Can’t hang around today as deadline hassle mounts, but lots to listen to here: an Atoms For Peace mix, something from Nicolas Jaar’s fine new Darkside project, a precious and ancient demo from Roddy Frame, a remix from The Avalanches, and my favourite track from Light In The Attic’s New Age comp, among other things.
Bjork is set to release bastards, an album featuring remixed versions of songs from her most recent LP, Biophilia.
bastards will come out on November 19 on her label One Little Indian and includes reworkings of Biophilia tracks by Death Grips, Hudson Mohawke, These New Puritans, Omar Souleyman and more. The remixes were previously released as part of an eight-part series.
John Murry first entered Uncut airspace in 2006 with World Without End, the bleakly brilliant album of country death songs he wrote and recorded with Bob Frank. Six years on, Murry has just released his first solo album, The Graceless Age, an album of almost symphonic emotional turmoil, co-produced by late American Music Club drummer Tim Mooney. The songs on the record deal sometimes explicitly with Murry’s heroin addiction, specifically the 10-minute ‘Little Coloured Balloons’, a harrowing account of a near-fatal OD. I reviewed The Graceless Age for the current issue of Uncut and emailed Murry some questions, to which he replied in detail and at illuminating length, as you will see from the fascinating transcript that follows.
Following music on Twitter, it sometimes feels as if a hyped album or a track is listened to for, at best, six hours now before it becomes in some way obsolete: if it’s not trending, it must be passé.
The new April issue of Uncut, out now, features David Bowie peering from the cover in his guise as sleazy space-star Ziggy Stardust. To celebrate this look at Bowie’s greatest creation 40 years on, here’s a fantastic piece from Uncut’s 18th issue, in November 1998, in which Chris Roberts looks back at the glammed-up, transgressive superstars who changed his adolescent world.
Hiss Golden Messenger
Slaughtered Lamb, London
“I’ll do my best to put you in a trance here,” says Michael Taylor, aka Hiss Golden Messenger, as he tweaks and tunes his guitar at the start of tonight’s Club Uncut show. This is Taylor’s third London show in a week, including an in-store performance at Rough Trade on Saturday. Clearly, he’s on a roll.
After last week’s kind of dutiful list, some better things on this one, I think. Headline news, I guess, is the arrival of the Avey Tare album, though I’m also very taken with the new single from Forest Swords, and of course the much-needed official reissue of Peter Walker’s debut.
A funny year for music so far, personally speaking. It seems that, despite the many albums I’ve liked, there have been a good few that’ve been, one way or another, kind of disappointing: albums I’ve looked forward to very much, then neurotically restrained myself from writing about, due to my self-imposed rule about negative criticism generally wasting time and space. There’s still too much stuff to enthuse about, after all.
