Over the past year or so, the Drag City label have quietly embarked on a series of reissues whose provenance is so obscure that I’ve briefly suspected them of being exquisite fakes: my favourite reissue of this year, Suarasama’s “Fajar Di Atas Awan” from Sumatra; the incredible Gary Higgins album; JT IV and so on.
There's not too much that's ironic about Metallica, but the band's terrific Reading Festival performance on Sunday night illustrates that such ironies do still exist. The main one is essentially this: here is a huge band that will go to extraordinarily complex lengths to give the appearance of keeping things simple, just like a small band would.
A tremendous amount of proofreading this afternoon, and we haven't had much time to go through new releases, or write proper blogs. So here are the 36 songs that have just been played on John Robinson's bulging iPod. One of those shuffle sessions that turn out to work rather well, I reckon...
That time of the week again. Here are the records that we've played over the last day and a bit in the Uncut office. One thing here worth explaining: Retribution Gospel Choir are fronted by Low's Alan Sparhawk and produced by Mark Kozelek.
