The hilarious news that Keith Richards snorted his father’s ashes reminds me, obliquely, of an incident involving John Cale, at the University Of East Anglia, where he was playing the first date of a UK tour with a band that included Chris Spedding on guitar and uber-producer Chris Thomas on keyboards. This would have been in May 1975, just after the release of Slow Dazzle. We were in a lecture theatre at the university, which had been appropriated as the band’s dressing room. Cale’s parents have travelled up from Garnant in South Wales for the show, this being apparently the first time they’ve had the chance to see their son on stage and Cale has taken them for a quick drink. The band’s been hanging around since the afternoon’s sound check and as showtime looms, someone starts cutting up lines of coke, which are quickly gone. Everybody fairly high, there’s now some concern that Cale when he gets back from the pub will want a quick pick-me-up – John’s idea in those days of a so-called ‘quick drink’ being about eight pints. Whoever’s holding the coke starts chopping out a line for Cale, who we hear from one of the road crew is heading our way, bumping into things as he approaches. “Hold on,” says Spedding, eyes glinting somewhat mischievously. “Let’s see how he gets on with this.” Chris then starts crunching up a piece of chalk he’s found, which once crushed he draws into a rather impressive tramline. “Just leave it and see what he does,” Spedding says, just as Cale comes booming through the doors of the lecture theatre, like someone barging through a crowd trying to get to the bar for last orders, a slight air of distracted panic about him. He’s barely in the room when he zooms in on the line of chalk, which without hesitation, he snorts, head rearing back then, like someone’s just caught him under the chin with a fast-moving uppercut. I am fully expecting a cardiac incident of some kind to follow, or perhaps some cerebral episode that will leave him frothing at the mouth and turning a worrying colour. “Not bad,” he decides. “Could have done with a bit more edge, though,” he adds, before getting on with the business of preparing himself for the gig. Spedding and Thomas exchange amazed looks. Cale, meanwhile, seems utterly unaffected by a snootful of chalk dust – although I might add that for whatever reason, he starts his set by banging away at a piano as if he’s taken a sudden and untrammelled dislike to it that borders on violent hysteria. He is then shortly to be found screaming the lyrics to “Fear Is A Man’s Best Friend” beneath said piano, where he's crouched like some dark creature in the shuddering throes of a psychic breakdown. From where I’m standing, I can see Cale’s parents sitting at the side of the stage, his father, an eyebrow raised, giving his wife a quizzical look perhaps inspired by complete bafflement at this spectacle and wondering what happened to their son’s classical training and how he might have ended up here, under a piano, yelping like something demented that for the benefit of everyone might have to be shackled or put down. In closing today’s post, I wonder if you have a moment whether you could go to: http://www.demographix.co.uk/surveys/V6RF-XHDX/G7TZXXTT/ It's a questionaire - but there is a chance to win a prize!

A few years ago, I spent an afternoon in Camden interviewing a mildly psychedelic indie band called Simian whose first record had been pretty good. To be honest, it was a rather frustrating experience: the singer was quite interesting, if detached, but he didn't get a chance to say much because the drummer just wouldn't shut up. With hindsight, the weird power structure made sense. The singer hasn't done much since, while the drummer - James Ford - has become a dark force in British music, producing Arctic Monkeys and Klaxons and making hip little dance records as Simian Mobile Disco with his old bandmate Jas Shaw. "Attack Decay Sustain Release" is the first Simian Mobile Disco album, and it's also the first artist album - as far as I can remember - to emerge from London's New Rave scene that privileges dance over indie. It's a scene, I think, that a lot of people desperately want to fail; perceived as a dayglo joke hatched by a bunch of dissolute art students in Shoreditch. Nevertheless, I'd prefer New British bands to try and mix things up a little instead of merely trying to sound like The Libertines. The Klaxon's album, "Myths Of The Near Future", was a very good art-pop album, but one where the dance imperative was very much secondary to an indie aesthetic reminiscent of early Blur. No such issues with "Attack Decay Sustain Release". It's a brisk, confident collection that assiduously draws on the dance music that has crossed over to indie kids in the last decade. So "Tits & Acid" is a reminder that The Chemical Brothers' schtick was exciting once upon a time. Daft Punk and that whole French filtered house sound is clearly a big influence, and I can detect Orbital in the lush techno of "Wooden" and "Scott". Plus there is, fairly inevitably, the sound of early '00s Hoxton: taut electro complete with blank-eyed dominatrix vocals on the admittedly excellent "Hustler" (inescapable in certain worlds last year, and a paean to shoplifting records). Old rave appears in this invigorating mix, too, and mercifully seems to be used affection rather than kitsch value: some big breakdowns, not many airhorns. "It's The Beat", notably, is indebted to Technotronic, but the vocal by The Go! Team's Ninja is so full-bloodedly joyous, it's difficult to see Simian Mobile Disco as cool kids being ironic. What they aren't, I suppose, is tremendously original. Better, perhaps, to think of "Attack Decay Sustain Release" as the return of stadium dance: the sense that two men behind laptops can make a whole festival rock. If that happens, what happens afterwards could be really interesting. . . In the meantime, have a look at this if you have a moment - I know it's a questionnaire thing, but there is a chance of a prize.

I have a real backlog of stuff to write about at the moment, and I need to do some kind of a round-up in the next day or two, hopefully before Easter. There's great doom, psych and drone from Earth, Vibracathedral Orchestra and Dungen. There's a lovely pair of reissues from ambient's spiritual master, Terry Riley. I have a couple of fun techno - or am I meant to call them new rave? - albums by Simian Mobile Disco and their feted French remixers, Justice. Oh, and I'm meant to hear The White Stripes' "Icky Thump" any day now. Today, though, I'm going to do the sensible thing and write about what's playing right now - the new album by Richard Thompson. Thompson is a notable presence on the new album by Rufus Wainwright, and Wainwright described him brilliantly to another Uncut writer last week. "I’ve admired [him]for years," he said, "and also been frightened of [him], musically, because he’s so fierce and heterosexual. I was excited to bring some of his muscle into the arena." It proves to be a terrific pairing , as Thompson's guitar cuts through Wainwright's orchestral fantasias with a sort of clean precision, and with much more sensitivity than the quote suggests. He's hardly Tony Iommi, you know? Anyway, Thompson has been on a hot streak these past few years - productive, innovative, politically engaged - after some rather toothless and overproduced records in the '90s. After 2005's solo acoustic set, "Front Parlour Ballads", his new one is a meatier, full band affair. It's called "Sweet Warrior" and the narratives often deal with that old dilemma of folk song: how to poetically represent soldiers as noble and heroic, while at the same time acknowledging the grimness and futility of their business. Thompson handles the paradox with guts and rage, most explicitly on "Dad's Gonna Kill Me", a dense, furious story set in Iraq. It's one of the many highlights on a long record that's remarkable for its intensity, craft and passion. The melodic richness is striking: "Poppy Red" wouldn't have sounded out of place on his last album with Linda Thompson, "Shoot Out The Lights". But there's also a sense of a virtuoso still finding that new sounds can be teased out of his guitar. The office favourite, at the moment, is "Bad Monkey", which I'm fairly recklessly calling a cross between "Marquee Moon" and "Hoots Mon" by Lord Rockingham's XI. It begins as stomping big band rock'n'roll, but gradually Thompson starts firing darts into the dancehall, playing increasingly dissonant solos in the face of rampaging brass. By the end, he's making notes bend and wander in a way that I'm technically incapable of describing, but may have something to do with North African scales. It's ridiculous, which is not normally one of Thompson's attributes. It's also bloody brilliant.

A bit of a catch-up today. First, thanks for the nice response to the Bjork preview I posted on Friday. I've been comparing "Volta" today with the new Timbaland album, "Shock Value". I think Timbaland's work on "Volta" is the first time he's allowed his beats to be tampered with by another producer - in this case, Bjork. Listening to "Shock Value", it's a good job he did. A year or two ago, in one of his rare interviews, I seem to recall Timbaland expressing a certain amount of boredom with making music, and a vague lethargy seems to pervade a lot of "Shock Value". Unlike so many of his records from the late '90s and early '00s, it feels as if he's content with being extravagantly-paid and perilously well-connected rather than being a beat maven who makes spacey, authentically weird pop music. Amidst the cameos from Fall Out Boy, Elton John and 50 Cent, the sub-standard off-cuts from Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado, and a pretty good turn from MIA, it's his old muse Missy Elliott who stands out, bringing a vivacity to "Bounce" that's mostly lacking elsewhere. At the height of Elliott's success, it was always assumed that the radicalism came from Timbaland. But I wonder whether he needs someone to spur him on to take those risks, especially these days? Maybe that's why his work with Missy and now Bjork (those extraordinary digital symphonies for Timberlake notwithstanding) are so exceptional? Apologies that you'll have to wait a while longer to hear this Bjork stuff. Unfortunately, I can't satisfy those of you who demanded, "LEAK IT OR I WET YOU!". Apart from the fact it's not terribly ethical, my copy is watermarked and can be directly traced back to me. While the prospect of being "wetted" by Bjork's people might sound quite enticing to some, I have other stuff to do, today at least. . . Like follow a couple of links people have sent me. The spiritual advisor of Millenial Reign sent me a link to their Myspace after seeing me mention Fucked Up here. Millenial Reign are a Fucked Up spin-off, and purport to be keeping the Clevo flame alive. Clevo seems to be '90s hardcore from Cleveland, as far as I can tell, though I must confess I've never heard any of the bands they reference. Still, this is top class grunting which reminds me a bit of the sludgy end of Black Flag, which is fine. Better still, Simon just alerted me to the fact that one of my favourite free folk types, Wooden Wand, has posted a new song on his Myspace. "Delia" is tremendous mystic songcraft, a step on from Wooden Wand's great Dylanish album from last year, that features a couple of Sonic Youth chipping in. I'll report more when the album - it's on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label that I banged on about here - turns up. Finally, it seems Wooden Wand - James Toth, that is - has a pretty pagan/churchy doom metal band, too. They're called Totem and they sound terrific right here. Enjoy.