Instant albums do not, as a rule, encourage reflection. There is surprise, sometimes indignation, a social media flame war, a lot of static about delivery systems. Once the 38 minutes of, say, Thom Yorke's "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes" have passed, it can all suddenly be over. What happens next?
I was struck by a couple of tweets this morning from Peter Watts (@peter_watts and the author of this month’s Ramones cover story in Uncut). The first ran, “I read the word 'liminal' in the Standard the other day. I think that's psychogeography's 'hippie wigs in Woolworths' moment.”
Conspicuously wealthy blues collectors probably know about this by now, but a copy of Tommy Johnson’s “Alcohol And Jake Blues” has surfaced – only the second that’s ever been found – and is on sale at Ebay. It’ll be interesting to see how bidding shapes up before the auction closes around 10 tonight (UK time): at time of writing, the highest offer is $16,800.00.
Jams, folks. Please take ten minutes to watch the excellent clips below from Natural Child and Chris Forsyth. The image above is the cover of Forsyth’s tremendous forthcoming album, which I’ll try my damnedest to write about in the next day or two.
At 7pm on the first night of Atoms For Peace’s London residency, the Amok Drawing Room has already sold out of commemorative mugs. The Enterprise pub across the road from the Roundhouse has been rebranded in expressionist monochrome, and an upstairs room has been upholstered in Stanley Donwood wallpaper, the better to sell exquisite £500 prints, t-shirts screenprinted while-you-wait, and a pointedly apocalyptic jigsaw puzzle.
Warp Films celebrated its tenth anniversary on Friday (April 12) with a special edition of Adam Buxton's BUG video showcase at the BFI Southbank.
The showcase featured rare early music videos by a young Jarvis Cocker, including 'LFO' by LFO and Aphex Twin's 'On', which were produced between 1990 to 1993 in the years directly before Pulp's own meteoric rise to fame.
We seem to be posting a lot more lists than actual joined-up writing at the moment – Michael’s just put Uncut’s full Top 75 of 2012 on the website, with links, and is promising our Archive/Reissues chart tomorrow – but, hey, here’s another. Among some other good new arrivals, another strong recommendation for Parquet Courts: check them out here.
A strange night at St Giles-In-The-Fields with Tim Hecker, which turned out to be something more like a real-time sound installation rather than a concert. This, I guess, is not a new problem with organ recitals: Hecker is sat in the organ loft, playing the church’s venerable instrument while the audience sit below, with their backs to him, in complete darkness, looking at the altar, and the silhouettes of two large speaker stacks.
Apologies for not posting much new stuff over the past few days; we’ve been wrapping up the next issue of Uncut. One thing I have written, though, is this piece about, sort of, Raphael Saadiq, which was destined to be my Wild Mercury Sound column in the mag until various advertising movements rendered it, perhaps fortunately, surplus to requirements. A pretty convoluted path to “Stone Rollin’”, but just about worth posting, I think…
