BMG has announced the release of a 6xLP Popol Vuh box set, The Essential Album Collection Vol. 1, for April 26.
It contains five of their 1970s albums – Affenstunde, Hosianna Mantra, Einsjäger & Siebenjäger, Aguirre and Nosferatu – remastered and pressed to 180g vinyl, along with bonus tr...
BMG has announced the release of a 6xLP Popol Vuh box set, The Essential Album Collection Vol. 1, for April 26.
It contains five of their 1970s albums – Affenstunde, Hosianna Mantra, Einsjäger & Siebenjäger, Aguirre and Nosferatu – remastered and pressed to 180g vinyl, along with bonus tracks, detailed liner notes and three original posters.
The albums will also be reissued as individual CD digipaks.
Check out the tracklistings below and pre-order The Essential Album Collection Vol. 1here:
Affenstunde
1. Ich mache einen Spiegel (Dream Part 4) 8:51
2. Ich mache einen Spiegel (Dream Part 5) 4:36
3. Ich mache einen Spiegel (Dream Part 49) 7:42
4. Affenstunde 18:35
5. Train Through Time (Bonus Track) 10:31
Hosianna Mantra
1. Ah! 4:48
2. Kyrie 5:23
3. Hosianna – Mantra 10:11
4. Das 5. Buch Mose:
– Abschied 3:16
– Segnung 6:07
– Andacht Pt. 1 0:47
– Nicht hoch im Himmel 6:18
– Andacht Pt. 2 0:46
– Maria (Bonus Track) 4:29
Einsjäger & Siebenjäger
1. Kleiner Krieger 1:08
2. King Minos 4:26
3. Morgengruß 2:56
4. Würfelspiel 3:08
5. Gutes Land 5:14
6. Einsjäger & Siebenjäger 19:24
7. King Minos II (Bonus Track) 1:55
8. Wo bist du? (Bonus Track) 5:42
Aguirre
1. Aguirre I 7:24
2. Morgengruss II 2:58
3. Aguirre II 6:13
4. Agnus Dei 3:07
5. Vergegenwaertigung 16:47
6. Aguirre III (Bonus Track) 7:17
Nosferatu (2xLP)
1. Brüder des Schattens 5:45
2. Höre, der du wagst 6:00
3. Das Schloss des Irrtums 5:37
4. Die Umkehr 5:57
5. Mantra I 6:15
6. Morning sun 3:21
7. Venus principle 4:41
8. Mantra II 5:23
9. Die Nacht der Himmel 5:03
10. Der Ruf der Rohrflöte 3:39
11. To a little way 2:33
12. Through pains to heaven 3:47
13. On the way 4:05
14. Zwiesprache der Rohrflöte 3:26
“I don’t know if we’ll ever repeat this,” says Paul Weller at the beginning of Other Aspects, interviewed during a break in rehearsals. “We’ve got to make it as special as possible – and that’s it.” He tends to be a forward-facing fellow, but you can see why Weller would want a per...
“I don’t know if we’ll ever repeat this,” says Paul Weller at the beginning of Other Aspects, interviewed during a break in rehearsals. “We’ve got to make it as special as possible – and that’s it.” He tends to be a forward-facing fellow, but you can see why Weller would want a permanent record of the two concerts he played at the Southbank last October. Performing a career-spanning set with his band and the London Metropolitan Orchestra, alongside a number of guest artists, the shows were the fulfilment of a long-cherished ambition to put himself entirely at the service of beauty.
The second night at the RFH was not only recorded for a live LP but filmed by Joe O’Connor for this two-hour concert film. Other Aspects finds Weller in “a more reflective space” – as well as in a smart pair of dress trousers and a ruinously expensive-looking jumper – as he tackles 25 songs spanning 40 years.
In terms of musical mood, the show takes its readings from his latest album, True Meanings, a low-key collection of largely acoustic songs burnished with strings and horns. As she does on the record, Hannah Peel handles the arrangements, and conducts the LMO. Though she makes terrific use of the tools at her disposal, enriching the songs and often radically altering them, Peel also knows when to stay out of the way. “Aspects” and “Where’er Ye Go” – a lovely ballad from 22 Dreams – are all the more affecting for their simple, pared-down settings.
It also helps that Weller forgoes a greatest hits set instead to go roving through his back pages. Perhaps recognising that the world may not be ready for an orchestral version of “Eton Rifles”, his forays into The Jam, Style Council and his solo songbook rarely lead where you might expect, with the emphasis on rejuvenation and reinvention. Of the three Jam selections, “Boy About Town” strolls soulfully where it used to strut, while the night’s prize-winning leftfield pick, “Private Hell”, gains a dramatic new suit of clothes.
“Tales From The Riverbank” bends a little more readily to the bucolic mood, as does “You Do Something To Me”, a rare populist choice. When it comes to solo work, Weller leans towards his first two albums. “Country” is both pastoral and vaguely trippy, John Martyn meets The Velvet Underground’s “The Ocean”, while “Wild Wood” sweeps and swoons. Digging into his 1992 debut, he works up a fine head of steam on “Amongst Butterflies” and the prowling throwback funk of “Strange Museum”.
Throughout, the past is very much at the service of the present. Almost all of True Meanings is performed, enabling Weller to forge connections across eras. “The Soul Searchers” makes a soothing companion to a swinging “Have You Ever Had It Blue?”; the bluesy “Mayfly” finds a sparring partner in the punchy “Man Of Great Promise”. Elsewhere, the detailed arrangements tease out the diversity of the new material, highlighting jewel-like intricacies in “Glide” and “What Would He Say?”, a lovely Bacharach-gone-country lilt. “Books” is radically altered by the contributions of vocalist Lucy Rose and Sheema Mukherjee, Kamalbir Nandra and Tofail Ahmed, joining Weller on sitar, tanpura and Indian violin.
Given that Other Aspects is also available as a double live album, it’s worth considering what the visuals offer that the audio can’t. Weller’s never had much truck with slick patter or dazzling theatrics, and doesn’t deviate from form here. This is in most respects a workmanlike concert film, without flash or frills, placing its faith in the performances. Even so, O’Connor wisely cuts away from the show now and again, returning to the rehearsal room for a through-the-keyhole peek at ‘the process’. As Weller lays out his reasons for pursuing this venture, it’s instructive to see him – fag constantly on the go – and his band getting to grips with the rigorous discipline of playing with an orchestra.
Back on stage, with 24 musicians involved there’s plenty of business to cover. O’Connor succeeds in capturing the intense interaction between the participants, as well as the depth of emotion they all invest in this passion project. Weller, meanwhile, is clearly relishing a profoundly satisfying career moment. “It’s the closest thing to flying, really,” he mutters. Other Aspects offers a welcome opportunity to watch him gently soar.
The Flaming Lips will commemorate the 20th anniversary of their classic album The Soft Bulletin with a short run of UK shows in September, at which they'll play the album in full:
September 5 – Usher Hall, Edinburgh
September 6 – Manchester Academy, Manchester
September 7 – Brixton Academy, L...
The Flaming Lips will commemorate the 20th anniversary of their classic album The Soft Bulletin with a short run of UK shows in September, at which they’ll play the album in full:
September 5 – Usher Hall, Edinburgh
September 6 – Manchester Academy, Manchester
September 7 – Brixton Academy, London
Tickets are on sale now for the three dates from here.
The Flaming Lips will release a new album called King’s Mouth on Record Store Day (April 13). Featuring extensive narration from The Clash’s Mick Jones, The the album comes accompanied by a book called King’s Mouth: Immerse Heap Trip Fantasy Experience.
It will initially be released on gold vinyl in a limited edition of 4000 from participating Record Store Day outlets, before getting a wider release in July.
Collapsing major-label deals, a disintegrating marriage, a quantity of drugs that would make Hunter S Thompson demur – Royal Trux have been through things that would have killed many bands stone dead. To be fair, it did knock them out of commission for a little over 15 years. But in the years foll...
Collapsing major-label deals, a disintegrating marriage, a quantity of drugs that would make Hunter S Thompson demur – Royal Trux have been through things that would have killed many bands stone dead. To be fair, it did knock them out of commission for a little over 15 years. But in the years following their 2000 swansong Pound For Pound, there was the lingering sense that Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema never quite put thoughts of their former group behind them. Herrema’s subsequent band RTX – later renamed Black Bananas – channelled more than a little of Trux’s dissolute hard-rock energy. Hagerty’s work under the name The Howling Hex, meanwhile, felt firmly rooted more in Trux’s more haywire, experimental side.
In 2012, Hagerty was planning a live re-enactment of Royal Trux’s notoriously out-there 1990 double LP Twin Infinitives when Herrema got wind. Instead of getting mad, she got in touch, the pair got to talking – and in 2015 they made their live return at California’s Beserktown Festival. Royal Trux were officially back on the road.
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White Stuff – the first studio album since Royal Trux’s reformation – is a reaffirmation of the group’s core values: the raw thrill of rock’n’roll, and the realisation that trash, when looked at the right way, can appear a kind of treasure. Weirdly recorded, weirdly mixed, their take on rock music feels mutant, radioactive – the equivalent of that three-eyed fish from The Simpsons. Hagerty’s guitars chunter and wail, sometimes echoing classic rock moves, other times wandering off on weird melodic tangents inspired by Ornette Coleman’s philosophy of harmolodics, the jazz saxophonist’s attempt to break free of conventional musical notation into new realms of raw expression. “Year Of The Dog” and “Under Ice” feature translucent keyboard washes and distorted electronics that arc across the frame. And firing through everything is the pair’s unmistakable chorus, Hagerty’s stoner drawl and Herrema’s wildcat yowl weaving in and around each other like a pair of drunks on the dodgems.
It goes without saying that this is a pretty singular brew. Royal Trux are kind of like The Fall in the respect that it’s hard to get a handle on what any given song might be about – they speak a language that’s all their own – but great lines pop up over and over, like bugs splatting on a windscreen. “I got a baseball bat and a handful of nails!” the pair holler on “Under Ice”. “South Californian drivers are the 19th wonder of the world!” goes “Purple Audacity #1”, a simmering funk excursion that finds Hagerty whipping up wild peals of guitar feedback. Someone called “Whopper Dave” winds up with a donut to the head. “Suburban Junkie Lady”, meanwhile, is a character sketch that’s sung with genuine warmth. “You’ve got nickels in your dimes/It happens all the time,” they chorus, sweetly.
Has anything changed in Truxland in the last decade and a half? The Kool Keith-featuring “Get Used To It”, released last October but not included here, appears to have been a little bit of a red herring, promising a new rap-boogie direction that never quite arrived. “Sic Em Slow”, with its ringing chimes and hand-drum percussion, gestures to the influence of Japanese ambient music – although Hagerty takes care to chain it to one of the album’s best, ugliest riffs.
Ultimately, perhaps the track that sums up Royal Trux 2.0 is White Stuff’s title track. It’s a voracious anthem to tour life with triumphalist chorus: “This is the way it’s supposed to be/Push me on a cart through the duty free/ Hanging and playin’ all across the land/Tellin’ everybody we’re the greatest band…” But there might be a note of caution buried in there too – a warning about chemical excess from a band that have certainly lived it. Arguably, other groups have taken up their baton in their absence – think Ariel Pink’s damaged rock deconstructions, or new-wave garage sorts like The Kills, who borrow the style, if not the substance. But Royal Trux remain unique, one of a kind: still going wrong like a hydrogen bomb.
Julia Jacklin’s 2016 debut, Don’t Let The Kids Win, captured the Australian songwriter in a sort of existential no man’s land; as she approached her mid-twenties, she felt like everyone had a life plan except her. She worked on a factory production line, writing music in her free time. She’d...
Julia Jacklin’s 2016 debut, Don’t Let The Kids Win, captured the Australian songwriter in a sort of existential no man’s land; as she approached her mid-twenties, she felt like everyone had a life plan except her. She worked on a factory production line, writing music in her free time. She’d long contemplated pursuing a career as a social worker. Instead, motivated by her love of Aldous Harding’s sound, she spent her savings on a month in a Christchurch studio with Harding’s collaborator Ben Edwards, and the very act of sharing those songs that fretted about her future plotted her a new course.
If Jacklin was looking for a kind of certainty, then she got it – almost two years of solid touring ensued. The parallel to that was that her romantic relationship was crumbling. Instead of the tentative questioning of its predecessor, then, Crushing is most definitely about one core theme – recovery from savage heartbreak. And it is breathtakingly raw.
The process may be familiar, but the way Jacklin journeys through the stages with stark vulnerability means it feels wholly fresh: from the explosive separation to a determined acceptance, via all the emotional turbulence in between. But it’s also about healing, Jacklin gradually reknitting together the gap between her body and mind that had grown to be so cavernous.
The pure detail means it’s not a standard break-up collection, but rather one so intimately relayed that the listener practically wears the experience with her. It’s right there in the opening song, “Body”, built on a simple, shadowy guitar line. The story of a man-child pulled up for smoking in the toilets on a short-haul flight, ruining a weekend away. “There on the Sydney tarmac/I threw my luggage down/I said I’m gonna leave you/I’m not a good woman when you’re around,” she sings, as the subject later threatens to weaponise a private image. “Naked on your bed looking straight at ya/Do you still have that photograph?/Would you use it to hurt me?” The repeated outro line of “I guess it’s just my life/And it’s just my body” ramming home the subject’s manipulation.
The Angel Olsen-esque “Head Alone” was written on the road, where Jacklin spent hours staring out of tourvan windows. The song bleeds like a fresh cut, a demand from the singer for psychological and physical space in a notoriously claustrophobic touring environment. “I don’t want to be touched all the time,” she asserts. “I raised my body up to be mine.” The more pacy garage rock of “Pressure To Party” follows, and marks the beginning of the rebuild – the loaded choice between ‘getting back out there’ to meet someone new, versus the familiar comfort of an old flame. “I’ve locked myself in my room/But I’ll open up the door and try to love again soon,” she decides in that moment.
Jacklin does this time and time again, puts herself through the wringer, preserving and processing the hurt. “Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You” is a tender country-folk ballad – in the vein of past tourmates Whitney – while “When The Family Flies In”, just Jacklin accompanied by a piano, is the album’s lowest point, in both tempo and frame of mind. Finger-picked acoustic number “Convention” is a sarcastic swipe at strangers who impart uninvited ‘advice’, and “Good Guy” evokes the loneliness of the rebound. “Tell me I’m the love of your life/Just for a night even if you don’t feel it,” she trills.
Things reach a visceral apex on the penultimate “Turn Me Down”, a track so exposed that recording it left Jacklin emotionally “ruined”. When she finally got it taped – the cracks and quivers in her voice are audible, the production defiantly un-airbrushed – she was lying on the vocal booth floor, which led to an “awkward moment” when a 16-year-old studio intern came in to check she was still OK. It’s a genuine relief to hear Jacklin sing, “I’ll be OK, I’ll be alright, I’ll get well soon, sleep through the night,” as closing track “Comfort” fades away.
It’s a moment that brings full circle a family of songs that are strikingly evocative, but never overwrought. Were Crushing soundtracking a film visualising the story it might have audiences battling an urge to reach through the cinema screen to console the protagonist. But that might not help – after all, heartbreak is lonely, unpredictable and personal, and no two experiences of it are identical. Here’s Jacklin’s, a powerful take on the oldest inspiration of them all.
The National have announced that their new album, I Am Easy To Find, will be released by 4AD on May 17.
Listen to a track from it, "You Had Your Soul With You", below. The song features guest vocals from long-time David Bowie collaborator Gail Ann Dorsey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBcVrb-snP...
The National have announced that their new album, I Am Easy To Find, will be released by 4AD on May 17.
Listen to a track from it, “You Had Your Soul With You”, below. The song features guest vocals from long-time David Bowie collaborator Gail Ann Dorsey.
I Am Easy To Find was mostly recorded at Long Pond, Hudson Valley, NY with additional sessions in Paris, Berlin, Cincinnati, Austin, Dublin, Brooklyn and other locations. The album features vocal contributions from Sharon Van Etten, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Lisa Hannigan, Mina Tindle and Kate Stables of This Is The Kit.
“Yes, there are a lot of women singing on this, but it wasn’t because, ‘Oh, let’s have more women’s voices,'” says The National’s frontman Matt Berninger. “It was more, ‘Let’s have more of a fabric of people’s identities.’ It would have been better to have had other male singers, but my ego wouldn’t let that happen.”
A companion short film will accompany the release, directed by Mike Mills (20th Century Women, Beginners) and starring Alicia Vikander. Watch a trailer for that below:
The National have also announced a full world tour to go with the five intimate dates they announced last week. Peruse their full itinerary below:
April 16 – PARIS, FR, Olympia
April 18 – LONDON, GB, Royal Festival Hall
April 22 – NEW YORK, NY, Beacon Theatre
April 24 – TORONTO, ON, Roy Thomson Hall
April 26 – LOS ANGELES, CA, Orpheum Theatre
June 11 – PHILADELPHIA, PA, Mann Center *
June 12 – BROOKLYN, NY, Prospect Park *
June 15 – MANCHESTER, TN, Bonnaroo
June 16 – ATLANTA, GA, Coca-Cola Roxy *
June 17 – ST. AUGUSTINE, FL, St. Augustine Amphitheatre *
June 19 – WASHINGTON, DC, The Anthem *
June 20 – PORTLAND, ME, Thompson’s Point *
June 21 – MONTREAL, QC, Place des Arts
June 22 – HAMILTON, ON, Pier 8 **
June 24 – COLUMBUS, OH, Express Live *
June 25 – ANN ARBOR, MI, Hill Auditorium *
June 26 – INDIANAPOLIS, IN, Lawn at White River *
June 28 – CHICAGO, IL, Northerly Island **
July 10 – MANCHESTER, GB, Castlefield Bowl
July 12 – MADRID, ES, Mad Cool Festival
July 13 – LONDON, GB, British Summer Time @ Hyde Park
July 15 – FRANKFURT, DE, Jahrhunderthalle
July 16 – HAMBURG, DE, Stadtpark
July 18 – RÄTTVIK, SE, Dalhalla
August 4 – WATERFORD, IE, All Together Now
August 6 – GLASGOW, GB, Summer Nights at the Bandstand
August 7 – GLASGOW, GB, Summer Nights at the Bandstand
August 9 – SICILY, IT, Ypsigrock
August 10 – BUDAPEST, HU, Sziget Festival
August 11 – BUFTEA, RO, Summer Well
August 14 – PAREDES DE COURA, PT, Paredes de Coura
August 16 – HASSELT, BE, Pukkelpop
August 16-18 – BIDDINGHUIZEN, NL, Lowlands
August 18 – HASSELT, BE, Pukkelpop
August 28 – VANCOUVER, BC, Deer Lake Park **
August 29 – SEATTLE, WA, Marymoor Park **
August 30 – PORTLAND, OR, Edgefield **
September 1 – STANFORD, CA, Frost Amphitheater **
September 2 – LOS ANGELES, CA, Greek Theatre **
September 3 – PHOENIX, AZ, Comerica Theatre **
September 5 – ODGEN, UT, Ogden Amphitheater **
September 8 – SANTA FE, NM, Santa Fe Opera House **
September 10 – AUSTIN, TX, 360 Amphitheatre **
September 11 – HOUSTON, TX, White Oak Music Hall **
November 25 – WARSAW, PL, Torwar Hall
November 26 – BERLIN, DE, Columbiahalle
November 27 – BERLIN, DE, Columbiahalle
November 29 – COPENHAGEN, DK, Royal Arena
December 1 – BOCHUM, DE, Ruhrcongress
December 2 – COLOGNE, DE, Palladium
December 3 – ZURICH, CH, Samsumg Hall
December 4 – MUNICH, DE, Zenith
December 5 – STUTTGART, DE, Porsche Arena
Following 2016's Killer Road, Patti Smith has teamed up again with experimental duo Soundwalk Collective for a new album called The Peyote Dance.
Slated for release via Bella Union on May 31, The Peyote Dance is based on Antonin Artaud's book of the same name, chronicling his 1936 travels in Mexico...
Following 2016’s Killer Road, Patti Smith has teamed up again with experimental duo Soundwalk Collective for a new album called The Peyote Dance.
Slated for release via Bella Union on May 31, The Peyote Dance is based on Antonin Artaud’s book of the same name, chronicling his 1936 travels in Mexico and his experiences with the remote Rarámuri tribe.
Hear a track from it, “The New Revelations Of Being”, below:
According to a press release, “The album’s sonic method originates in the idea of retracing Artaud’s steps and returning to the village and cave where he lived. Gathering stones, sand, leaves, and many instruments such as violins and drums that the Rarámuri made themselves, the artists were able to awaken the landscape’s sleeping memories and uncover the space’s sonic grammar.”
Of her vocal contributions, Smith says: “The poets enter the bloodstream, they enter the cells. For a moment, one is Artaud… You can’t ask for it, you can’t buy it, you can’t take drugs for it to be authentic. It just has to happen, you have to be chosen as well as choose… We understand that this work and the artist are not dead, they find life in recording them.”
The Who's Pete Townshend will publish his debut novel, The Age Of Anxiety, via Hachette on November 5.
"Ten years ago I decided to create a magnum opus that would combine opera, art installation and novel," Townshend explains. "Suddenly here I am with a completed novel ready to publish. I am an avi...
The Who’s Pete Townshend will publish his debut novel, The Age Of Anxiety, via Hachette on November 5.
“Ten years ago I decided to create a magnum opus that would combine opera, art installation and novel,” Townshend explains. “Suddenly here I am with a completed novel ready to publish. I am an avid reader and have really enjoyed writing it. I am also happy to say the majority of the music is composed, ready to be polished up for release and performance. It’s tremendously exciting.”
Publisher Mark Booth adds: “The Age of Anxiety is a great rock novel, but that is one of the less important things about it. The narrator is a brilliant creation – cultured, witty and unreliable. The novel captures the craziness of the music business and displays Pete Townshend’s sly sense of humour and sharp ear for dialogue. First conceived as an opera, The Age of Anxiety deals with mythic and operatic themes including a maze, divine madness and long-lost children. Hallucinations and soundscapes haunt this novel, which on one level is an extended meditation on manic genius and the dark art of creativity”.
Details about the accompanying opera, album and art installation will follow in due course.
The Last Bohemians is a new podcast, profiling inspirational female artists, musicians and cultural figures.
Hosted by Guardian/Observer journalist Kate Hutchinson, the first series features interviews with Cosey Fanni Tutti, Pauline Black of The Selecter, Pamela Des Barres, Molly Parkin, Bonnie Gr...
The Last Bohemians is a new podcast, profiling inspirational female artists, musicians and cultural figures.
Hosted by Guardian/Observer journalist Kate Hutchinson, the first series features interviews with Cosey Fanni Tutti, Pauline Black of The Selecter, Pamela Des Barres, Molly Parkin, Bonnie Greer and LSD campaigner Amanda Feilding.
The soundtrack to Andrew Dominik’s 2007 film The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, as written and performed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is being released on vinyl for the first time on April 19.
It was Cave and Ellis's second soundtrack after scoring Cave's own 2005 film ...
The soundtrack to Andrew Dominik’s 2007 film The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, as written and performed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is being released on vinyl for the first time on April 19.
It was Cave and Ellis’s second soundtrack after scoring Cave’s own 2005 film The Proposition. They have since gone on to write the music for a number of other films, incluing Dias De Gracia, Lawless, Loin Des Hommes, Hell Or High Water, Wind River and Kings.
The Prodigy's Keith Flint has died, aged 49. Police were called to his home in North End, Essex, this morning (March 4) after concerns for his welfare but Flint was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police stated that the death is not being treated as suspicious.
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The Prodigy’s Keith Flint has died, aged 49. Police were called to his home in North End, Essex, this morning (March 4) after concerns for his welfare but Flint was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police stated that the death is not being treated as suspicious.
After meeting producer Liam Howlett at a rave in 1989, Flint initially joined The Prodigy as a dancer. He became the face of the group after taking lead vocals on 1996 No. 1 hits “Firestarter” and “Breathe”.
Flint had recently completed a tour of Australia with The Prodigy and was due to embark on an American tour in May promoting their latest album, 2018’s No Tourists.
Originally published in Uncut's February 2016 issue
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How the interstellar pioneer of free jazz created a mystical, Afro-futurist epic as a gift for the Creator: "He was the most unusual person…"
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Originally published in Uncut’s February 2016 issue
How the interstellar pioneer of free jazz created a mystical, Afro-futurist epic as a gift for the Creator: “He was the most unusual person…”
_____________________
While history is full of musical auteurs, single-mindedly pursuing their own niche interests and expanding the minds of a coterie of cult followers, few have been quite as dedicated to their art as Sun Ra. Born Herman Poole Blount in 1914 – though he claimed he was in fact from Saturn – and backed by his Arkestra collective, he released multiple albums of experimental jazz each year from 1957 until his death in 1993, sometimes in runs as small as 75 copies.
“He wrote at least one composition a day!” marvels Arkestra member Knoel Scott. “Every day. I remember I’d see him at the piano in the mornings. I asked him why, and he said, ‘Everybody all over this planet is always begging the Creator for things, but nobody ever gives the Creator anything. So every morning I give the Creator a song…’”
One of his most enduring gifts to the Creator remains “Space Is The Place”, a 22-minute epic that appears to mix Duke Ellington, West African funk and Afro-futurist mysticism. With the title repeated by female singers including the late June Tyson, the song builds and builds, propelled by percussion, free-jazz saxophones and Sun Ra’s interstellar organ.
“He pioneered a lot of things,” explains Val Wilmer, the British jazz photographer and writer who became good friends with Sun Ra and the Arkestra during the late ’60s and ’70s, “in the use of keyboards and so on in jazz. The other thing he did, the way they dressed in that Egyptian look, well, Earth Wind And Fire and lots of other bands were inspired by that.”
As well as acting as the title track and centrepiece of the Space Is The Place album, the song also gave its name to a feature-length film that Sun Ra and his group filmed in 1972. Mixing live footage with a surreal narrative, the movie dealt with time travel, teleportation and the emigration of all African-Americans to a distant planet. As Scott explains later on, this wasn’t just some Ziggy-style fantasy, but genuinely a deeply held mythological belief system for Ra and many of the Arkestra.
“He was the most unusual person,” says Marshall Allen, Sun Ra’s trusted lieutenant and now leader of the Arkestra. “He kept you working and kept ideas flowing until there was so much that it was sometimes overwhelming. It was once in a lifetime, you know?”
Aaaaand here we go... what a week. Solange's album is amazing - here it in full here - plus the Visible Cloaks, Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano collaboration is immense. Lots of other good stuff, too - Tindersticks, Rolling Blackouts, Aldous Harding, Teenage Fanclub. Dig in!
Follow me on Twitter @Mi...
Aaaaand here we go… what a week. Solange’s album is amazing – here it in full here – plus the Visible Cloaks, Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano collaboration is immense. Lots of other good stuff, too – Tindersticks, Rolling Blackouts, Aldous Harding, Teenage Fanclub. Dig in!
One of the wildest talents of her generation, Anne Briggs retired from music in 1973, leaving only a handful of recordings behind her.
In a rare and remarkable interview in the latest issue of Uncut – in shops now and available to order online here – this most elusive of folk singers talks fra...
One of the wildest talents of her generation, Anne Briggs retired from music in 1973, leaving only a handful of recordings behind her.
In a rare and remarkable interview in the latest issue of Uncut – in shops now and available to order online here – this most elusive of folk singers talks frankly with Jim Wirth about her extraordinary life, her brief but indelible career, and why it had to end so soon.
“I’ve always been an outside kind of person,” says Briggs. “I’ve been a professional gardener in one form and another. I’ve spent the past 20 years outdoors; I had a contract with the Forestry Commission and then with the Crown Prosecution Service, helping the guys who are doing community service – keeping their clients occupied.”
In 11 years as a singer, Briggs released an EP and two full-length albums, as well as recording tracks for two Topic Records compilation albums – 1963’s The Iron Muse and 1966’s saucy The Bird In The Bush – and 1963 and 1964’s Edinburgh Folk Festival LPs. Even factoring in Sing A Song For You and “Four Songs” – a more recent EP of pieces scavenged from old radio sessions and a live tape – her entire recorded output amounts to barely three hours of music. However, the extraordinary power of her voice, supernaturally clear and eternally distant, has given Briggs an abiding appeal like few of her contemporaries.
“I love the almost dispassionate delivery of Annie, and the starkness,” modern folk polymath Eliza Carthy tells Uncut. “The directness of the delivery and the purity of her voice – it’s like a dagger. It cuts right through you.”
“It’s all there on the albums,” adds Steve Ashley, Briggs’ long-term friend and one-time collaborator. “You can still hear that magic. She was also completely unpredictable.”
On bad nights, Briggs dissolved on stage, forgetting lyrics and abandoning songs as she battled with her profoundly ambivalent attitude to performing. She always sang with her eyes tight shut, making no attempt to reach out to the crowd; her transcendent nights might be the ones when she managed to blank the audience out entirely. “I was always singing to myself,” she says, momentarily cheery. “I hated being in front of an audience. I was nervous. I was just so fucking nervous. I’m so fucking nervous being here with you. I didn’t like being watched. I didn’t like having my photograph taken. Perhaps I felt that I was never empowered to be important.”
“I resented hugely, from the age of about 11, the way that girls were treated. I wasn’t allowed to wear trousers! I was a real outdoor girl, out in the woods all the time, and if you haven’t got trousers you just end up with scratched legs.
“In the village I came from I was known as ‘the Bohemian’,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I was quite hard work for my uncle and aunt, because we were in this little village community and I wasn’t behaving in the right way. I didn’t see it that way. I just saw there was an inevitability that I had to pursue all possibilities, and I was particularly pissed off with the role in life for working-class girls. So pissed off. It was awful.” She twists her fingers. “That I would be a hairdresser. I was a clever girl! A hairdresser! That was the aspiration: your own little salon.”
Such was her unworldliness that she spent part of the summer of 1967 living alone on a beach in the west of Ireland, an experience she recounted on her stark signature tune “Living By The Water” – key line: “Because I need no company, I make no enemies.”
“I did live on a beach,” she says. “Alone. For several weeks. I was totally happy with that. I didn’t want to be tied down; anybody putting pressure on me, I didn’t want it.”
You can read much more from this extraordinary encounter with Anne Briggs in the current issue of Uncut, in shops now with John Lennon on the cover.
This year's Record Store Day takes place on Saturday April 13.
You can now peruse the full list of official RSD 2019 releases here.
Order the latest issue of Uncut online and have it sent to your home!
Highlights include:
The first ever official release of REM's famous 1991 shows at London's Bor...
This year’s Record Store Day takes place on Saturday April 13.
You can now peruse the full list of official RSD 2019 releases here.
The first ever official release of REM’s famous 1991 shows at London’s Borderline under the name Bingo Hand Job.
A brand new Courtney Barnett 12″ single, “Everybody Here Hates You” featuring original artwork by Barnett herself.
David Bowie’s “Revolutionary Song” 7″, a rare track recorded with The Rebels for the soundtrack of 1979’s Just A Gigolo and never previously released as a single outside of Japan, backed with Marlene Dietrich’s take on the title song.
Dexys Midnight Runners At The BBC 1982 – first ever vinyl release for the BBC recording of this legendary Newcastle show, plus session tracks.
A 7″ single of Erykah Badu’s version of Squeeze’s Tempted, featuring Thundercat and James Poyser of The Roots.
Fela Kuti and Roy Ayers’s 1980 collaboration Music Of Many Colours on limited edition rainbow starburst vinyl.
Live At Wooodstock albums from Janis Joplin and Sly & The Family Stone.
A first vinyl release for Tim Buckley’s Honeyman, a performance recorded for New York’s WLIR radio station on November 27, 1973, right after the release of Sefronia.
Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks Alternative: a 12″ mini-album featuring four bonus tracks from Morrison’s landmark album: “Beside You (Take 1),” “Madame George (Take 4),” “Ballerina (Long Version),” and “Slim Slow Rider (Long Version)”. “There is a possibility of one or two additional previously-unreleased bonus tracks,” says the press release…
The National have announced short run of intimate shows for April.
Along with concerts in Paris, New York, Toronto and LA, there is a date at London's Royal Festival Hall on April 18.
Order the latest issue of Uncut online and have it sent to your home!
Tickets go on sale at 10am on Monday (March...
The National have announced short run of intimate shows for April.
Along with concerts in Paris, New York, Toronto and LA, there is a date at London’s Royal Festival Hall on April 18.
Tickets go on sale at 10am on Monday (March 4) from here.
See the full list of dates below:
Monday April 16 @ Paris at Olympia
Thursday, April 18 @ London at Royal Festival Hall
Monday, April 22 @ NYC at Beacon Theatre
Wednesday, April 24 @ Toronto at Roy Thomson Hall
Friday, April 26 @ LA at Orpheum Theatre
Spotify has a launched a new documentary podcast about The Clash, narrated by Chuck D of Public Enemy.
Listen to Episode 1 of Stay Free: The Story Of The Clash below:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2JgBM7vWUEBu6eLDOoiu20
Order the latest issue of Uncut online and have it sent to your home!
“...
Spotify has a launched a new documentary podcast about The Clash, narrated by Chuck D of Public Enemy.
Listen to Episode 1 of Stay Free: The Story Of The Clash below:
“It’s an honour heading up this new podcast,” said Chuck D. “I was and am a big fan of their music. We were always tackling very similar social and political issues.”
You can watch a trailer for the full series below:
Pink Floyd have announced the re-release of their 1968 album A Saucerful Of Secrets on 180g vinyl for Record Store Day 2019.
The album has been remastered by James Guthrie, Joel Plante and Bernie Grundman from the original 1968 analogue mono mix.
Order the latest issue of Uncut online and have it ...
Pink Floyd have announced the re-release of their 1968 album A Saucerful Of Secrets on 180g vinyl for Record Store Day 2019.
The album has been remastered by James Guthrie, Joel Plante and Bernie Grundman from the original 1968 analogue mono mix.
The limited-edition release comes on 180-gram black vinyl, with a black poly-lined inner sleeve, and a faithful reproduction of the original sleeve, including the ‘Columbia’ logo, under which imprint (via EMI) the early Pink Floyd released in the UK.
It will be available from participating stores only on Record Store Day, Saturday April 13.
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have today released a single called "In The Capital", their first new material since last year's acclaimed album Hope Downs.
Hear it below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToteR-IzPqg
Order the latest issue of Uncut online and have it sent to your home!
"In The C...
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have today released a single called “In The Capital”, their first new material since last year’s acclaimed album Hope Downs.
“In The Capital” is available on streaming services now and will also be released as a limited edition 7″ on April 26, backed with another new song “Read My Mind”.
“I first had the idea for the melody and some of the lyrics when I was swimming,” says the band’s Fran Keaney. “It’s taken a while to finish the song, to make it feel like the initial feeling. I can’t neatly describe it, but something like connection despite distance. I was thinking about transience and water and death and big cities and fishing towns and moon river.”
Check out Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s upcoming European tour dates below:
Jul 3rd | Roskilde, DK – Roskilde Festival
Jul 5th | Ewijk, NL – Down the Rabbit Hole Festival
Jul 7th | Paris, FR – Le Point Ephemere Jul 9th | Liverpool, UK – Invisible Wind Factory
Jul 11th | Dublin, IE – The Iveagh Gardens
Jul 12th | Madrid, ES – Mad Cool Festival
Jul 13th | Lisbon, PT – NOS Alive Jul 15th | Glasgow, UK – St. Luke’s
Jul 16th | Sheffield, UK – The Leadmill
Jul 18th | Cardiff, UK – Clwb Ifor Bach
Jul 19th | Bedford, UK – Esquires
Jul 21st | Suffolk, UK – Latitude Festival
Jul 22nd | Birmingham, UK – Mama Roux’s
Jul 23rd | Reading, UK – Sub89
Jul 27th | Thirsk, UK – Deer Shed Festival
A new Radio 4 documentary about Lou Reed will premiere a previously unheard 1965 demo of the singer performing future Velvet Underground staple "I'm Waiting For The Man".
An extract from the demo will feature in Walking The Wild Mind, presented by Suzanne Vega, which is scheduled for broadcast on B...
A new Radio 4 documentary about Lou Reed will premiere a previously unheard 1965 demo of the singer performing future Velvet Underground staple “I’m Waiting For The Man”.
An extract from the demo will feature in Walking The Wild Mind, presented by Suzanne Vega, which is scheduled for broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC Sounds app at 8pm on Saturday (March 2).
The five-inch reel-to-reel tape was discovered in a sealed packaged, hidden behind some CDs in Reed’s study. It is believed that he mailed the package to himself in May 1965 in an attempt to establish copyright.
Lou Reed archivist Don Fleming opened the tape early last year to discover that it contained what is believed to be the first recorded version of “I’m Waiting For The Man”, among other previously unheard tracks.
“It was one of eleven songwriting demos that Lou seemed to have recorded on one day,” explains the documentary’s producer, Judith Kampfner. “As Don says it ‘is perfectly formed’ though to me Lou sounds very innocent. Don doesn’t know who harmonises with Lou on the song. The harmony to me is a bit Simon & Garfunkel though Don says there is very much a Bob Dylan influence there. The other voice is most probably a guy who worked with Lou at Pickwick Records. It is very different from the VU version that was released. I get goosebumps every time I hear it.
“According to Don it was a bit of a struggle to get the tape to work at first. They heard the songs start but then shortly over that another track started. They brought in a music preservation expert who determined that it wasn’t made on a commercial studio type of tape deck. It was made on some home deck that had weird tracking on the heads the way that it was set up. He had to reconfigure it.
“When I interviewed Don, he also played a few seconds of a couple of other songs but I don’t talk about them in the show because we don’t have any of the music. He says they most likely will release them at some time. I can say that he told me there were two songs that have never been released but that’s all I can really say.”
The latest issue of Uncut includes an in-depth feature about the making of Lou Reed’s 1989 album New York. The magazine is in shops now, or you can order a copy online by clicking here.
