After a successful Antipodean run earlier in the year, Nick Cave is bringing his Conversations tour to Europe in May and June.
Described by Cave as “an exercise in connectivity”, he will take questions from the audience and perform some of his most beloved songs on piano.
Order the latest iss...
After a successful Antipodean run earlier in the year, Nick Cave is bringing his Conversations tour to Europe in May and June.
Described by Cave as “an exercise in connectivity”, he will take questions from the audience and perform some of his most beloved songs on piano.
See the full list of Conversations With Nick Cave tourdates below:
Monday 13 May Friedrich-Ebert-Halle, Hamburg, Germany
Wednesday 15 May Admiralspalast, Berlin, Germany
Thursday 16 May Tonhalle, Düsseldorf, Germany
Sunday 19 May Oslo Konserthus, Oslo, Norway
Tuesday 21 May DR Koncerthuset – Koncertsalen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Friday 24 May Philharmonie Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Sunday 26 May Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Monday 27 May TivoliVredenburg – Grote Zaal, Utrecht, Netherlands
Wednesday 29 May De Roma, Antwerp, Belgium
Friday 31 May Cirkus Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden Saturday 15 June Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, UK
Monday 17 June Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK
Wednesday 19 June The Barbican, London, UK
Thursday 20 June The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK
Saturday 22 June Usher Hall Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Sunday 23 June Sage One, Sage Gateshead, Gateshead, UK
Tuesday 25 June Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, UK
Wednesday 26 June Eventim Olympia, Liverpool, UK
Friday 28 June Brighton Dome Concert Hall, Brighton, UK
Tickets go on sale at 9am on Thursday (February 21) from here.
It’s been 10 years since The Specials got back together. Since then they’ve sold out venues from Sydney to San Francisco, from Tokyo to Toronto, and played prominent slots to huge festival crowds from GuilFest to Glastonbury, from Coventry City’s Ricoh Arena to Hyde Park. What they’ve not do...
It’s been 10 years since The Specials got back together. Since then they’ve sold out venues from Sydney to San Francisco, from Tokyo to Toronto, and played prominent slots to huge festival crowds from GuilFest to Glastonbury, from Coventry City’s Ricoh Arena to Hyde Park. What they’ve not done until now, however, is write any new material. This might because the band’s principal songwriter, Jerry Dammers, wasn’t involved in the reunion – either (depending on who you believe) because he was forced out, or because he absented himself.
Instead the remaining members – singers Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple, guitarist Roddy ‘Radiation’ Byers, bassist Horace Panter and drummer John Bradbury – continued without him, playing (largely) Dammers’ songs, unimpeded by any new product.
They’ve since shed a few original members – Bradbury died in 2015, Staple quit owing to ill health in 2012, while Byers (the band’s other prolific songwriter) left in 2014 – leaving just Hall, Golding and Panter as the core members. They’re joined by Danish pianist Nikolaj Torp Larsen (a seasoned session musician who has worked with everyone from Lana Del Rey to Elton John), along with jazz and reggae drummer Kenrick Rowe and Ocean Colour Scene/Paul Weller guitarist Steve Cradock.
Dammers once postulated that the band advanced so much between the first and second albums that it was like they’d shifted from With The Beatles to Sgt Pepper while totally bypassing, say, Rubber Soul. Weirdly, Encore serves as that imaginary intermediate album, a step up from the rough-and-ready monochrome world of the 1979 debut LP but not entirely comfortable with the garish esoterica of More Specials (1980). Its tracks can be split into three groups: cover versions, spoken-word tracks and ‘proper songs’.
Covers have always been an essential part of the Specials catalogue, and there are plenty on Encore. It kicks off with a fearsome, clavinet-heavy disco version of Eddy Grant and The Equals’ funky, multiracial anthem “Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys”. The band also update an obscure 1967 Trojan track about gun crime, the deceptively jolly “Blam Blam Fever” by The Valentines; and even revisit “The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum)”, a song that Hall, Golding and Staples wrote as the follow-up to “Ghost Town” but ended up performing in the Fun Boy Three. Where the original was stark and minimal, this version, renamed “The Lunatics”, comes beautifully upholstered with antique Afro-Cuban strings and horns, with Larsen providing a lavish and suitably demented piano intro.
Another cover, of sorts, is “Ten Commandments”, a response to Prince Buster’s astonishingly sexist song of the same name. Where the 1965 original is a virtual manifesto for rape, murder, adultery and marital coercion (“Thou shall not provoke me to anger or my wrath will descend upon you heavily”), here the band enlist anti-EDL activist Saffiyah Khan to provide a feminist response, delivering her proclamations in a suitably blank Brummie accent (“thou shall not tell me what to wear or how to wear it”) over a space-age dub backing.
It’s one of three spoken-word songs on the album. “BLM” sees Golding conversationally reciting experiences of racism over a funk groove, while “The Life And Times (Of A Man Called Depression)” sees Hall deliver a brilliantly poetic, soul-baring monologue about mental illness (“I refuse to succumb to what your vision of happy should look like”) over the suitably disorientating time-signature of 5/4.
That leaves just four ‘proper’ original songs. “We Sell Hope” is a gentle, string-drenched plea for global understanding. “Embarrassed By You” is an extremely un-rock’n’roll response to teenage criminality (“We never fought for freedom for nasty little brutes like you,” spits Golding, directing his righteous anger towards moped muggers and knife-wielding hoodlums). “Breaking Point” subverts UKIP’s referendum slogan to attack everything from petty nationalism to smartphone addiction. Best of all is “Vote For Me”, a delightfully bitter little skank about the unreliability of politicians.
Even in his absence, Dammers haunts proceedings, with Larsen constantly referencing his riffs and his arrangements. “Vote For Me” starts with the eerie diminished chord sequence that Dammers used on “Ghost Town”; “The Lunatics” uses the kind of lavish orchestrations that Dammers employed on tracks like “Stereotypes”; while the eccentric, tuba-driven, Balkans-meets-Berlin cabaret of “Breaking Point” would have fitted comfortably onto the world music pastiches on More Specials.
Encore is a perfectly good record – it skanks and bubbles in all the right places, explores some interesting sonic territories, and features at least two tracks that will have live audiences singing along as if they were 40-year-old singles. But one can’t help but wonder how Dammers’ wayward genius might have added a level of glorious unpredictability to proceedings.
On the cover of Bassekou Kouyate’s fifth album, his huge hands grasp a tiny instrument that to the uninitiated looks like a child’s toy. With its four strings, tiny body covered in cow hide and short, fretless neck, Kouyate’s ngoni is an invention of such modest simplicity that you wonder how ...
On the cover of Bassekou Kouyate’s fifth album, his huge hands grasp a tiny instrument that to the uninitiated looks like a child’s toy. With its four strings, tiny body covered in cow hide and short, fretless neck, Kouyate’s ngoni is an invention of such modest simplicity that you wonder how he coaxes such a mighty sound of it.
The answer, of course, is that after paying his dues as a backing musician with Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté, the Malian virtuoso revolutionised the centuries-old instrument on his 2007 solo debut Segu Blue, adding pick-ups and wah-wah to the ngoni’s raw and earthy banjo-like acoustic plucking. Playing with a dynamic rock’n’roll energy and wielding the instrument like an electric guitar rather than performing in the customary seated position, he was swiftly dubbed the “Hendrix of the ngoni”.
Over the course of three further albums his ambition grew ever bolder. On 2013’s Jama Ko, former Arcade Fire producer Howard Bilerman took the helm and upped the rock’n’roll attack. The process reached its high tide with the full-throttle electric roar of 2015’s Ba Power, produced by Walkabouts veteran Chris Eckman.
On first hearing, admirers of those albums may feel that Miri represents a step back. “I have two kinds of people listening to my music,” Kouyate once noted. “African listeners, who understand what I’m telling them, and people in Europe and America, who listen to my music for its vibe but don’t get the lyrics. I wanted a contemporary sound for those listeners. But the balance is to maintain some tradition to please my African audience.”
Miri tilts that balance back towards African tradition. It’s an album on which – metaphorically at least – he reverts to the seated position in which the ngoni was played since time immemorial until the revolution he brought about. The album’s title translates as “contemplation”, and it’s a fitting description of a quieter, more thoughtful set steeped in the folk styles of the Manding and Bambara empires that dominated West Africa for centuries, though the songs exist trenchantly in the here and now, addressing the political and social concerns of modern Malian society.
The good news is that despite the absence of the distortion and effects pedals heard on Kouyate’s last two albums, there is still plenty of invention and crisp note-bending to entice and thrill western ears, from “Wele Ni”, on which he plays the ngoni blues with a bottleneck, to the pneumatic, funk-fuelled rhythms of “Konya” on which his snapping lead lines duel with the electric guitar of Snarky Puppy’s Michael League.
There are plenty of other guests, adding global flavours from Brooklyn to Marrakech, via Havana. Yet at its heart, the record is a family affair, built around Kouyate’s five-piece band Ngoni Ba, featuring the soulfully keening lead vocals of his wife Amy Sacko, sons Madou Kouyate (bass ngoni) and Moctar Kouyate (percussion) and his niece Kankou Kouyate on backing vocals. The family ensemble is heard at its most intimate on the gently rhythmic opener “Kanougan”, an acoustic love song with the lilt of a lullaby that evokes bucolic dream images of Kouyate’s village on the banks of the Niger, far from the noise and turbulence of the capital Bamako, where he’s now based.
“Deli” finds Kouyate’s ngoni rippling with a kora-like elegance rather than the fierce, jagged notes for which he’s become famous. “Kanto Kelena” is bluesier ,with a gritty vocal from Habib Koite on the sort of tune you might find on an Ali Farka Touré album. “Wele Cuba” is a simmering Buena Vista…-style jam that pays tribute to the influence of Cuban rhythms on West African music with Yasel González Rivera from the reggaeton duo Madera Limpia adding spirited salsa vocals.
The instrumental title track contains some of Kouyate’s most virtuosic playing, plangent cascades of notes with almost a flamenco feel, topped only by “Wele Ni” on which his ngoni sounds like Ry Cooder in the slide zone.
As a back-to-the-roots album which at the same time packs a vital contemporary relevance, Miri does everything you could ask and more. “Pour savoir où vous allez, vous devez vous rappeler d’où vous venez,’’ as they say on the streets of Bamako. To know where you’re going, you have to remember where you’ve come from…
In the current issue of Uncut – in shops now and available to buy online by clicking here – Kurt Wagner talks about Lambchop's gradual streamlining from an 11-piece alt.country band to the intimate, dreamy electronica of new album This (Is What I Wanted To Tell You).
“The way we created the l...
In the current issue of Uncut – in shops now and available to buy online by clicking here – Kurt Wagner talks about Lambchop’s gradual streamlining from an 11-piece alt.country band to the intimate, dreamy electronica of new album This (Is What I Wanted To Tell You).
“The way we created the last couple of records is different from the way we started making records, which was just getting together and playing around in the basement and then eventually recording it,” says Wagner to Uncut’s Stephen Deusner. “The songs were already there when we finally got to the studio. Now it’s about reverse-engineering it.”
While This (Is What I Wanted To Tell You) may seem radically different from the band’s earliest releases, it still plays like a Lambchop record. “It’s remarkable how it sounds simultaneously them and not them,” says Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo. “It’s the same impression I had of them when I first heard them. They’ve changed a lot over the years, but what struck me that first time was how so many people could play so quietly together. Lambchop create a cacophony, but it’s such a sweet cacophony.”
Wagner has settled gracefully, even beatifically into his day job as an artist, and he chuckles when he describes himself as “your typical house husband. I try to do what I can during normal working hours, but I try to clock out at five. Cook dinner for my wife. Do some housework. I love my life the way it is, but I’m always trying to find ways to make these things coexist. That’s been my goal from the beginning: to just be a normal dude and do this without being seduced by things that make me a not-better person.”
What Wagner doesn’t want is to become the indie-rock curmudgeon, grumbling about the good old days while shouting at the kids to get off his lawn. Rather, he finds inspiration and something like reassurance in the new generation of musicians moving to Nashville. “I can’t imagine trying to start out in this environment, but people do it everyday. It’s exciting to see them do it. But I can’t imagine being young right now. To live in Nashville and be starting out – they’re working three jobs and playing music, and it’s incredible to me.”
Recently, Wagner and his wife, along with a few friends, invested in a club downtown, which they’re turning into an all-ages venue. “I’m just one of the landlords,” he says. “Maybe it’ll get me out of the house more. Who’s that weird old dude in the back of the club? That’ll be me.” In other words, he knows he can be involved but only at a remove that allows a younger generation to devise their own scene, to play their own shows, to form their own bands. “I’m completely realistic about it. I don’t take for granted that there will be a tomorrow as far as what I do. I’ll always make stuff, whether or not anybody will hear it or not, but I don’t know if it will be a way of sustaining myself.”
When he’s not at the club, he’ll be at home, dreaming up the next Lambchop album and the next one after that. “This is hopefully where I end up, this old guy in an office putting out a record every now and then. I’m just too old to do anything else. Maybe there will be a genre someday called Old Fucks Who Keep Doing Their Thing. I don’t know if there’s a roadmap for us elder statesmen, so I guess I’m just going to create my own map that allows me to do the things I love and avoid the things I don’t.”
You can read much more about Lambchop in the current issue of Uncut, in shops now with Leonard Cohen on the cover.
Originally published in Uncut's February 2017 issue
“I want to try everything, for sure,” insists Ty Segall. The Californian, not yet 30, is looking back over the mass of records he has produced in the last decade. “By the time I made [2010’s] Melted, I had solidified my idea of ‘Don’t ...
Originally published in Uncut’s February 2017 issue
“I want to try everything, for sure,” insists Ty Segall. The Californian, not yet 30, is looking back over the mass of records he has produced in the last decade. “By the time I made [2010’s] Melted, I had solidified my idea of ‘Don’t do anything twice if you don’t have to.’ I’m not saying I’ve totally stuck to that rule, but for me there should always be a different spin on it.”
Since rising from the San Francisco underground at the end of the last decade, Segall has found room to explore garage rock concept albums like Slaughterhouse, hushed acoustic folk, stoner jams with his trio Fuzz, and pouting, acid-glam epics such as Twins and Manipulator. Along the way, he’s collaborated with White Fence’s Tim Presley, and paid tribute to his hero Marc Bolan. His new, self-titled album, meanwhile, is a fine entrance point into his work, expanding his heavy electric and acoustic songs far out into psychedelic improv.
“I realised I could just do what I wanted to do on a record,” he explains of his Neil Young-like quest to experiment, “and if no-one liked it, who cares. It’s more about allowing myself to be free.”
_____________________
TY SEGALL TY SEGALL CASTLE FACE, 2008 Written while Segall was in the Traditional Fools, this was an aggressive, distorted – and, at 24 minutes, brief – debut, with everything played by Ty himself.
TY SEGALL: In the Traditional Fools, we were very democratic in the writing process, and eventually I started stockpiling my own songs. I didn’t know what to do with them, because I was really insecure about putting something out under my name. I recorded a tape first, Horn The Unicorn, and that’s a band version of a lot of these songs. I was working at a radio station and I got fired for not showing up for my shift, which is understandable. But I was still friends with the director of the station, and I gave him my tape. He was like, “This is amazing, man, you should do something with this.” So I decided to play some shows. I felt really weird about calling a band my name, though, so I just started doing things as a one-man band. Then I decided to re-record all the songs one-man-band-style, so I could have something to give away at the shows. My buddy Kyle was one of the only guys I knew who had an eight-track, so I went over to his basement and did it all in two hours. A little-known fact is that this is a digital record – but I think those things sound great. I gave it to [Thee Oh Sees’] John Dwyer after he saw the Traditional Fools play, asking him if he knew of anyone who might want to put it out. He gave me the addresses for In The Red, Sub Pop, all these labels, and none of them responded. He was like, “Fuck it, I’ll put it out.”
__________________________
TY SEGALL MELTED GONER, 2010 Segall teams up with engineer Eric Bauer for his third album, which adds more obvious hooks to his garage fuzz, and introduces some new collaborators.
Bauer was a silk-screener and did T-shirts on the side. While we were talking, he mentioned that he did some recording, and I figured out that he had helped record some of the Hospitals stuff, some of the Sic Alps stuff and some of the early Oh Sees stuff. I asked him how much he charged, and he was like, “Ah, don’t worry about it, just come in and we’ll play it by ear.” At that time, he had a Tascam 388, two preamps, a Space Echo, a compressor and maybe four or five microphones, and that was it. But it was definitely the most hi-fi stuff I had done up to that point on an actual tape machine, so that was really cool. There’s a lot of people on this one – Tim Hellman, who’s in Thee Oh Sees now, is on bass, Emily [Rose Epstein, drummer] is on “Caesar”, Charles [Moothart] double drums on “Girlfriend”, Mike Donovan from Sic Alps does the vocals on “Mike D’s Coke”. Back then, I was way more loose and I was kind of obsessed with trying to do things differently. So on at least one or two of these songs, the drums were laid down after the guitar, because I liked how fucked-up it sounded. Nowadays I would rather just have me and Charles go in and lay down drums and guitar, you know? But doing it the other way, it’s like Skip Spence’s Oar or Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs, you can tell the drums are laid down afterwards, and it’s pretty cool. It was cool around this time to be able to tour, and start to realise, ‘OK, I think maybe we could be a working band…’
Filthy Friends, the indie supergroup featuring Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker and REM's Peter Buck, have announced that their second album Emerald Valley will be released by Kill Rock Stars on May 3.
Hear the first track from it, “Last Chance County”, below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...
Filthy Friends, the indie supergroup featuring Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and REM’s Peter Buck, have announced that their second album Emerald Valley will be released by Kill Rock Stars on May 3.
Hear the first track from it, “Last Chance County”, below:
Talking about her lyrical inspirations for the album, Tucker says: “I had this long poem growing in my brain. It turned into a sort of manifesto about the kind of place we are at as a country but also as a region. Just taking stock of where we’re at and feeling like I can’t believe we let things get this bad.”
London festival Innervisions has announced the line-up for its 2019 edition, taking place in venues across the city on July 3-7.
Van Morrison will play two nights at the Roundhouse on July 6 and 7, with Mavis Staples playing the same venue on July 4.
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...
London festival Innervisions has announced the line-up for its 2019 edition, taking place in venues across the city on July 3-7.
Van Morrison will play two nights at the Roundhouse on July 6 and 7, with Mavis Staples playing the same venue on July 4.
James Brown saxophonist Maceo Parker plays the Roundhouse on July 5, with Gilberto Gil at Shepherd’s Bush Empire on July 7.
Ramp play Islington Assembly Hall on July 4 with Aloe Blacc at the Roundhouse on July 3. There’s also a Kraftwerk Re:Werk event at Indigo At The O2 on July 4, with an orchestra playing the music of Kraftwerk.
Wilco have announced a new European tour for September, in addition to their existing dates in June.
The new tour takes in three UK shows at the end of the September. See Wilco's full itinerary below:
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12th June – Ancienne Belgique, Brussels
13th Ju...
Wilco have announced a new European tour for September, in addition to their existing dates in June.
The new tour takes in three UK shows at the end of the September. See Wilco’s full itinerary below:
12th June – Ancienne Belgique, Brussels
13th June – Ancienne Belgique, Brussels
15th June – Paradiso, Amsterdam SOLD OUT
16th June – Paradiso, Amsterdam SOLD OUT
18th June – Aeronef Club, Lille
19th June – Le 106, Rouen
20th June – La Sirene, La Rochelle
22nd June – Azkena Rock Festival, Vitoria-Gasteiz Spain
4th September – Tapperiet, Trondheim
6th September – Stavanger Konserthus Zetlitz, Stavanger
7th September – USF Verftet, Bergen
8th September – Sentrum Scene, Oslo
10th September – Den Gra Hal, Copenhagen
12th September – Tempodrom, Berlin
13th September – Carlswerk Victoria, Cologne
14th September – Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg
15th September – Progresja, Warsaw
18th September – Volkshaus, Zurich
19th September – Fabrique, Milan
20th September – Gran Teatro Geox, Padova
22nd September – Le Trianon, Paris
23rd September – TivoliVredenberg Grote Zaal, Utrecht 26th September – Barrowlands, Glasgow
27th September – Albert Hall, Manchester
28th September – Eventim Apollo, London
Tickets go on sale at 9am on Friday (February 15) from here.
Cambridge Folk Festival, taking place at the city's Cherry Hinton Hall on August 1-4, has added a number of new names to the bill.
Headlining Friday night will be folk-rock supergroup Calexico And Iron And Wine, reprising a collaboration begun on the 2005 joint EP In The Reins. Closing out the fest...
Cambridge Folk Festival, taking place at the city’s Cherry Hinton Hall on August 1-4, has added a number of new names to the bill.
Headlining Friday night will be folk-rock supergroup Calexico And Iron And Wine, reprising a collaboration begun on the 2005 joint EP In The Reins. Closing out the festival on Sunday will be another supergroup, with Amadou & Mariam joining forces with Blind Boys Of Alabama.
To mark the band’s 50th anniversary, Uncut’s latest expanded, deluxe Ultimate Music Guide is an ambitious survey of the entire, brilliant career of Genesis – from prog shapeshifters to stadium gods. We’ve delved deep into the archives of NME and Melody Maker, finding interviews with the band...
To mark the band’s 50th anniversary, Uncut’s latest expanded, deluxe Ultimate Music Guide is an ambitious survey of the entire, brilliant career of Genesis – from prog shapeshifters to stadium gods. We’ve delved deep into the archives of NME and Melody Maker, finding interviews with the band that have languished unseen since the 1970s and ‘80s. We’ve reviewed every album, the solo careers, and there’s a special new introduction by Steve Hackett, too!
Ultimate Record Collection: The 1960s is a 124-page guide to hearing (and buying) the best music of the 1960s. From James Brown to the Beatles, Dylan to John Coltrane, the mag takes you inside the works of the decade’s pivotal musicians. Not only that, it gives you the lowdown on a further – go ...
Ultimate Record Collection: The 1960s is a 124-page guide to hearing (and buying) the best music of the 1960s. From James Brown to the Beatles, Dylan to John Coltrane, the mag takes you inside the works of the decade’s pivotal musicians. Not only that, it gives you the lowdown on a further – go on, count them! – 500 great records by musicians who moved the game on significantly without becoming household names. Whether you stream it, get it on CD with the extras, on vinyl new or old – this is the way to getting the most out of rock’s most revolutionary decade.
For your pleasure…the latest edition of the ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE. This time: the definitive guide to the music of ROXY MUSIC! Insightful new writing on every album. Hilarious archive features. And that’s before we even get to the decade by decade look at the work of BRIAN ENO and BRYAN FERRY! St...
For your pleasure…the latest edition of the ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE. This time: the definitive guide to the music of ROXY MUSIC! Insightful new writing on every album. Hilarious archive features. And that’s before we even get to the decade by decade look at the work of BRIAN ENO and BRYAN FERRY! Stay hip! Keep cool! To the thrill of this handsome and urbane 124 page magazine!
The latest in our series of Ultimate Music Guides is a deluxe edition of our work on The Cure. Commemorating the band’s 40th year of active service, and a year which has seen them play sold-out shows in Hyde Park and a Meltdown Festival curated by Robert Smith, this new updated edition features ne...
The latest in our series of Ultimate Music Guides is a deluxe edition of our work on The Cure. Commemorating the band’s 40th year of active service, and a year which has seen them play sold-out shows in Hyde Park and a Meltdown Festival curated by Robert Smith, this new updated edition features new writing and reviews – and a bespoke foreword from Cure founder member Lol Tolhurst! From their punk beginnings to the imperial phase of their dramatic and emotional pop, it’s all here: your Ultimate Music Guide to The Cure.
Archive features! New eyewitness accounts! The Best of NME 1975-9 continues our series compiling the greatest hits of the legendary music paper, now online. In this issue: the rise of Bruce Springsteen! The genius of Pete Shelley and the Buzzcocks! And inside Kate Bush’s notorious Tour Of Life! Pl...
Archive features! New eyewitness accounts! The Best of NME 1975-9 continues our series compiling the greatest hits of the legendary music paper, now online. In this issue: the rise of Bruce Springsteen! The genius of Pete Shelley and the Buzzcocks! And inside Kate Bush’s notorious Tour Of Life! Plus: Tom Waits, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Patti Smith, reviews of key albums and singles, letters, ads and more besides!
Following specials on GLAM, PUNK, and SOUL the latest edition of the ULTIMATE GENRE GUIDE focuses on the art of the SINGER-SONGWRITER. A magazine mixing in-depth new writing and illuminating archive features, inside you will find revealing insights and engrossing encounters with legends like JONI MI...
Following specials on GLAM, PUNK, and SOUL the latest edition of the ULTIMATE GENRE GUIDE focuses on the art of the SINGER-SONGWRITER. A magazine mixing in-depth new writing and illuminating archive features, inside you will find revealing insights and engrossing encounters with legends like JONI MITCHELL, CROSBY STILLS, NASH & YOUNG, LEONARD COHEN, JAMES TAYLOR and CAROLE KING and a special afterword from DAVID CROSBY. It’s the story of how singer-songwriters made an inward journey and broadcast it to the world. It’s the Ultimate Genre Guide: Singer-songwriter.
Veteran blues guitarist John Mayall will release a new album called Nobody Told Me through Forty Below Records on February 22.
Hear the latest track from it, a version of Little Milton's "That’s What Love Will Make You Do" featuring Todd Rundgren, below:
https://soundcloud.com/john-mayall-411050...
Veteran blues guitarist John Mayall will release a new album called Nobody Told Me through Forty Below Records on February 22.
Hear the latest track from it, a version of Little Milton’s “That’s What Love Will Make You Do” featuring Todd Rundgren, below:
“When I was 18, one of the greatest influences in my musical life was John Mayall’s Bluebreakers,” says Rundgren. “Some 50 years later, it is one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had as a guitarist – to be a Bluesbreaker, if only for a moment.”
Adds Mayall: “I’m really thrilled that Todd wanted to put his distinctive guitar licks on this song. It really kicks it into high gear, doesn’t it…”
Peruse the full tracklisting for Nobody Told Me below:
1. What Have I Done Wrong FT Joe Bonamassa
2. The Moon Is Full FT Larry McCray
3. Evil And Here To Stay FT Alex Lifeson
4. That’s What Love Will Make You Do FT Todd Rundgren
5. Distant Lonesome Train FT Carolyn Wonderland
6. Delta Hurricane FT Joe Bonamassa
7. The Hurt Inside FT Larry McCray
8. It’s So Tough FT Stevan Van Zandt
9. Like It Like You Do FTCarolyn Wonderland
10. Nobody Told Me FT Carolyn Wonderland
Sitting on the roof terrace of The Benjamin, a plush boutique hotel in New York’s Midtown district, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins are contemplating the differences between Peter Gabriel-era Genesis and the band’s later incarnation. “The awkward join,” says Collins. “Can you see the join...
Sitting on the roof terrace of The Benjamin, a plush boutique hotel in New York’s Midtown district, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins are contemplating the differences between Peter Gabriel-era Genesis and the band’s later incarnation. “The awkward join,” says Collins. “Can you see the join?”
It is 2014, and Rutherford and Collins are here to promote a new career-spanning box set, R-Kive. They make an odd couple: Rutherford, the reserved, urbane Old Carthusian; Collins, cheery and chatty despite the physical discomfort caused by complications from a back operation.
Could Genesis have recorded their ’80s output if Peter Gabriel had still been at the helm?
“Who’s to say?” Collins shrugs. “I think you said that there’s traces of the early band in the next three or four albums after. I talked myself into believing that there is a big difference. But if you think about things like ‘Home By The Sea’ or ‘Tonight, Tonight, Tonight’, where there are time shifts and mood shifts, would Peter have maybe instead of having the gory costumes, maybe he would have learnt to do more by insinuation and therefore done less. It wouldn’t have necessarily gone to ridiculous lengths as The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.”
So was a massive pop album; for a while, there wasn’t much distance between Genesis and Gabriel.
“Yeah, what is the difference between ‘I Can’t Dance’ and ‘Sledgehammer’? We’ll never know.”
The unusual, labyrinthine history of Genesis – from cerebral prog shapeshifters to stadium gods – is celebrated in our latest expanded, deluxe Ultimate Music Guide, released too mark the band’s 50th anniversary. In shops from Thursday, February 14 – but available now from our online store – the bookazine features the usual mix of archive interviews from Melody Maker, NME and Uncut, plus reviews of every album and the solo careers. There’s more Phil, ore Gabriel and a special new introduction by Steve Hackett, too…
In this extract from his introduction, Hackett recalls the band’s glory years: “Supper’s Ready”, Tom Baker and his driven new bandmates. “It was like suddenly going to Eton…”
“It was thrilling and intimidating in equal measure. The band was very competitive. You have to remember, most of them had been together in some shape or form since they were 11 years old. So me joining them at 21, it was like suddenly going to Eton. It wasn’t so much house rules as them having their own language. They had their own history, pre-history… lots of reason for not doing things, it seemed.
“I would work on them like Chinese water torture to try and get my own way. Like if were were going to do something like ‘Supper’s Ready’ I said we should do it with all the sound effects so it has everything going for it. Peter Gabriel realised that he needed to personify it – and dress up accordingly, to act them, to be the lyric, to be the lyric, to be or not to be…
“‘Supper’s Ready’ was written piecemeal, but written quickly – in about two weeks, that’s half an album, working at the speed of Bach. We had an album to write, lots of gigs, recording being interrupted by gigs. We were playing on the university circuit – an earnest circuit and we were glad of it.
“The ideas of early Genesis were really clever and great. By the time we did Selling England By The Pound the band was becoming more professional, there was a growing confidence. The early records, the ideas were great but not always in time or in tune. It’s about the music, but also about the presentation.
“Pete shaved his head in the middle and wore a gold cross, but when I first met Genesis the look was much more Tom Baker: long scarves, overcoats, funny hats, borrowed trousers, policeman’s shoes. I concentrated on the music, I had forgotten you were meant to look like someone. By 1976 I was glam myself. I ditched the Polish dissident look.”
Yesterday's edition of BBC Radio 4's Behind The Scenes followed PJ Harvey as she composed and recorded a score for Ivo Van Hove's stage adaptation of All About Eve.
The score includes two new PJ Harvey songs, sung in the play by actors Gillian Anderson and Lily James. Hear a clip of one, "The Moth"...
Yesterday’s edition of BBC Radio 4’s Behind The Scenes followed PJ Harvey as she composed and recorded a score for Ivo Van Hove’s stage adaptation of All About Eve.
The score includes two new PJ Harvey songs, sung in the play by actors Gillian Anderson and Lily James. Hear a clip of one, “The Moth”, below:
BBC broadcaster John Wilson’s Behind-the-Scenes program on PJ Harvey's scoring work for theatre will broadcast on BBC Radio 4 today, February 11th at 16:00GMT. https://t.co/YhNfzDemNCpic.twitter.com/upD140Vcv2
Says Harvey in the programme: “The play resonated with me immediately because Margo, the lead character, is an ageing actress who’s at that point where she’s feeling uncomfortable on stage. As a female performer I understand those feelings”.
Discussing her decision to take a break from the album/touring schedule to write the score, she says: “You also weigh it up with ‘OK, I’ve done this half my life, do I want to continue this way? Or do I maybe want to try something different?’… I think you can never lay hard lines down like that, I think you just have to go with the moment, and right now I have enormous pleasure writing scores for theatre”.
Listen to the whole episode of Radio 4’s Behind The Scenes: PJ Harvey on BBC Sounds here. All About Eve is currently showing at London’s Noël Coward theatre.
Chic bandleader Nile Rodgers has been unveiled as the curator of this year's Meltdown festival, taking place at London's Southbank Centre on August 3-11.
He will hand-pick the line-up for the nine-day festival, with the first acts being announced in April.
Order the latest issue of Uncut online an...
Chic bandleader Nile Rodgers has been unveiled as the curator of this year’s Meltdown festival, taking place at London’s Southbank Centre on August 3-11.
He will hand-pick the line-up for the nine-day festival, with the first acts being announced in April.
“To be able to curate and produce nine days of live music for the city of London, the UK and music enthusiasts visiting from all over the world is truly a dream come true,” said Rodgers. “Anyone who knows my career knows that funk, disco, jazz, soul, classical, pop, new wave, R&B, fusion, punk, rock, Afrobeat, electronic and dance music all play a role and you can expect that to be reflected in the performances we are planning. It’s all about the groove and this August everyone in London will be dancing to incredible live performances!”
Another week, another plentiful bounty from friends old and new. Lots to get your teeth into here, from the gorgeous heavy folk of Daniel O'Sullivan
to the vital Tuareg rock of Kel Assouf to a remixed Marvin Gaye rarity. There's more from Royal Trux's triumphant comeback, Tyler Ramsey unveils his f...
Another week, another plentiful bounty from friends old and new. Lots to get your teeth into here, from the gorgeous heavy folk of Daniel O’Sullivan
to the vital Tuareg rock of Kel Assouf to a remixed Marvin Gaye rarity. There’s more from Royal Trux’s triumphant comeback, Tyler Ramsey unveils his first new music since stepping away from Band Of Horses, and Sunwatchers showcase their thrillingly seditious psych-jazz-rock. Plus The Chemical Brothers are back doing what they do best. See you on the floor at the Heavenly Social!
KEL ASSOUF
“Fransa”
(Glitterbeat)
MARVIN GAYE
“My Last Chance (Salaam Remi Remix)”
(Motown)
HEATHER WOODS BRODERICK
“Where I Lay”
(Western Vinyl)
