This is the second of a projected series of four recorded live at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2001 (Montreal Diary A was issued last year). The program here consists of duets by two Italian musicians: veteran trumpeter Enrico Rava and the up-and-coming pianist Stefano Bollani. The mood is informal and convivial, Rava providing a lyricism and thoughtfulness that’s complemented by Bollani’s trademark whimsicality and edge-of-anarchic surrealism. Another worthy issue from the French jazz outfit Label Bleu.

DA Pennebaker, that eminent celluloid chronicler of live rock (Don’t Look Back, Down From The Mountain), filmed the farewell Ziggy show (July 3, 1973, Hammersmith Odeon), and now Tony Visconti’s remixed the soundtrack for a 30th anniversary double CD special edition (the film’s out on DVD, too). Bowie’s between-song banter is included for the first time, most notably the big bold brouhaha of the bye-bye speech. And “The Width Of A Circle” is present in all its noisy, unedited, 16-minute glory. Although the sound’s still erratic in parts, The Spiders prove they were every bit as kick-ass a rock’n’roll band as the nostalgic claim: they were always just messy enough.

“The technology wasn’t there then”, Visconti told Uncut earlier this year. “Pennebaker did his best but the sound on the film wasn’t up to scratch. So in ’81, David and I put some money into it and tidied it up. Nobody could hear themselves on stage in ’73; Mick Ronson was as loud as anything, and private in-ear monitors were still a fantasy. So David re-sang the backing vocals, sweetened them up, added some percussion. He never replaced his own lead vocal; it was impeccable.”

It opens with a portentous blast of Beethoven’s Ninth before cracking into a light-footed “Hang On To Yourself”. Then it sizzles electrically through high-spots from Bowie’s first golden age, as well as Brel’s “My Death”, “White Light/White Heat”, a brief medley of “All The Young Dudes/Oh! You Pretty Things” and blasts of Rossini and Elgar juxtaposed with much raucous riffing and the greatest of white voices. “Time” is sublime, and the “Rock’n’Roll Suicide” finale is as showbizzily dramatic as the genre ever got: you half expect Brian De Palma and Paul Williams to burst out of the wings. Handbags, gladrags and the tears of a pierrot. Fantastic.

The soundtrack from Eminem’s gamble-that-paid-off movie has done so well that second helpings have arrived. No verbals from the man himself here, but an irresistible set of just-left-of-familiar hip hop. Among the most inventive work-outs are OutKast’s “Player’s Ball” and Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”. Accompanying the movie’s ‘romantic’ interlude?a wordless hump against a factory wall?is “You’re All I Need” from Method Man and Mary J Blige. How the makers of From Here To Eternity must regret not opting for something as sweet and tender for that grubby beach scene.

Sometimes you just have to hand it to the mainstream. Chicago is a riot as a big glossy movie (although I can’t vouch for the West End production starring some bloke from Eastenders). Kander and Ebb’s songs are a sassy splash of satire, much more scathing and cynical than you might’ve inferred. Queen Latifah edges in among the Tinseltown divas, and numbers like “Razzle Dazzle” and “We Both Reached For The Gun” rasp with wit and pizzazz. Punctuating the swagger is John C Reilly’s rendition of “Mr Cellophane”, a song so cleverly despairing it could’ve been adapted from the works of Philip Larkin. Alarmingly good.

The fastest-growing TV show in the US, wherein tales of a young Superman are accompanied by a radio-soft blend of American rock, from Remy Zero’s theme to Ryan Adams’ “Nuclear”. Von Ray’s “Inside Out” is the spit of Nickelback, and the new single. Best thing here by a mile is The Flaming Lips’ “Fight Test”, the opening track of what’s been described in these pages as the greatest album since Best Of Jesus Christ Volume One. It’s lovely, but owes an extraordinary debt to the Cat Stevens song “Father To Son”. People have pointed this out before, but only very quietly. Mind you, Cat, to the best of our knowledge, never had pandas on stage with him.

This isn’t quite what you’d expect from Muggs, not even after his 1999 collaboration with Tricky. He has gone for the full trip hop/psych-rock concept album?a major hazard given such previous near-misses as UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction?but it’s not at all bad. One Amy Trujillo provides most of the vocals in a Goldfrapp stylee over avant-rock music like “Dead Flowers”, while there are cameos from the Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli (“Fat City”) and House Of Pain man Everlast (“Gone For Good”). The Julee Cruise homage that is the closing “Far Away” also works. It should at least keep you going until you can get hold of the new Massive Attack album.

After years composing cosmic space rock using drum machines, synthesizers and Vocoders, Jimi Tenor has decided to go back to his roots and make a seriously funky jazz album with real instrumentation and live recordings.

It’s an ambitious move that could easily have backfired on him, but the fusion of ’60s free jazz, ’70s psych and ’80s soul has resulted in his most satisfying and fully-realised album to date. Tracks like “Trumpcard” and “Nuclear Fusion” emphasise Sun Ra’s influence, while “Stargazing” and “Spending Time” expose Tenor’s romantic side.

The idea of fabricating a new psychedelia has long been an ambition of many electronic artists. Too often, though, the likes of Death In Vegas and The Chemical Brothers have stumbled in their attempts: thwarted by limited talent; anxious to import worn rock’n’roll iconography rather than capitalise on the oceanic possibilities of the music that inspired them.

Up In Flames is a little different. In 2001, Dan Snaith was discovered in Toronto, studying maths and making engrossing, humane electronica in the vein of his friend Kieran (Four Tet) Hebden. Two years on, Snaith has relocated to London, played a lot of hip hop records in the middle of his live sets and completed an astonishing second album. Up In Flames takes the most levitating alt.rock of the last decade or so as its springboard, meriting comparison with My Bloody Valentine, Spiritualized, Stereolab and (though he’d never heard them) the early work of Mercury Rev.

Instead of creating digital facsimiles, however, Snaith grasps the opportunities these richly imaginative bands offer and comes up with a genuinely awe-inspiring mix of live, sampled and processed Technicolor sound. “Every Time She Turns Round It’s Her Birthday” mimics the relentless crescendos of Spiritualized’s “Angel Sigh” but goes further, punctuating the horn voluntaries with euphoric multi-tracked gasps and a great wall of motorik breakbeats. After five-and-a-half minutes, a saxophone solo reminiscent of Pharoah Sanders blows in to up the cosmic ante even further. In comparison, the likes of The Chemical Brothers’ “Private Psychedelic Reel” shrivel into insignificance.

It’s one of those albums where the audacity is often as breathtaking as the ideas. In a rare moment of understatement, “Crayons” ostensibly updates The Jesus & Mary Chain’s “Never Understand” by replacing feedback with a toy xylophone. Elsewhere, though, Snaith triumphs by going overboard whenever possible. The result is both adventurous and accessible, a record in love with the obliterating power of sound.

One-time support for acts ranging from BB King to Kelly Joe Phelps, veteran of endless busted record deals, and inhabitant of Paterson, NJ, the broken steel town that inspired Ginsberg, Kurtz is an uncompromising force on this aptly-titled record. Her voice sometimes belts out so strongly it bruises the songs, but can also be bluesily intimate over torch song strings or grating industrial guitars, as she tells stories of chastened hopes, on the road and in Paterson’s dead end.

Mark Selby has penned tunes for artists more commercial than he (Dixie Chicks, Wynonna Judd, etc), but his own work tends more towards gritty roots rock

Soul Of Man And Phantom Beats

21ST CENTURY BREAKS

Yet another band to emerge from the fertile Louisville, Kentucky scene, Shipping News take their name from Annie Proulx’s masterful book. It’s hard to believe that the origins of Shipping News lie in hardcore. Since their earliest incarnation, they’ve undergone a radical makeover. Three-Four is full of hypnotic lo-fi atmospherics, dark and sludgy electronica and post-folk strumming?three distinct musical moods reflecting the fact that the album was originally three EPs, recorded individually by the three band members. Oddly absorbing and surprisingly cohesive.

The first new album from Joan Armatrading since 1995’s What’s Inside is an admirably unpretentious collection. She may have left behind the bedsitter image long ago, yet her songs continue to deal in the currency of romantic love, only now from the dignified perspective of a mature woman who has no illusions but still has her dreams. Armatrading may be strictly Radio 2 these days, yet in her time she was a role model every bit as groundbreaking as Ms Dynamite today. For that, she commands not only our love and affection but our total respect.

While it can’t be said that Procol Harum are still the melodic force they were in the ’60s and early ’70s, this, their 12th album in 36 years, is never less than honest, dignified and graceful?music of indisputable integrity made with soul and technical assurance. There’s no sign here of any uncommitted running through the changes. This is still a real group in genuinely active condition, which in itself is remarkable. Probably mainly for the band’s many long-term devotees, nonetheless.

Stratford 4 singer/guitarist Chris Streng played in the short-lived Wave with future BRMC members Robert Turner and Peter Hayes before forming the Stratford 4. Like Streng’s former bandmates, the 4 are fascinated by the widescreen worlds one can conjure with an electric guitar. Accordingly, their second album draws heavily on such masters of six-string cinematics as The Church, The Jesus & Mary Chain and Spacemen 3, the latter getting namechecked in nine-minute fuzz-drone epic “Telephone”.

Alegria, Wayne Shorter’s first studio album for eight years, follows last year’s poll-winning Footsteps Live! and, despite the fact that the leader is now 70, shows no sign of slowing down or thinning out. With a basic unit of Danilo Perez, John Patitucci, and Brian Blade augmented by larger arrangements and occasionally a switch to Brad Mehldau on piano and Terri Lyne Carrington on drums, this is a fine album, subtle and poetic with plenty of Shorter’s hip flights of abstract fantasy.

Former Swans mainman Michael Gira financed this recording solely through sales of a live CD, and the lack of corporate involvement is plain to hear. Meticulously crafted yet vibrant and visceral, it’s like a claustrophobic noir soundtrack crossed with a jauntily macabre musical. It’s urban and tribal, soulful, sacred and funny, recalling The Bad Seeds and The Residents. A magnificent, hugely welcome return.

Twenty-one-year-old singer/guitarist Guy Blakeslee is Entrance, and his debut would have been labelled acid-folk and lauded as an ‘outsider art’cult item if it were released on a private press label 30 years ago. Blakeslee wails in loopy, unfettered fashion over idiosyncratic acoustic guitar and seems not unfamiliar with Marc Bolan. Entrance also delight in deconstructing Skip James and Bob Dylan, invoking echoes of early-Zep acoustic excursions along the way.