to flourish, loop pedals have changed the state of play for solo performers. No longer having to rely on real-time performing, the first two acts on tonight at the final night of Club Uncut at The Great Escape have been able to take folk to stranger, new climes.

After last night's Hold Steady-headlined first night, Uncut's stage at The Great Escape continues tonight (May 10) with an opening set from Serafina Steer.

The storms battering the South Coast have blown themselves out by the time Club Uncut reconvenes for another year at The Great Escape festival. It’s after midnight and very nearly pitch-black in the Dome Studio just before our first night’s headliners, The Hold Steady, dramatically hit the lights, then the stage. “As the song says,” Craig Finn promises, “we’re gonna have a real good time together.”