Rough Trade Shops is releasing a compilation album of the best music released by the indie label over the past 40 years.
Entitled Recorded At The Automat: The Best of Rough Trade Records, the album, which is released March 23, will cover the early years of Rough Trade, when Geoff Travis first started the label in 1978, later to be joined by Jeannette Lee. It includes the likes of Swell Maps, Robert Wyatt, The Fall, The Raincoats, The Smiths, The Strokes, the Libertines, Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens.
James Blake has won the 2013 Barclaycard Mercury Prize with his album Overgrown.
The album, his second, was picked above competition from Arctic Monkeys, Disclosure, Villagers, Rudimental and David Bowie and the bookies favourite Laura Mvula. Upon winning the award, the 22nd Mercury Prize, he delivered a short speech, and said: "Thank you to my parents for showing me the importance of being independent."
Apologies for the service interruption last week. I returned to the office yesterday to find a bunch of new things, not least the immense new Sun Araw, which on first listen sounded more or less one of the best things I’ve heard this year – though it might’ve been because it’s music so perfectly suited to this serious heat.
A bumper list this week, as the 2009 releases start arriving in the Uncut office. Not everything here is going down ecstatically, but a first listen to the new Fennesz album today suggests that one was well worth waiting for. In the continuing absence of those My Bloody Valentine reissues, let alone any unreleased material from Kevin Shields’ archives, “Black Sea” really deserves to bring Christian Fennesz to a wider audience, I think.
