Bob Dylan's high school girlfriend Echo Casey, née Helstrom, has died in California aged 75, according to the Star Tribune. She was believed to be the inspiration for his song "Girl From The North Country", from his breakthrough 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
Dylan dated Casey from 1957 to...
Bob Dylan‘s high school girlfriend Echo Casey, née Helstrom, has died in California aged 75, according to the Star Tribune. She was believed to be the inspiration for his song “Girl From The North Country”, from his breakthrough 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
Dylan dated Casey from 1957 to 1958 when they both attended Hibbing High School in Minnesota. Her independent spirit and love of music left a strong impression on Dylan, who later compared her to Brigitte Bardot in his memoir Chronicles: Volume One.
There remains speculation about the identity of the “Girl From The North Country”, with some believing the song to be about Dylan’s later girlfriends Bonnie Beecher or Suze Rotolo (who appears with him on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan). However, the lyrics about freezing rivers and winds that “hit heavy on the borderline” would seem to point to northern Minnesota.
Casey lived in Minneapolis for a while before eventually moving to Los Angeles in the 1970s, where she worked as a secretary on movie sets.
“Girl From The North Country” became the title for Conor McPherson‘s Bob Dylan musical, currently showing at London’s Noel Coward Theatre. Tickets are available here.
In the current issue of Uncut, Phil Manzanera looks back at the early days of Roxy Music. Among many things, he considers the slick visual presentation deployed by Roxy around the time of their debut album - cricket jumpers, diamanté-studded fly sunglasses, feather boas and all.
"Prog was the anti...
In the current issue of Uncut, Phil Manzanera looks back at the early days of Roxy Music. Among many things, he considers the slick visual presentation deployed by Roxy around the time of their debut album – cricket jumpers, diamanté-studded fly sunglasses, feather boas and all.
“Prog was the antithesis of showing off and dressing up,” he explains. “Getting to 1972, there was that period when all that came to a grinding end because of drugs – heroin killed everything, and everything became grey. And there was no showbiz element, which there had been with Tamla Motown and The Beatles, so with Bowie and with us it was going into colour and being flamboyant and having fun, but with some decent music. We never thought we were glam rock. Marc Bolan and Bowie had started quite a few years earlier and had been trying to find their thing; we came out of nowhere with an already-formed thing.”
It’s a useful, insider take on the context around which Roxy, Bowie, Bolan and many more besides evolved during the early Seventies, where “being flamboyant and having fun” seemed as critical to the creative process as it did a reaction against the more studied, unapologetic complexities of prog. Roxy’s splendid debut album is about to be released as a super deluxe box set – and, by timely coincidence, Uncut celebrates glam rock in the first of our new series, The Ultimate Genre Guide, which goes on sale this Thursday in the UK and is available to pre-order from our online store.
Here’s John Robinson, who edited this one, to explain more…
“As you will discover when you read this stomping new publication, there were many ways to be glam. Conceptual, like Roxy or Bowie. Flashy, and made for colour television, like Slade. Theatrical, like Alice Cooper, or chaotic like the New York Dolls. For our cover star Marc Bolan it was the fulfilment of childhood dreams of stardom – and fuel for the dreams of others.
“Perhaps more than anything else, it could be a key to reinvention and self-discovery. Roy Wood was a joint-passing hippy before he became the glitter-bearded star of Wizzard. Mott The Hoople were longtime triers about to quit, given another shot when they performed Bowie’s ‘All The Young Dudes’ – essentially glam’s national anthem. Elton John began the 1970s as an earnest balladeer, and was possibly more a glam rocker from expediency than anything else. Still, it allowed him to access elements of his showmanship, sexuality and general high spirits than he had previously managed.
“As the 1974 meeting with NME’s Charles Shaar Murray included here makes plain, Elton in some ways embodies glam’s improbable hotline connection between pure showbusiness and the man in the street. Having once changed his birth name from Reginald Dwight, he tells Murray that he’s now giving thought to a new middle name: Hercules (although he ‘could have called myself Fiona, I suppose. Elton Fiona John. Or Dalmatian.’) Stephen Dalton’s commentary details not only Elton’s glam recordings but also recounts several gossipy years of cattiness and fallings-out.
“There was no one way to be glam. There were some recognisable features – the intersection of ambiguous sexuality and hard, often 1950s-inspired rock; an emphasis on performance, posing and showmanship; great singles – but this was no straitjacket.
“Some artists – like Lou Reed or Iggy Pop – drifted into glam, took what they wanted and moved on. The lesser talents had their brief moment basking in its reflective glow. All round, it offered freedom, not confinement. (Unless you were The Sweet, of course – for whom the whole experience turned into a struggle for independence from their production team.)
“As David Cavanagh points out here in his writing about glam singles, not everyone could be as talented as David Bowie. Glam offered both the sublime and the ridiculous, whether that was the stellar run of albums Bowie made between 1970 and 1974, or a one-off exploitation single by one-hit wonders we’d now find filed under ‘junk shop glam’.
“You can read about all versions of the glam experience here, in a range of hilarious archive features – just who were Hair, Nose & Teeth? – and insightful new commentary. There are thoughts on glam film, glam art and glam’s legacy. You’ll read how our artists – from Bowie, Bolan and Slade through to Queen and Sparks (by 2018, glam’s only real survivors) – made, and were remade, by glam rock.
“So catch a bright star and place it on your forehead… and there you go.”
New Zealand psych-funk-rockers Unknown Mortal Orchestra have released a new single. Hear "American Guilt" below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFFa440Mo0I
As part of a lengthy world tour, the band have announced four UK dates in May:
May 24 - London, Roundhouse
May 25 - Bristol, SWX
May 26 - ...
New Zealand psych-funk-rockers Unknown Mortal Orchestra have released a new single. Hear “American Guilt” below:
As part of a lengthy world tour, the band have announced four UK dates in May:
May 24 – London, Roundhouse
May 25 – Bristol, SWX
May 26 – Manchester, Strange Waves festival
May 27 – Leeds, World Island festival
Tickets go on sale on Friday January 26 via the band’s own site.
The Strokes' frontman Julian Casablancas has released a new single with his other band, The Voidz. Hear "Leave It In My Dreams" below:
https://open.spotify.com/album/68AD3dLFUewEL8Tym17gqS
Now simply called The Voidz (as opposed to Julian Casablancas & The Voidz), the band are readying the fol...
The Strokes‘ frontman Julian Casablancas has released a new single with his other band, The Voidz. Hear “Leave It In My Dreams” below:
Now simply called The Voidz (as opposed to Julian Casablancas & The Voidz), the band are readying the follow-up to their 2014 album Tyranny. Watch a droll, B-movie-style trailer for the album below:
South African jazz trumpeter and prominent anti-apartheid campaigner Hugh Masekela has died aged 78.
He passed away peacefully in Johannesburg after a long battle with prostate cancer.
Masekela rose to global prominence in the late 60s with the hits "Up, Up And Away" and "Grazing In The Grass", pe...
South African jazz trumpeter and prominent anti-apartheid campaigner Hugh Masekela has died aged 78.
He passed away peacefully in Johannesburg after a long battle with prostate cancer.
Masekela rose to global prominence in the late 60s with the hits “Up, Up And Away” and “Grazing In The Grass”, performing at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and guesting with The Byrds and Paul Simon.
Written during a long period of exile from his homeland, his 1977 song “Soweto Blues” (sung by his former wife Miriam Makeba) became an anthem of the struggle against apartheid, as did 1987’s “Bring Him Back Home”, written for Nelson Mandela.
Masekela was hailed by current South African President Jacob Zuma, who said: “His contribution to the struggle for liberation will never be forgotten.”
“Vini Reilly, by the way, is way overdue a revival,” says God, appearing to Tony Wilson in a hash-haze vision towards the end of 24 Hour Party People. “You might want to think about a greatest hits.” It’s played for laughs, but there’s an important truth here: in many ways, Wilson’s pe...
“Vini Reilly, by the way, is way overdue a revival,” says God, appearing to Tony Wilson in a hash-haze vision towards the end of 24 Hour Party People. “You might want to think about a greatest hits.” It’s played for laughs, but there’s an important truth here: in many ways, Wilson’s persistent attempts to usher the guitarist into the spotlight of popular acclaim was the secret driver of the whole quixotic Factory escapade.
The Factory club was first founded in 1978, after all, expressly to promote the “neo-psychedelia” of the Column’s first misfiring incarnation, and Factory Records formed in 1979 to release the group’s music (the fledgling Joy Division at this time being almost an afterthought). You could even see Factory Classical, one of the most noble fiascos of the entire enterprise, as an attempt to conjure a context for Reilly’s quasi-classical meanderings – notably Without Mercy (1984), part of Wilson’s campaign to cultivate Reilly as Withington’s answer to Bohuslav Martinů.
1985 seemed to mark another change of tack, with Wilson stuffing Reilly’s Christmas stocking with sequencers and electronic paraphernalia. Although it was never expressly stated, you get the feeling that Wilson might have been pushing Reilly towards soundtrack work. And it’s maybe not that great a stretch to think of a possible world where Reilly developed as a kind of post-punk Mark Knopfler, plangently scoring wistful widescreen accounts of post-industrial decay.
On 1986’s Circuses And Bread, with tracks like “Dance 1”, Reilly was evidently still getting to grips with the technology (Melody Maker compared it to testcard music), but for The Guitar And Other Machines (Nov 1987), things were falling into place. Producer Stephen Street was brought in (paving the way for Reilly’s crucial role on Morrissey’s Viva Hate), and synthetic elements were grafted into the Durutti soundworld more seamlessly.
“Arpeggiator” is a stunningly bold statement of intent – it’s like the hitherto frail, musical Durutti corpus has been augmented into some six-million-dollar bionic body. Longtime Durutti Columnist John Metcalfe’s viola, plucked and bowed, swoops over a scintillating torrent of synths, before the track erupts into powerchords and molten lead guitar.
“What Is It To Me (Woman)” is a more characteristic Durutti excursion, but played out on a wider screen, the decaying reverbed guitar lines intertwined with desolate piano and washed over with wailing harmonica. Wilson had often despaired of Reilly’s reluctance to spend more than a couple of days in the studio, but Stephen Street seems to have persuaded him of the virtues of a more diligent approach – it’s like the home movies or chamber pieces of the early albums have suddenly been recast in cinemascope. “Red Shoes”, then, is an appropriate title, conjuring associations with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Technicolor fantasia. Sensing the way the marketplace was changing, Factory ensured …Other Machines was the first LP to be released on DAT – Wilson once again vainly trying to steer the nascent yuppie audiophile market away from Brothers In Arms to more esoteric in-car entertainments.
This exemplary reissue augments the original LP with a number of fugitive pieces from the Durutti discography: notably the “Greetings Three” EP, originally released in Italy in 1986, plus a handful of tracks cut in LA and released as the “City Of Our Lady” EP in August ’87 – remarkable for a barmy cover of “White Rabbit”.
The third disc, meanwhile, unearths a live recording from the conclusion of the US tour, at the Bottom Line club in New York, previously available only on cassette. It’s hard to say the live set adds much to the studio incarnation of the …Other Machines material – “Arpeggiator” feels like it’s been diminished from IMAX to church hall, an undoubtedly sublime guitarist playing along with some MIDI backing tracks. It’s only on tracks like “Jacqueline”, where Reilly really locks into a groove with drummer Bruce Mitchell, that the music comes alive and you sense the magic that still eludes the machines.
Q&A
Bruce Mitchell, Durutti Column drummer and manager
Did Vini listen to the album again for this reissue?
Vini doesn’t really listen to his old stuff now. He likes the artefacts, though, the finished products. He puts them on his wall.
A lot of the album feels like it might be auditioning for soundtracks – was that a conscious intention?
Vini has only ever made music for himself. Tony Wilson always thought the music would come to film, but it’s only in the last couple of years that it has started showing up on soundtracks [and on Jerry Maguire, 1996].
It was sad to hear about Vini’s ongoing health problems – how’s he doing now?
He’s going to be playing in March. After the strokes it was hard for him. We bought him a special instrument with a narrow neck, but when we went to see him he had his old Strat set up and was roaring away! He frequently rediscovers his mojo. We’ve got an LP all ready to be released, but he’s having a bit of a dispute with the producer. Vini has his ups and downs, you know, but he’s still functioning in his unique way. STEPHEN TROUSSÉ
In a piece Merrill Garbus wrote for Talkhouse in 2013, about her trip to Haiti to take drumming lessons plus folkloric and contemporary dance classes, there’s an aside that speaks not only to Nikki Nack, her album of the following year, but also to a clear future path. “I am not a dancer so much...
In a piece Merrill Garbus wrote for Talkhouse in 2013, about her trip to Haiti to take drumming lessons plus folkloric and contemporary dance classes, there’s an aside that speaks not only to Nikki Nack, her album of the following year, but also to a clear future path. “I am not a dancer so much,” she admits, “but these days I will dance harder than I ever have in my whole life.” What was then a simple commitment to participate fully in that programme (despite some reluctance), now reads like a passionate affirmation of her belief in dance music as a connecting life force.
Rhythm is certainly the core strength of I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, on which jazz-schooled bass player and long-term collaborator Nate Brenner becomes Tune-Yards’ official other half. But it’s hardly as if Garbus has ever been a slouch in that department. With 2011’s Whokill, she shifted away from her debut’s lo-fi, DIY mix of ukulele, percussion, vocals and snatches of field recordings to something more insistent, with a strong undertow of idiosyncratic funk – a result of her exploration of non-Western beat patterns, especially African polyrhythms and a non-reliance on the down beat. Songs like “Gangsta” especially, chimed with the pop of peers Vampire Weekend, but there was nothing collegiate about Tune-Yards; their rhythmic interests ran to gently skronking wyrd folk (on “Wooly Wolly Gong”) and math-jazz (“Riotriot”), while following Afro-pop’s source. It was 2014’s Nikki Nack, though, that underscored not only the eccentricity of their art, but also its flexibility and futurist spirit.
Now, Tune-Yards’ fourth, which embraces the broad, even populist notion of “electronic dance music” while perversely pushing them further than they’ve pushed themselves before. It’s a big, bold, entertainingly disruptive blast of a record with a mirror-ball lure, refracting everything from Motown to early ’80s disco and funk, boom bap, ’90s piano house and contemporary R&B (to which Garbus’s powerful, multi-tasking voice is brilliantly suited), which loses none of their oddness or playfulness, but puts issues such as race and cultural identity, privilege, intersectional feminism and looming ecological disaster under the lyrical spotlight.
Explaining the prime motivation of I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, Garbus told Uncut: “I was fascinated by my own snobbery about four-on-the-floor dance tunes. I didn’t feel comfortable actively disliking a whole genre of music, so I set out to learn about where ‘EDM’ came from: its history, roots. I’ve always loved making music people can dance to and I’ve also wanted to complicate pop music, rhythmically, melodically, lyrically, thematically. I wanted to see if we could make dance music with electronic elements that still felt in line with what Tune-Yards had done before.”
All those boxes are ticked, when you consider songs picked even at random. Soaring first single “Look At Your Hands” for instance, whose super-charged clatter and delirious, “la-la-la-la-la-la” beat punctuation suggests Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” reconfigured around bass music’s DNA – but with power/lessness and inherited agency on its mind. Or “Colonizer”, where Garbus’s light, sing-song tone (“I use my white woman’s voice to tell stories of travels with African men/I comb my white woman’s hair with a comb made especially, generally for me”) contrasts with chip-tune chattering, a distorted bass frequency and pitch-shifted choral ululations. In contrast are “Honesty” (a Technicolor, sax-strafed update of William Onyeabor’s psychedelic funk), “Coast To Coast” – driving, blues/soul pop with a keys nod to Talk Talk, of all people, and an apocalyptic theme (“see you in the middle, when the walls come tumbling down to the sea”) – and the album’s wild card, the soulful and dreamy “Who Are You”. Here, Garbus’s voice seems to be drifting across constellations in search of connection like a satellite signal on the blink, while a saxophone flutters around her. Tune-Yards sign off with the effects-heavy “Free”, whose Nina Simone-ish supplication soars above a shuddering beat pattern before being silenced by a backwards noise loop.
The final sound on the record is Garbus counting out a beat, with sticks, for (presumably) Brenner and laughing as she throws back to opening track “Heart Attack”. It’s a neat, full-circle closer – and also a reminder not only that the beat goes on, but also of Tune-Yards’ enduring commitment to its primacy. SHARON O’CONNELL
Q&A
Merrill Garbus
What determined your approach to this LP?
I was disturbed by aspects of our previous tour cycle. So much of Tune-Yards music is directly influenced by black music: folk and pop music from all over Africa, hip hop, funk, rock, soul, blues… and I felt a real disconnect between our mostly white audiences and any real kind of examination of ourselves, of our whiteness, of our relationship to this music… I wondered if I was being explicit enough about my discomfort with our complicity in this system. I felt the weight of the Elvis legacy, I suppose – being a white performer filtering black music through a white experience and selling a “white-washed” product to mostly white people. I wanted to disrupt that, or to see if I even could disrupt that.
Which elements of ’80s music do you love most?
I appreciate some of those early drum machine-based songs, where there’s not the kind of hi-fi beats we have now, where everything sounds crisp and perfect. It was a lot of information jammed into a sample, a drum loop, whatever… crunchy, rough around the edges, sometimes kind of thin, sometimes totally blown out. I also loved those late-‘80s dance anthems where just one word gets chanted. As much as I don’t like to live in the past, the ’80s pulls me back all the time. It gets a bad rap for cheese.
INTERVIEW: SHARON O’CONNELL
This year marks the 20th anniversary of John Fogerty's Grammy award for his album Blue Moon Swamp. To celebrate, it's getting a deluxe reissue along with four of the Credence Clearwater Revival frontman's other solo albums.
1997's Blue Moon Swamp will be reissued on April 27 along with Premonition ...
This year marks the 20th anniversary of John Fogerty‘s Grammy award for his album Blue Moon Swamp. To celebrate, it’s getting a deluxe reissue along with four of the Credence Clearwater Revival frontman’s other solo albums.
1997’s Blue Moon Swamp will be reissued on April 27 along with Premonition (1998) and Centerfield (1985), with Eye Of The Zombie (1986) and Deja Vu (All Over Again) (2004) following on May 25.
All albums will be released in 180g vinyl, CD and digital editions. You can pre-order Blue Moon Swamp here.
Fogerty is currently putting the finishing touches to a new album slated for release later this year.
With a full Smiths reunion seemingly more distant than ever, three former members - bassist Andy Rourke, drummer Mike Joyce and fleeting second guitarist Craig Gannon – are teaming up with Manchester Camerata orchestra for a series of concerts this summer under the banner 'Classically Smiths'.
Ma...
With a full Smiths reunion seemingly more distant than ever, three former members – bassist Andy Rourke, drummer Mike Joyce and fleeting second guitarist Craig Gannon – are teaming up with Manchester Camerata orchestra for a series of concerts this summer under the banner ‘Classically Smiths‘.
Manchester Camerata previously provided the orchestral oomph for the Haçienda Classical concerts and played on New Order‘s Music Complete.
Smiths songs due to be orchestrally reimagined for the shows include Hand in Glove, How Soon is Now?, There is a Light That Never Goes Out, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want, Shoplifters Of The World Unite, Girlfriend In A Coma and Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me.
Guest vocalists have yet to be revealed.
Three Classically Smiths concerts have been announced so far, with more to be unveiled soon:
June 28 – Manchester O2 Academy
June 29 – London O2 Academy, Brixton
July 2 – Edinburgh Usher Hall
Tom Waits' first seven albums, originally released on Elektra/Asylum from 1973-80, will be remastered and reissued by Anti- in March.
They will be available on streaming platforms from March 9 with CD releases to follow on March 23 and 180g vinyl editions staggered throughout the year.
The full li...
Tom Waits‘ first seven albums, originally released on Elektra/Asylum from 1973-80, will be remastered and reissued by Anti- in March.
They will be available on streaming platforms from March 9 with CD releases to follow on March 23 and 180g vinyl editions staggered throughout the year.
The full list of albums to be reissued is as follows:
Closing Time (1973)
The Heart Of Saturday Night (1974)
Nighthawks At The Diner (1975)
Small Change (1976)
Foreign Affairs (1977)
Blue Valentine (1978)
Heartattack And Vine (1980)
You can pre-order the CDs and the Closing Time vinyl here.
His soft voice, withdrawn nature and short life have given rise to a myth of NICK DRAKE as a tragic figure. In fact, this was a man with a robust musical identity, and a far-reaching plan for his songs. Forty years after his death, his producers JOE BOYD and JOHN WOOD, and contemporaries including R...
Nearly a year later, John Wood answered the telephone to Nick Drake. Drake would occasionally drop in to visit John and Beverley Martyn at their new home in Hastings, on the Sussex coast, and visit Wood and his family at their home in Suffolk, but otherwise, his movements were sketchy. Wood hadn’t heard from him, he remembers, for “a long time”, but when the pair spoke, it appeared that Drake’s appetite for recording was undiminished.
“He said, ‘I’m ready to go back in the studio. When can I come in and record?’” says Wood. Sound Techniques remained a busy studio, but something about Drake’s increasingly mercurial nature motivated Wood to suggest he came in as soon as possible.
“He was off the radar a bit,” says Wood, “so I thought maybe I shouldn’t hang about. The only time we could get was in the middle of the night. I just felt he wanted to get on with it quickly. There wasn’t any messing about – he knew exactly what he wanted to do.”
What was recorded over those two evenings became 1972’s 28-minute Pink Moon. “The first or second thing we put down was ‘Parasite’,” says Wood. “But at that point I’m not sure if I knew what was going on. I remember saying, ‘Do you want Danny to come in?’ and he just said, ‘No, I don’t want anyone else on it.’”
Among the material Drake recorded was a song whose complex minor-chording creates a sense of stillness, while describing a world of unrelenting motion. It sounded of a piece with material from Five Leaves Left. This, finally, was “Things Behind The Sun” – “that song”, the song that Drake had played as an encore at the Royal Festival Hall two years earlier.
“One of the interesting things about Nick,” says John Wood, “is that he pretty much always knew what he was going to do with everything.”
In the title track, Robin Frederick hears a musical statement of Nick Drake’s personal condition. “When he goes down to that low note, it’s too low for him to sing,” she says. “He could easily have put it up a step and sung it that way, but he wanted it like that. I trust the choices he made. That low note is basically saying, ‘I can’t get any lower – this is too low for me.’”
Pink Moon was Drake’s final album. He died on November 25, 1974.
It was around 1978, thinks Joe Boyd, when they started turning up at his house. “Kids from Ohio, with backpacks. ‘You knew Nick Drake? Please tell me about him.’ How they knew where I lived, I don’t know, but I got people knocking at my door.”
Once the manager/producer of a struggling songwriter, since Nick Drake’s death Boyd has been cast by some as custodian of Drake’s fortunes in life – implicitly saying that if different decisions had been made about his music, the outcome of his life would have somehow been different.
“There is a school of thought which says Nick Drake is at his best at his purest, ie Pink Moon, and all the rest is just Joe Boyd imposing something on Nick,” says Boyd. “But I would say to them: that was what he wanted. The only time he performed in Cambridge was with a string quartet. Before I even met Nick, he was working with Robert.
“I hear from people who ask, ‘When are you going to put out the version of Five Leaves Left or Bryter Layter with just Nick’s voice and guitar?’ And I write them a polite note saying, basically, fuck off. Explaining that it’s recorded live in the studio… The only way you get ‘River Man’ to sound like that is to put Nick in the middle of the strings – you can’t get an album of just Nick and guitar because the strings are all over the voice track.”
In their son’s final months, Boyd also retained the confidence of Nick Drake’s parents, who asked him to call and reassure Nick that he wouldn’t think less of him if he took antidepressants. Beyond that, Boyd has looked after Drake by making sure his records have remained available in perpetuity.
“I knew Chris Blackwell would always support Nick,” Boyd remembers, “but I said ‘Who knows, you might get run over by a bus tomorrow. I want it in the contract that his records don’t go out of print.’” I had the feeling that one day people would get it, but not if the records had been allowed to disappear.”
When they arrived at Boyd’s door, these kids from Ohio generally told Joe the same story.
“Both boys and girls would tell it,” says Boyd. “‘I started going out with this person, it was early in the relationship and it was starting to get serious. They said, “Do you know Nick Drake?” I said, “No. Who’s Nick Drake?” and they said: “Sit down…”
“‘And they put this record on, and something became clear to me that if I didn’t take this seriously, then the relationship didn’t have a chance.’”
German electronic duo Mouse On Mars will release a new album, Dimensional People, on April 13.
The impressive guest list includes Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Zach Condon (Beirut), Aaron and Bryce Dessner (The National), Sam Amidon, Lisa Hannigan, Spank Rock and Swamp Dogg.
You can hear the lead sin...
German electronic duo Mouse On Mars will release a new album, Dimensional People, on April 13.
The impressive guest list includes Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Zach Condon (Beirut), Aaron and Bryce Dessner (The National), Sam Amidon, Lisa Hannigan, Spank Rock and Swamp Dogg.
You can hear the lead single Dimensional People Part III, featuring Justin Vernon, below:
The full tracklisting is as follows:
1. Dimensional People Part I
2. Dimensional People Part II
3. Dimensional People Part III
4. Foul Mouth
5. Aviation
6. Parliament Of Aliens Part I
7. Daylight
8. Tear To My Eye
9. Parliament Of Aliens Part II
10. Parliament Of Aliens Part III
11. Résumé
12. Sidney In A Cup
George Clinton has revived his Parliament moniker for the first time since 1980. You can hear the single I'm Gon Make U Sick O'Me, featuring Scarface, below:
https://open.spotify.com/track/405KnSR4FWAoByENBCazFn
It's taken from an upcoming new Parliament album Medicaid Fraud Dog, which features re...
George Clinton has revived his Parliament moniker for the first time since 1980. You can hear the single I’m Gon Make U Sick O’Me, featuring Scarface, below:
It’s taken from an upcoming new Parliament album Medicaid Fraud Dog, which features regular P-Funk horn players Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis, Greg Thomas and Benny Cowan. According to previous reports, the album may be released on Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label.
Parliament/Funkadelic will tour North America from January 31. See the full set of tour dates here.
XL Recordings boss Richard Russell has revealed that the self-titled debut album from his collaborative project Everything Is Recorded will be released on February 16.
Guest vocalists include Sampha, Ibeyi, Obongjayar and rapper Giggs, while there are instrumental contributions from Peter Gabriel, ...
XL Recordings boss Richard Russell has revealed that the self-titled debut album from his collaborative project Everything Is Recorded will be released on February 16.
Guest vocalists include Sampha, Ibeyi, Obongjayar and rapper Giggs, while there are instrumental contributions from Peter Gabriel, Damon Albarn, Kamasi Washington, Owen Pallett and Rachel Zeffira of Cat’s Eyes.
Hear Everything Is Recorded‘s new song Bloodshot Eyes, featuring Infinite and Green Gartside, below:
Russell has also announced the collective’s debut live show, at the abandoned Savoy Cinema in Dalston, London, on February 15. It will feature Sampha, Ibeyi, Infinite, Obongjayar, Rachel Zeffira, Warren Ellis and more.
Yo La Tengo have shared four tracks from their new album, There’s A Riot Going On.
The album will be released on March 16 on Matador Records and can be pre-ordered here.
The four songs are “You Are Here”, “Shades Of Blue”, “She May, She Might” and “Out Of The Pool”.
The trackl...
Yo La Tengo have shared four tracks from their new album, There’s A Riot Going On.
The album will be released on March 16 on Matador Records and can be pre-ordered here.
The four songs are “You Are Here”, “Shades Of Blue”, “She May, She Might” and “Out Of The Pool”.
The tracklisting for the album is:
You Are Here
Shades Of Blue
She May, She Might
For You Too
Ashes
Polynesia #1
Dream Dream Away
Shortwave
Above The Sound
Let’s Do It Wrong
What Chance Have I Got
Esportes Casual
Forever
Out Of The Pool
Here You Are
Just in case you missed the reveal earlier in the week, there's a new issue of Uncut on sale today - you can read more about it by clicking here.
In the meantime, here are some highlights from another strong week for new music. In terms of new discoveries, I really like Haley Heynderickx song, whic...
Just in case you missed the reveal earlier in the week, there’s a new issue of Uncut on sale today – you can read more about it by clicking here.
In the meantime, here are some highlights from another strong week for new music. In terms of new discoveries, I really like Haley Heynderickx song, which has shades of both Sharon Van Etten and Jeff Buckley, as well as Mint Field, who have an agreeable Mazzy Star fuzz to them. There’s righteous post-punk vibes from Bas Jan and Shopping; welcome returns in their respective spheres for Graham Coxon, Gwenno and Young Fathers; Teenage Fanclub drummer Francis MacDonald‘s neo-classical project continues to grow; Tracey Thorn gets on her disco shoes.
More next week. Oh, and did I say the new issue of Uncut was now on sale..?
This month's long-awaited, all-analogue vinyl remaster of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless is not the end of the story for the band's legendary 1991 album.
In this month's Uncut - on sale from January 18 - bandleader Kevin Shields reveals his plans for an "ultimate version" of Loveless: "Three songs ...
This month’s long-awaited, all-analogue vinyl remaster of My Bloody Valentine‘s Loveless is not the end of the story for the band’s legendary 1991 album.
In this month’s Uncut – on sale from January 18 – bandleader Kevin Shields reveals his plans for an “ultimate version” of Loveless: “Three songs a side… that’s the next challenge!”
A landmark of songwriting and sonic adventure, Loveless didn’t come cheap. As Shields and his fellow bandmates Colm Ó Cíosóig, Debbie Googe and Bilinda Butcher recall, this was a recording plagued by poverty, illness and a commitment to “plough through hell”.
“How many studios did we work in? 25 I think,” says Shields. “It nearly sank us, to be honest.”
Yet simply trying to remaster the album for vinyl caused almost as many issues. “The number of stupid things that happened trying to get these records out is unbelievable,” says Shields, recounting the time a courier got lost delivering a new cut of the album. “He had to be rescued by a tractor, which had to be rescued by another tractor.
“We did over a year’s worth of test pressings. It was a crazy process. It’s not over.”
From Amsterdam, via squats, haunted studios and desert festivals, we tell the definitive story of this groundbreaking band and their visionary songwriter. “I still can’t really figure out what it is that Kevin does,” says Paul Weller. “But I know something: only he can do it.”
The issue also features a rundown of Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums – from Lou Reed to Ty Segall – while our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including the Valentines, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.
Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas.
To celebrate what would have been George Harrison's 75th birthday next month, the 2002 tribute event Concert For George is being reissued in multiple formats on February 23.
Featuring performances by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Joe Brown, Dhani Harrison, Jools Holland, Jef...
To celebrate what would have been George Harrison‘s 75th birthday next month, the 2002 tribute event Concert For George is being reissued in multiple formats on February 23.
Featuring performances by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Joe Brown, Dhani Harrison, Jools Holland, Jeff Lynne, Billy Preston, and Ravi and Anoushka Shankar, the concert will be available in 2xCD (with or without DVD or Blu-Ray options), 4xLP and deluxe box set editions.
The latter includes 4xLPs, 2xCDs, 2xDVD and Blu-Ray, plus a 60-page book and a cutting from the original hand-painted on-stage tapestry used as the backdrop at the Royal Albert Hall.
The deluxe box set (limited to 1000 copies worldwide) can be pre-ordered here. The regular versions can be pre-ordered here.
The End Of The F***ing World is an acclaimed teen drama series, currently streaming on Netflix. Blur's Graham Coxon wrote the score as well as a number of new songs for the project.
You can hear one of them, Walking All Day, below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMDkemefjxk&feature=youtu.be
...
The End Of The F***ing World is an acclaimed teen drama series, currently streaming on Netflix. Blur’s Graham Coxon wrote the score as well as a number of new songs for the project.
You can hear one of them, Walking All Day, below:
The best of Coxon‘s music for the show will be released as a 16-track digital album on January 26, with a vinyl edition to follow in March. You can pre-order the album here.
March 9 sees the release of Jimi Hendrix's Both Sides Of The Sky, the final volume in a trilogy of albums "intended to present the best and most significant unissued studio recordings remaining in Jimi Hendrix’s archive".
Among the ten previously unreleased tracks is a version of Muddy Waters' bl...
March 9 sees the release of Jimi Hendrix‘s Both Sides Of The Sky, the final volume in a trilogy of albums “intended to present the best and most significant unissued studio recordings remaining in Jimi Hendrix’s archive”.
Among the ten previously unreleased tracks is a version of Muddy Waters‘ blues standard Mannish Boy, recorded by Band Of Gypsys (Billy Cox and Buddy Miles) at the Record Plant in New York on April 22, 1969. Hear it below:
