Features

Over the past year or two, MC Taylor of “Hiss Golden Messenger has become not just one of my favourite American contemporary songwriters, but also a great source of musical recommendations; most recently, of course, with his terrific “Wah-Wah Cowboys” mixtape.

It would be nice – and indeed, it’s sometimes professionally expedient – to pretend that we all work in splendid isolation, following our own idiosyncratic paths in directions that no other journalists travel.

The clock was ticking yesterday afternoon as we approached the final deadlines for the next issue of Uncut. But we were finished early enough for me to rush hot-foot across London to The May Fair hotel, near Hyde Park, where Leonard Cohen was due to present a playback of his new album, Old Ideas, to a specially invited audience.

Following on from yesterday’s news story about the new Bruce Springsteen album “Wrecking Ball”, “We Take Care Of Our Own” has surfaced this morning.

Just been opening this morning’s post, and there are at least a couple of new albums in there that I’ll be playing imminently, from Grimes and the Carolina Chocolate Drops (not two artists who are immediately obvious bedfellows, for sure).

Bit of a rush this morning, and the relentless bulldozing consistency of New York’s Endless Boogie means that I’ve been round the block covered by “Twenty Minute Jam Getting Out Of The City” a good few times.

One of my favourite labels at the moment is probably RVNG INTL, thanks mostly to the Blues Control & Laraaji album I fixated on at the end of last year, and to the forthcoming collaboration between Sun Araw, M Geddes Gengras and The Congos.

Thinking about it now, it seems as if many of our favourite film makers decided to take 2011 off. Aside from the Coens' True Grit at the start of the year and Martin Scorsese's foray into children's movies at its close, you could be forgiven for wondering where had all the directors we'd so assiduously championed since Uncut began, in 1997, disappeared off to.

A fine morning thus far, thanks to Julia Holter, Leonard Cohen and, as I type, the new album by Lee Ranaldo, “Between The Times & The Tides”.

In case you’ve stumbled across https://www.www.uncut.co.uk for the first time in the wake of our redesign, each week I post a list of the music we’ve played in the Uncut office.