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We want your questions for Smokey Robinson

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As he begins work on his new album, Duets due for release next year, Smokey Robinson is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular Audience With… feature. So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask the legendary singer? What does he remember about living next door to Diana Ross as a child? Who are his favourite Motown artists? What are his memories of writing "Tears Of A Clown" with Stevie Wonder? Send up your questions by noon, Wednesday, September 11 to uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com. The best questions, and Smokey's answers, will be published in a future edition of Uncut magazine. Please include your name and location with your question.

As he begins work on his new album, Duets due for release next year, Smokey Robinson is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular Audience With… feature.

So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask the legendary singer?

What does he remember about living next door to Diana Ross as a child?

Who are his favourite Motown artists?

What are his memories of writing “Tears Of A Clown” with Stevie Wonder?

Send up your questions by noon, Wednesday, September 11 to uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com. The best questions, and Smokey’s answers, will be published in a future edition of Uncut magazine. Please include your name and location with your question.

Arcade Fire debut new single “Reflektor” tonight

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Arcade Fire are to unveil their new single, "Reflektor", tonight [September 9]. The single appeared to leak over the weekend, with Tumblr site Onmimusic posting on Saturday [September 7] what was claimed to be "Reflektor". Since then, all working links to the leak have been taken down. The video f...

Arcade Fire are to unveil their new single, “Reflektor”, tonight [September 9].

The single appeared to leak over the weekend, with Tumblr site Onmimusic posting on Saturday [September 7] what was claimed to be “Reflektor“. Since then, all working links to the leak have been taken down.

The video for “Reflektor” has been directed by Anton Corbijn.

The track is taken from the band’s fourth album, which has been produced by James Murphy.

According to reports in The Sun newspaper, David Bowie features on a track after it was reported yesterday that he had joined the band and former LCD Soundsystem man James Murphy in recording sessions at New York’s Electric Lady studios. Whilst Bowie is known to be a fan of the group and once performed ‘Wake Up’ with them, representatives for Arcade Fire have stated they can “neither confirm nor deny” the rumours.

Meanwhile, Arcade Fire reportedly debuted a host of new songs at an intimate surprise set at a Montreal salsa bar last Wednesday [September 4]. Local website The Main reported that the band played to a “couple dozen” fans at the Salsatheque venue, who were told they would be removed from the venue if they attempted to record or take pictures of the gig on their cameraphones.

The Main described the ‘standout’ song of the short set as: “Imagine the Talking Heads’ ‘Once In A Lifetime’, but if David Bowie had written it while on vacation.” They added that the all-new-material set “was unexpectedly dance-oriented, due to the upbeat rhythms of conga drums and electronic flourishes alongside their most poppy sounds.”

Marc Bolan At The BBC: Radio Sessions And Broadcasts 1967-77

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Six disc document of Bolan's evolution... The treasure trove of classic rock material recorded for the BBC has become a key part of the vintage reissue catalogue. But few artists possessed a destiny so intertwined with Auntie Beeb that it could produce a six-CD box set. As the excellent Mark Paytress liner notes – designed to look like early ‘70s ‘inkie’ music press coverage – explain at length, this is largely down to the extraordinary relationship between former Stoke Newington mod Marc Feld and laconic Liverpudlian hippy music crusader John Peel, which coincided with the launch of Radio One in September 1967. Peel’s promotion of his androgynous, elfin, rockabilly-loving friend on the alternative margins of The BBC’s new pop channel was so persistent that, at one point on this fascinating set, Peel feels compelled to make an on-air denial of the rumours that he has a financial stake in Bolan’s success. Famously, the pair fell out abruptly and terminally as Bolan made the transition from underground purveyor of Tolkien-esque acoustic whimsy to pop star so huge that he invented a genre – glam-rock – and caused scenes of teen hysteria so uncontrolled that Britain’s tabloids routinely compared ‘T.Rextasy’ to Beatlemania. The music that made this phenomenon is all here. But what makes Marc Bolan At The BBC a great box set is that, through live shows, interviews and even oddly barbed announcements of T.Rex tracks, it tells the story of Bolan’s rise, fall and tragically terminated redemption in the manner of a good documentary. The first two discs document the struggle of an ambitious, prolific writer of inspired hippy gibberish to find an audience beyond a relatively small coterie of ‘freaks’. Discs three and four place the glory of one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll noises ever created within the context of Bolan’s often startling hubris, pretentiousness and defensiveness when faced with an interviewer. And the final two discs chart a genuinely depressing creative decline, yet more hubris, increasing disrespect from BBC voices and the beginnings of a humble, self-mocking comeback before a car-crash at Barnes Common deprived us of a unique figure in British music. Whether this is the cunning agenda of compiler Clive Zone is unclear. But the story is so vivid that there’s absolutely no need for a narrator. For Bolan fans hungry for new music, the first two discs are the treasure trove. Kicking off with five tracks from Bolan’s strange Simon Napier-Bell-instigated stint as songwriter-guitarist with proto-punk troublemakers John’s Children, the abrupt switch just four months later to the mystical acoustica of the Tyrannosaurus Rex partnership with bongo player Steve Peregrine Took possesses a breathtaking chutzpah, and flags up Bolan’s ability to make abrupt U-turns that worked. Through sessions, concerts and even a poetry recital or two, the base Bolan elements take shape and coalesce into something increasingly special; the rockabilly themes of cars and girls reinterpreted through a personal mythology of meetings with wizards and bucolic imagery, with the generation gap between square adults and The Kids presented as a kind of metaphorical netherworld; a Middle-Earth of star-children prancing carefree to the funky strums and crackling vocals of Pied Piper Marc. By the time Mickey Finn replaced Took in late 1969, electric guitar is making its first tentative appearance, and songs like “Fist Heart Mighty Dawn Dart” and “By The Light Of The Magical Moon” are becoming a new kind of pop music, reaching for the James Burton licks, proper drums and Tolkien-meets-Little Richard teen poetry that finally changed everything for Bolan with the success of the “Ride A White Swan” single in October 1970. Many of the tracks covering the 1971-72 imperial phase here are simply the Tony Visconti-produced studio backing tracks with Bolan overdubbing new guitar and vocals. They show off what a pro Bolan was in even the most rudimentary studio situation, but, in the end, just sound like more sonically muffled versions of the superior originals. It’s the interviews that become increasingly fascinating, as even the most friendly question about the possibility that Bolan has lost the support of his underground audience is met with increasingly lofty pronouncements where he compares himself to Dylan and Hendrix, defines himself as a best-selling poet, suggests that both critics and old fans are too thick to understand the complex political messages hidden in lines like “She’s faster than most and she lives on the coast, uh-huh-huh.” Marc Bolan At The BBC lays this story bare, and, as well as thrilling you with at least four discs-worth of great music, feels like the most poignant release of Bolan’s posthumous career; a sad, frustrating unmade movie about a doomed rock star. But the soundtrack is a thriller. Garry Mulholland Q&A BOB HARRIS How did you first meet Bolan? It was at John Peel’s basement flat in Fulham in late 1967. I went round to interview John for a student magazine called Unit, so I was meeting him for the first time, too. Marc looked amazing, with his corkscrew hair and silk trousers, sitting on the carpet cross-legged strumming an acoustic guitar. It was the trigger moment for a great friendship with both of them. You went on to compere throughout the legendary T.Rextasy tour in early 1971… Yes. It was bedlam. At the first gig in Portsmouth there were hundreds of kids waiting outside afterwards. We went out through this corridor formed by policemen and all the girls were waving scissors around, trying to get locks of Marc’s hair. I was behind him so the blades of these scissors were coming at me at exactly eye-level. It was completely unexpected for Marc but very exciting. For the rest of the tour we were in the cars and gone while the last note was still resonating. Was the sudden change from cult-hippy Tyrannosaurus Rex to teen-glam T. Rex contrived ambition or natural progression? A combination of the two. The most important element was that Marc’s music was always underpinned by his enormous love for and knowledge of early rock ‘n’ roll. You get to “Ride A White Swan” – the turning point – and its exactly halfway between what “Deborah” was and what “Get It On” was going to become.’ The Bolan At The Beeb booklet reveals your take on the abrupt end of the Bolan/Peel relationship. Maybe it wasn’t Marc’s hubris after all… No. John wrote a hurtful review of T.Rex in Disc And Music Echo magazine. But John had a track record of doing this. Not long after I started on Whistle Test in 1970 he stopped talking to me, and didn’t until I started doing the country show on Radio 2 in 1998. He never explained why. INTERVIEW: GARRY MULHOLLAND

Six disc document of Bolan’s evolution…

The treasure trove of classic rock material recorded for the BBC has become a key part of the vintage reissue catalogue. But few artists possessed a destiny so intertwined with Auntie Beeb that it could produce a six-CD box set. As the excellent Mark Paytress liner notes – designed to look like early ‘70s ‘inkie’ music press coverage – explain at length, this is largely down to the extraordinary relationship between former Stoke Newington mod Marc Feld and laconic Liverpudlian hippy music crusader John Peel, which coincided with the launch of Radio One in September 1967. Peel’s promotion of his androgynous, elfin, rockabilly-loving friend on the alternative margins of The BBC’s new pop channel was so persistent that, at one point on this fascinating set, Peel feels compelled to make an on-air denial of the rumours that he has a financial stake in Bolan’s success.

Famously, the pair fell out abruptly and terminally as Bolan made the transition from underground purveyor of Tolkien-esque acoustic whimsy to pop star so huge that he invented a genre – glam-rock – and caused scenes of teen hysteria so uncontrolled that Britain’s tabloids routinely compared ‘T.Rextasy’ to Beatlemania.

The music that made this phenomenon is all here. But what makes Marc Bolan At The BBC a great box set is that, through live shows, interviews and even oddly barbed announcements of T.Rex tracks, it tells the story of Bolan’s rise, fall and tragically terminated redemption in the manner of a good documentary.

The first two discs document the struggle of an ambitious, prolific writer of inspired hippy gibberish to find an audience beyond a relatively small coterie of ‘freaks’. Discs three and four place the glory of one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll noises ever created within the context of Bolan’s often startling hubris, pretentiousness and defensiveness when faced with an interviewer. And the final two discs chart a genuinely depressing creative decline, yet more hubris, increasing disrespect from BBC voices and the beginnings of a humble, self-mocking comeback before a car-crash at Barnes Common deprived us of a unique figure in British music. Whether this is the cunning agenda of compiler Clive Zone is unclear. But the story is so vivid that there’s absolutely no need for a narrator.

For Bolan fans hungry for new music, the first two discs are the treasure trove. Kicking off with five tracks from Bolan’s strange Simon Napier-Bell-instigated stint as songwriter-guitarist with proto-punk troublemakers John’s Children, the abrupt switch just four months later to the mystical acoustica of the Tyrannosaurus Rex partnership with bongo player Steve Peregrine Took possesses a breathtaking chutzpah, and flags up Bolan’s ability to make abrupt U-turns that worked. Through sessions, concerts and even a poetry recital or two, the base Bolan elements take shape and coalesce into something increasingly special; the rockabilly themes of cars and girls reinterpreted through a personal mythology of meetings with wizards and bucolic imagery, with the generation gap between square adults and The Kids presented as a kind of metaphorical netherworld; a Middle-Earth of star-children prancing carefree to the funky strums and crackling vocals of Pied Piper Marc.

By the time Mickey Finn replaced Took in late 1969, electric guitar is making its first tentative appearance, and songs like “Fist Heart Mighty Dawn Dart” and “By The Light Of The Magical Moon” are becoming a new kind of pop music, reaching for the James Burton licks, proper drums and Tolkien-meets-Little Richard teen poetry that finally changed everything for Bolan with the success of the “Ride A White Swan” single in October 1970.

Many of the tracks covering the 1971-72 imperial phase here are simply the Tony Visconti-produced studio backing tracks with Bolan overdubbing new guitar and vocals. They show off what a pro Bolan was in even the most rudimentary studio situation, but, in the end, just sound like more sonically muffled versions of the superior originals. It’s the interviews that become increasingly fascinating, as even the most friendly question about the possibility that Bolan has lost the support of his underground audience is met with increasingly lofty pronouncements where he compares himself to Dylan and Hendrix, defines himself as a best-selling poet, suggests that both critics and old fans are too thick to understand the complex political messages hidden in lines like “She’s faster than most and she lives on the coast, uh-huh-huh.”

Marc Bolan At The BBC lays this story bare, and, as well as thrilling you with at least four discs-worth of great music, feels like the most poignant release of Bolan’s posthumous career; a sad, frustrating unmade movie about a doomed rock star. But the soundtrack is a thriller.

Garry Mulholland

Q&A

BOB HARRIS

How did you first meet Bolan?

It was at John Peel’s basement flat in Fulham in late 1967. I went round to interview John for a student magazine called Unit, so I was meeting him for the first time, too. Marc looked amazing, with his corkscrew hair and silk trousers, sitting on the carpet cross-legged strumming an acoustic guitar. It was the trigger moment for a great friendship with both of them.

You went on to compere throughout the legendary T.Rextasy tour in early 1971…

Yes. It was bedlam. At the first gig in Portsmouth there were hundreds of kids waiting outside afterwards. We went out through this corridor formed by policemen and all the girls were waving scissors around, trying to get locks of Marc’s hair. I was behind him so the blades of these scissors were coming at me at exactly eye-level. It was completely unexpected for Marc but very exciting. For the rest of the tour we were in the cars and gone while the last note was still resonating.

Was the sudden change from cult-hippy Tyrannosaurus Rex to teen-glam T. Rex contrived ambition or natural progression?

A combination of the two. The most important element was that Marc’s music was always underpinned by his enormous love for and knowledge of early rock ‘n’ roll. You get to “Ride A White Swan” – the turning point – and its exactly halfway between what “Deborah” was and what “Get It On” was going to become.’

The Bolan At The Beeb booklet reveals your take on the abrupt end of the Bolan/Peel relationship. Maybe it wasn’t Marc’s hubris after all…

No. John wrote a hurtful review of T.Rex in Disc And Music Echo magazine. But John had a track record of doing this. Not long after I started on Whistle Test in 1970 he stopped talking to me, and didn’t until I started doing the country show on Radio 2 in 1998. He never explained why.

INTERVIEW: GARRY MULHOLLAND

Watch Pixies debut new songs live

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The Pixies debuted a number of new songs at a surprise show at the Echo in Los Angeles on Friday [September 6]. The band are due to begin their world tour tonight [September 9]. According to Slicing Up Eyeballs, the band played six new songs, among them "Bagboy" and three songs - "Another Toe", "W...

The Pixies debuted a number of new songs at a surprise show at the Echo in Los Angeles on Friday [September 6].

The band are due to begin their world tour tonight [September 9].

According to Slicing Up Eyeballs, the band played six new songs, among them “Bagboy” and three songs – “Another Toe”, “What Goes Boom” and “Indie Cindy” – from EP-1, which the band released last week.

The Pixies also played two unreleased songs, reportedly called “Blue Eyed Hexe” and “Greens and Blues”.

It was the band’s first show in nearly two years, and their first to feature new bassist, Kim Shattuck of The Muffs, who replaced Kim Deal.

“Blue Eyed Hexe” and “Greens and Blues”

“What Goes Boom”

“Another Toe In The Ocean”

“Bagboy”

Neil Young prepping latest Archives release

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Neil Young is to release the latest instalment of his Archives series before the end of this year. According to a report on Vintage Vinyl News, Young will release Live At the Cellar Door 1970. The recording is taken from six shows Young played at The Cellar Door, Washington, DC on November 30, and...

Neil Young is to release the latest instalment of his Archives series before the end of this year.

According to a report on Vintage Vinyl News, Young will release Live At the Cellar Door 1970.

The recording is taken from six shows Young played at The Cellar Door, Washington, DC on November 30, and December 1 and 2, 1970.

Previous stand-alone releases in the Archives series have included Live At The Fillmore East 1970 (with Crazy Horse), Sugar Mountain: Live At Canterbury House 1968 and Massey Hall 1971.

A release date of September 6, 2013 had originally been reported; although a revised date suggests the album is now due for November.

Neil Young fansite Thrasher’s Wheat has posted the following tracklisting:

On The Way Home

Tell Me Why

Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Old Man

Down By The River

After The Gold Rush

Expecting To Fly

Flying On The Ground Is Wrong

Bad Fog Of Loneliness

See The Sky About To Rain

Kurt Vile to release new collaborative EP with Sore Eros

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Kurt Vile has announced a new EP in collaboration with Sore Eros, Pitchfork reports. The three-track record - called Jamaica Plain - will feature material recorded in the early 2000s, when Vile was still working as a forklift truck driver before he signed a record deal with the Matador label. Cre...

Kurt Vile has announced a new EP in collaboration with Sore Eros, Pitchfork reports.

The three-track record – called Jamaica Plain – will feature material recorded in the early 2000s, when Vile was still working as a forklift truck driver before he signed a record deal with the Matador label.

Created in collaboration with Sore Eros – aka Robert Robinson, who was once a member of Vile’s band The Violators – the tracks were recorded in Vile’s hometown of Philadelphia and in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Last month, Vile was presented with the Liberty Bell Award after it was announced August 28 would be named Kurt Vile Day in Philadelphia. The award is the highest honour the city can bestow upon one of its citizens and is only eligible to be received by natives of the area. It is presented in recognition of outstanding professional achievements and civic generosity. Vile was born in Philadelphia in 1980 and is known for his love of the city.

The Jamaica Plain EP will be released on November 4 and will be available as a 10″ and digital download. The tracklisting is as follows:

‘Jamaica Plain’

‘Serum’

‘Calling Out Of Work’

Kurt Vile returns to the UK in December for a six-date tour. Vile will play the following dates:

London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire (Dec 11)

Leeds Brudenell Social Club (13)

Manchester Academy 2 (14)

Glasgow Arches (15)

Bristol Fleece (16)

Brighton Concorde 2 (17)

John Lennon reveals “hell” of recording Let It Be in lost interview

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A lost, decades-old interview with John Lennon sees the singer reveal that recording Let It Be was "hell". As the Telegraph reports, the audio interview – with Village Voice journalist Howard Smith – was recorded shortly after The Beatles had finished work on the 1969 studio album. However, it lay forgotten in Smith's attic for nearly four decades but will now be put up for sale by RR Auction. In the interview, Lennon – who was speaking to Smith along with his wife, Yoko Ono – says of working on the record: "We were going through hell. We often do. It's torture every time we produce anything. The Beatles haven't got any magic you haven't got. We suffer like hell anytime we make anything, and we got each other to contend with. Imagine working with The Beatles, it's tough." He added: "There's just tension. It's tense every time the red light goes on." Lennon, who also described the LP as a "strange album", continued: "We never really finished it. We didn't really want to do it. Paul was hustling for us to do it. It's The Beatles with their suits off." RR Auction vice president Bobby Livingston said that the tape had a minimum bid price of $300, but estimated that it could reach between $5,000 and $10,000. It is just one of 100 Beatles-related items that will go under the hammer of their Marvels Of Modern Music memorabilia sale. "It's a frank and honest interview from one of the most revered musicians and activists of all time," he said.

A lost, decades-old interview with John Lennon sees the singer reveal that recording Let It Be was “hell”.

As the Telegraph reports, the audio interview – with Village Voice journalist Howard Smith – was recorded shortly after The Beatles had finished work on the 1969 studio album. However, it lay forgotten in Smith’s attic for nearly four decades but will now be put up for sale by RR Auction.

In the interview, Lennon – who was speaking to Smith along with his wife, Yoko Ono – says of working on the record: “We were going through hell. We often do. It’s torture every time we produce anything. The Beatles haven’t got any magic you haven’t got. We suffer like hell anytime we make anything, and we got each other to contend with. Imagine working with The Beatles, it’s tough.”

He added: “There’s just tension. It’s tense every time the red light goes on.” Lennon, who also described the LP as a “strange album”, continued: “We never really finished it. We didn’t really want to do it. Paul was hustling for us to do it. It’s The Beatles with their suits off.”

RR Auction vice president Bobby Livingston said that the tape had a minimum bid price of $300, but estimated that it could reach between $5,000 and $10,000. It is just one of 100 Beatles-related items that will go under the hammer of their Marvels Of Modern Music memorabilia sale. “It’s a frank and honest interview from one of the most revered musicians and activists of all time,” he said.

Stephen Stills confirms CSNY appearance at Bridge School concert

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Stephen Stills has confirmed that CSNY will perform at this year's Bridge School Benefit concerts. In an interview in the Boston Globe, Stills says, "We’re doing the Bridge School Benefit with Neil at the end of October so I will see everybody then. But we were on the road for 18 months, me and D...

Stephen Stills has confirmed that CSNY will perform at this year’s Bridge School Benefit concerts.

In an interview in the Boston Globe, Stills says, “We’re doing the Bridge School Benefit with Neil at the end of October so I will see everybody then. But we were on the road for 18 months, me and David and Graham, so we’re having a little vacation.”

Neil Young has recently cancelled dates on the latest tour with Crazy Horse due to an ongoing injury to guitarist Poncho Sampedro’s hand.

Young has also unveiled plans for his Pono audio service, which is due to launch in 2014.

Stills and Young’s bandmate, David Crosby confirmed details of his new album earlier this week on Twitter.

Meanwhile, CSNY are working on a set of their 1974 live tour, which has been has been delayed until next year.

We want your questions for Howe Gelb

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As he releases his new album The Coincidentalist, the legendary Howe Gelb is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular Audience With… feature. So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask the alt.country guru? How did Calexico end up becoming his backing band? What does he remember about working with PJ Harvey on Giant Sand's Cover Magazine album? What are his memories of the music scene in Tuscon in the late 1970s? Send up your questions by noon, Tuesday, September 10 to uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com. The best questions, and Howe's answers, will be published in a future edition of Uncut magazine. Please include your name and location with your question.

As he releases his new album The Coincidentalist, the legendary Howe Gelb is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular Audience With… feature.

So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask the alt.country guru?

How did Calexico end up becoming his backing band?

What does he remember about working with PJ Harvey on Giant Sand‘s Cover Magazine album?

What are his memories of the music scene in Tuscon in the late 1970s?

Send up your questions by noon, Tuesday, September 10 to uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com. The best questions, and Howe’s answers, will be published in a future edition of Uncut magazine. Please include your name and location with your question.

Julian Cope – Revolutionary Suicide

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Armed with intellectual acumen, the arch druid baits religion - and the Turks... In the same month that the MC5’s Wayne Kramer tells an interviewer that “embracing violence as a viable political strategy” was “the biggest mistake we made”, Julian Cope – an MC5 fan and John Sinclair scholar – releases an album with an AK-47 flaunted on the cover and a quote from Les Rallizes Dénudés inside: “Sometimes you have a guitar. Sometimes you arm yourself.” Reading the booklet, we find a block of text printed above the word ‘Kalashnikov’, asking if the time “could be right for suicide”. Faced with this kind of rhetoric, one wonders what kind of endgame Cope envisages. Since his politicisation on Peggy Suicide (1991), Cope’s albums have documented the world around him in indignant polemics and idiosyncratic gonzo verse. Revolutionary Suicide is among his finest recent work, equal parts mission statement and sonic eccentricity, an album produced with one foot on a Mellotron pedal and the other in Lee Perry’s Black Ark. There’s a terrific pop song (“Paradise Mislaid”) about a pair of ex-clubbers regretting that they got married. More beatific melody follows (“In His Cups”) as though Cope has channelled “Sunspots”. The soapbox rag “Mexican Revolution Blues” surrenders to a sublime coda that materialises like a Harold Budd interlude in a Phil Ochs tune. Cope, who performs most of the album himself, has given his listeners plenty to like. But other parts of Revolutionary Suicide are far from blissful. One of his most controversial themes – that Christianity and Islam have no place in an enlightened society – shows signs of hardening into an obsession. The 11-minute “Destroy Religion”, a sound collage featuring bizarre vocalisations and an erratic synthesiser, may not be quite the diatribe one expects from its title, but other songs go much, much further. “Hymn To The Odin” calls for priests to be “erased” and “every mosque” to be felled. Specifically identifying Islam as homophobic and misogynistic, “Why Did The Chicken Cross My Mind?” attacks liberals who decline to debate the issue, implying that they’re no better than Neville Chamberlain backing out of a confrontation with Hitler. Cope’s criticism of Islam is some of the most outspoken to come from a public figure – while at the same time being lucid and in no way open to misinterpretation. The song is an open address to an entire religion. If it circulates beyond his usual fanbase, it’s anyone’s guess what might happen. Those jaw-dropping sentiments are followed by “The Armenian Genocide”, lasting just over a quarter of an hour, in which Cope excoriates modern-day Turkey for refusing to recognise the crimes of the Ottoman Empire. Adopting the character of an Armenian traveller caught up in the death marches of 1915, Cope is initially implausible as he recounts the tale of a brutal mass starvation while strumming four simple chords over and over. But then something extraordinary happens. He may not have the accent for it, let alone the personal experience, but he has knowledge and outrage on his side. He adds more and more musical ingredients to the mix, symbolically mirroring the desecrations heaped on the marchers at each stage of their route, and our disbelief is suspended long before his narrative unfolds into a 20th century catastrophe. Reiterating a one-word humanitarian mantra (“people...”) for minutes on end, this intensely moving song points a bony finger at the world’s conscience and demands the ratification that Armenians have awaited for a century. Cope has, in the space of two very different pieces lasting a combined 24 minutes, shown himself to be compassionate, erudite, condemnatory and shockingly unafraid of whom he angers. In 2007, Cope released an album called You Gotta Problem With Me. Nobody did have a problem with him, because he was preaching to the converted. But that album title may prove prophetic. An outsider in every sense now, Cope has described himself as a “shaman standing on the edge of whatever is current”. Protest singers write about the news, and Revolutionary Suicide brings Cope’s shamanic reportage into the sharpest possible focus. It asks us to accept that Cope is not just clever (“Mao and Nixon sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G-E-R”) but intellectually correct. It asks us to explain what we defend, and why. It asks what precisely we want, and how much we can sanction, from Julian Cope. David Cavanagh Q&A What do you mean by revolutionary suicide? The album is named after [Black Panther leader] Huey Newton’s autobiography. Huey Newton made this really important comment. He said that all revolutionaries are doomed. I take him to mean doomed in the ancient sense of ‘judgment’ – as in the Domesday Book. What is revolutionary suicide? For me, it’s Hunter S. Thompson, a practitioner of Western thought to the max, who did all he could and quit honourably [i.e. committed suicide]. It’s the idea of ultimate freedom. In a secular country, where we’re all supposed to be our own Pope, surely we can also be our own hangman if it gets too much? You mention Peggy Suicide in your sleevenotes. Are the two albums connected in your mind? They both recognise what I call atavisms. Revolutionary Suicide reconfirms the links to everything that I value. I’m really on the same riff as ever, but now I’m saying I’m armed and extremely dangerous. I’ve got extra information. I don’t have to be fearful of using an alarmist symbol like the AK-47, because I know that the AK-47 stands for freedom, so much so that it appears on the flag of Mozambique. You end the album with an 11-minute song called “Destroy Religion”. Everyone’ll be going, ‘Oh, he’s slagging off religion again,’ but I just thought it was an opportunity to say it the best way. And the best way is doing it like Amon Düül I with William Blake on lead vocals. It’s true that I find all these cultures wanting – but remember, I find our culture more wanting than any of them. I’m somebody who found Christianity wanting for the first 11 years of my career. Then, when I learned more, I found the other religions wanting too. INTERVIEW: DAVID CAVANAGH

Armed with intellectual acumen, the arch druid baits religion – and the Turks…

In the same month that the MC5’s Wayne Kramer tells an interviewer that “embracing violence as a viable political strategy” was “the biggest mistake we made”, Julian Cope – an MC5 fan and John Sinclair scholar – releases an album with an AK-47 flaunted on the cover and a quote from Les Rallizes Dénudés inside: “Sometimes you have a guitar. Sometimes you arm yourself.” Reading the booklet, we find a block of text printed above the word ‘Kalashnikov’, asking if the time “could be right for suicide”. Faced with this kind of rhetoric, one wonders what kind of endgame Cope envisages.

Since his politicisation on Peggy Suicide (1991), Cope’s albums have documented the world around him in indignant polemics and idiosyncratic gonzo verse. Revolutionary Suicide is among his finest recent work, equal parts mission statement and sonic eccentricity, an album produced with one foot on a Mellotron pedal and the other in Lee Perry’s Black Ark. There’s a terrific pop song (“Paradise Mislaid”) about a pair of ex-clubbers regretting that they got married. More beatific melody follows (“In His Cups”) as though Cope has channelled “Sunspots”. The soapbox rag “Mexican Revolution Blues” surrenders to a sublime coda that materialises like a Harold Budd interlude in a Phil Ochs tune. Cope, who performs most of the album himself, has given his listeners plenty to like.

But other parts of Revolutionary Suicide are far from blissful. One of his most controversial themes – that Christianity and Islam have no place in an enlightened society – shows signs of hardening into an obsession. The 11-minute “Destroy Religion”, a sound collage featuring bizarre vocalisations and an erratic synthesiser, may not be quite the diatribe one expects from its title, but other songs go much, much further. “Hymn To The Odin” calls for priests to be “erased” and “every mosque” to be felled. Specifically identifying Islam as homophobic and misogynistic, “Why Did The Chicken Cross My Mind?” attacks liberals who decline to debate the issue, implying that they’re no better than Neville Chamberlain backing out of a confrontation with Hitler. Cope’s criticism of Islam is some of the most outspoken to come from a public figure – while at the same time being lucid and in no way open to misinterpretation. The song is an open address to an entire religion. If it circulates beyond his usual fanbase, it’s anyone’s guess what might happen.

Those jaw-dropping sentiments are followed by “The Armenian Genocide”, lasting just over a quarter of an hour, in which Cope excoriates modern-day Turkey for refusing to recognise the crimes of the Ottoman Empire. Adopting the character of an Armenian traveller caught up in the death marches of 1915, Cope is initially implausible as he recounts the tale of a brutal mass starvation while strumming four simple chords over and over. But then something extraordinary happens. He may not have the accent for it, let alone the personal experience, but he has knowledge and outrage on his side. He adds more and more musical ingredients to the mix, symbolically mirroring the desecrations heaped on the marchers at each stage of their route, and our disbelief is suspended long before his narrative unfolds into a 20th century catastrophe. Reiterating a one-word humanitarian mantra (“people…”) for minutes on end, this intensely moving song points a bony finger at the world’s conscience and demands the ratification that Armenians have awaited for a century. Cope has, in the space of two very different pieces lasting a combined 24 minutes, shown himself to be compassionate, erudite, condemnatory and shockingly unafraid of whom he angers.

In 2007, Cope released an album called You Gotta Problem With Me. Nobody did have a problem with him, because he was preaching to the converted. But that album title may prove prophetic. An outsider in every sense now, Cope has described himself as a “shaman standing on the edge of whatever is current”. Protest singers write about the news, and Revolutionary Suicide brings Cope’s shamanic reportage into the sharpest possible focus. It asks us to accept that Cope is not just clever (“Mao and Nixon sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G-E-R”) but intellectually correct. It asks us to explain what we defend, and why. It asks what precisely we want, and how much we can sanction, from Julian Cope.

David Cavanagh

Q&A

What do you mean by revolutionary suicide?

The album is named after [Black Panther leader] Huey Newton’s autobiography. Huey Newton made this really important comment. He said that all revolutionaries are doomed. I take him to mean doomed in the ancient sense of ‘judgment’ – as in the Domesday Book. What is revolutionary suicide? For me, it’s Hunter S. Thompson, a practitioner of Western thought to the max, who did all he could and quit honourably [i.e. committed suicide]. It’s the idea of ultimate freedom. In a secular country, where we’re all supposed to be our own Pope, surely we can also be our own hangman if it gets too much?

You mention Peggy Suicide in your sleevenotes. Are the two albums connected in your mind?

They both recognise what I call atavisms. Revolutionary Suicide reconfirms the links to everything that I value. I’m really on the same riff as ever, but now I’m saying I’m armed and extremely dangerous. I’ve got extra information. I don’t have to be fearful of using an alarmist symbol like the AK-47, because I know that the AK-47 stands for freedom, so much so that it appears on the flag of Mozambique.

You end the album with an 11-minute song called “Destroy Religion”.

Everyone’ll be going, ‘Oh, he’s slagging off religion again,’ but I just thought it was an opportunity to say it the best way. And the best way is doing it like Amon Düül I with William Blake on lead vocals. It’s true that I find all these cultures wanting – but remember, I find our culture more wanting than any of them. I’m somebody who found Christianity wanting for the first 11 years of my career. Then, when I learned more, I found the other religions wanting too.

INTERVIEW: DAVID CAVANAGH

Neil Young plans Pono launch for next year

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Neil Young has confirmed that Pono - his audio service which will provide listeners with downloads of high-resolution songs made to sound like their initial recordings - will finally launch next year. In a post on his Facebook page yesterday [September 5], Young wrote, "I’m very happy to bring yo...

Neil Young has confirmed that Pono – his audio service which will provide listeners with downloads of high-resolution songs made to sound like their initial recordings – will finally launch next year.

In a post on his Facebook page yesterday [September 5], Young wrote, “I’m very happy to bring you some good news. All of us at Team PONO have been focused on getting everything right for our early 2014 launch of Pono.

“The simplest way to describe what we’ve accomplished is that we’ve liberated the music of the artist from the digital file and restored it to its original artistic quality – as it was in the studio. So it has primal power.

“Hearing PONO for the first time is like that first blast of daylight when you leave a movie theater on a sun-filled day. It takes you a second to adjust. Then you enter a bright reality, of wonderfully rendered detail.”

For the project, designed an an alternative to the compressed sound quality of traditional MP3s, Young has already struck a deal with his own label, Warner Music Group, and is reportedly also in talks with Universal Music Group and Sony Music about contributing remastered versions of their catalogues to Pono’s online library of songs.

Arcade Fire’s new track “Reflektor” confirmed for September 9 premiere

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Arcade Fire will be premiering their new track "Reflektor" on Monday of next week. Director Anton Corbijn told The Daily Beast that the band will be unveiling the video for the song on the evening of September 9, saying: "I'm working on a really great song at the moment: Arcade Fire's new single. T...

Arcade Fire will be premiering their new track “Reflektor” on Monday of next week.

Director Anton Corbijn told The Daily Beast that the band will be unveiling the video for the song on the evening of September 9, saying: “I’m working on a really great song at the moment: Arcade Fire’s new single. The song is called ‘Reflektor’ and you’ll be able to see it Monday evening.”

When asked for more details about the video, he added: “I can’t say much more than that, because it’s all a surprise. You’ll have to watch the TV Monday evening.”

This news follows the cryptic trailer titled ‘Reflektor 9/9/9‘, which was posted online yesterday (September 4). The band stated that they would reveal something at 9pm on September 9 with the video again confirming the time and date to viewers. They have previously confirmed they will release a new album on October 29 by replying to a fan on Twitter who wrote “you’re my favourite”.

Queen: “It was all like a fantasy to see how far we could go”

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From the archives, our cover feature from Uncut’s March 2005 issue (Take 94). Brian May and others talk us through Queen's incredible story, right up to their controversial team-up with Paul Rodgers. Words: Jon Wilde / Additional reporting: Nigel Williamson ________________ Queen Halloween,...

From the archives, our cover feature from Uncut’s March 2005 issue (Take 94). Brian May and others talk us through Queen’s incredible story, right up to their controversial team-up with Paul Rodgers. Words: Jon Wilde / Additional reporting: Nigel Williamson

________________

Queen
Queen

Halloween, 1978. Queen are preparing to party on a scale far beyond what might be considered practical, plausible or remotely possible. “Excess all areas” is their credo. Indeed, singer Freddie Mercury lays fair claim to coining the phrase.

On the back of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and subsequent albums (A Night At The Opera, A Day At The Races, News Of The World), Queen have become just about the biggest band on the planet. Not only are they insanely popular, but they’re absurdly wealthy and immoderate: “The Cecil B DeMille of rock,” as Mercury proclaimed.

Mercury has established himself as the ringmaster of Queen’s famed social gatherings. Every one of these is a no-expense-spared Freddie Mercury Production. And, he decides, the launch party for new album Jazz will be the most outrageous in history.

A budget of £200,000 has been decided upon, then conveniently forgotten after Mercury declares: “Fuck the cost, darlings, let us live a little.” A venue has been chosen – The Fairmont, an elegant hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans. A guest list of 500 has been drawn up, including rock and movie stars, friends and loyal journalists. The food and drink is ordered – oysters, lobsters, the world’s finest caviar, vats of Cristal. All that’s left to organise is the entertainment.

According to Bob Gibson, the LA-based publicist in charge of the evening’s festivities: “Freddie decided that he wanted to bring in a lot of street people to liven things up. I was instructed to find anyone vaguely offbeat who might bring a little, ahem, colour to proceedings.”

These include a man who specialises in biting the heads off live chickens and a woman who, for a price somewhere within knocking distance of $100,000, offers to decapitate herself with a chainsaw.

Not for nothing does the party become known as Saturday Night In Sodom. As they enter the hotel, guests are greeted by a troupe of hermaphrodite dwarves serving cocaine from trays strapped to their heads; the coke has been specially imported from Bolivia and quality-checked by Mercury.

Fortified by “lines of marching powder as long and as thick as your grandmother’s arm”, the guests are free to choose from a menu of exotic diversions. The hotel ballrooms, made up to resemble labyrinthine jungle swamps, are swarming with magicians, Zulu tribesmen, contortionists, fire-eaters, drag queens and transsexual strippers. Drinks are served by naked waiters and waitresses who politely request that any tips are placed not on trays but in bodily crevices. Naked dancers cavort in bamboo cages suspended from ballroom ceilings. Nude models of both sexes wrestle in huge baths of shimmering, uncooked liver, while 300lb Samoan women lounge on banquet tables, smoking cigarettes from various orifices. As a bonus, visitors to the hotel’s grand marble bathrooms are orally serviced by prostitutes of both sexes.

“Most hotels offer their guests room service,” quips a passing Mercury. “This one offers them lip service.”

Justin Vernon: “Volcano Choir is here to stay – I don’t think I’ve ever sung like this before”

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Justin Vernon explains that Volcano Choir are “here to stay” in the new issue of Uncut, dated October 2013 and out now. Vernon, better known under his solo alias Bon Iver, is keen to dismiss any ideas people have of the collective, also featuring Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, as a side-pro...

Justin Vernon explains that Volcano Choir are “here to stay” in the new issue of Uncut, dated October 2013 and out now.

Vernon, better known under his solo alias Bon Iver, is keen to dismiss any ideas people have of the collective, also featuring Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, as a side-project.

“It’s been shaping more than anything I’ve done,” he says, “emotionally and [in terms of] reflection and reacting. I don’t think I’ve ever sung like this before.

“It was challenging, but it revealed itself to me, and it was because of these guys. It’s here to stay.”

Vernon has recently wound down Bon Iver for the time being, suggesting that he may not even work under the name in the future.

The new issue of Uncut is out now.

Marcus Mumford and The Vaccines’ Justin Young cover Bob Dylan and Neil Young

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Mumford & Sons' Marcus Mumford and The Vaccines' vocalist Justin Young have recorded a session together, covering songs by both Bob Dylan and Neil Young. The two frontmen teamed up for the Daytrotter website over the weekend. Mumford and Young laid down two tracks, both of them cover versions; Neil Young's 'Like A Hurricane' and Bob Dylan's 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright'. The results of the late night recording session are expected to be aired on the site in October. Of the collaboration, Daytrotter founder Sean Moeller told NME: "It was about 2am in Troy, Ohio, Saturday night, when Marcus plucked Justin out of the waterpark pool on the Stopover grounds – the afterparty was raging 'til 4 am there - to come on up to the un-airconditioned Troy High School auditorium to record 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright' and 'Like A Hurricane', learning them on the spot, while we, along with the exhausted superintendent of the school and his family looked on from the back row. Then we all went to the after-afterparty, smoked cigars, and got twice as smashed at The Leaf & Vine, in a ghostly town square." The session took place following Mumford & Sons' Stopover event in Troy. The Vaccines are currently on the road with the band. Both play Guthrie, Oklahoma this weekend (September 6-7), alongside Haim, Alabama Shakes, Willy Mason, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and more, and the following weekend (September 13-14), they will be joined by Fun, The Walkmen and others in St Augustine, Florida.

Mumford & Sons’ Marcus Mumford and The Vaccines’ vocalist Justin Young have recorded a session together, covering songs by both Bob Dylan and Neil Young.

The two frontmen teamed up for the Daytrotter website over the weekend. Mumford and Young laid down two tracks, both of them cover versions; Neil Young’s ‘Like A Hurricane’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’. The results of the late night recording session are expected to be aired on the site in October.

Of the collaboration, Daytrotter founder Sean Moeller told NME: “It was about 2am in Troy, Ohio, Saturday night, when Marcus plucked Justin out of the waterpark pool on the Stopover grounds – the afterparty was raging ’til 4 am there – to come on up to the un-airconditioned Troy High School auditorium to record ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ and ‘Like A Hurricane’, learning them on the spot, while we, along with the exhausted superintendent of the school and his family looked on from the back row. Then we all went to the after-afterparty, smoked cigars, and got twice as smashed at The Leaf & Vine, in a ghostly town square.”

The session took place following Mumford & Sons’ Stopover event in Troy. The Vaccines are currently on the road with the band. Both play Guthrie, Oklahoma this weekend (September 6-7), alongside Haim, Alabama Shakes, Willy Mason, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and more, and the following weekend (September 13-14), they will be joined by Fun, The Walkmen and others in St Augustine, Florida.

Noel Gallagher hits out at Foreign Secretary William Hague at GQ Awards – watch

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Noel Gallagher aimed a jibe at Foreign Secretary William Hague from the stage at the GQ Men Of The Year Awards in London last night (September 4) – scroll down to watch a clip. Appearing on stage to collect his Icon prize, Gallagher told the audience: "Welcome to the Tory party conference, by t...

Noel Gallagher aimed a jibe at Foreign Secretary William Hague from the stage at the GQ Men Of The Year Awards in London last night (September 4) – scroll down to watch a clip.

Appearing on stage to collect his Icon prize, Gallagher told the audience: “Welcome to the Tory party conference, by the way. Nice to see the Foreign Secretary here with all the shit going on in the world that he should be sorting out. Good for you.”

Meanwhile, during an interview with GQ at the bash, Gallagher called out Rihanna for travelling with a large entourage, comparing the pop singer’s crew to a “fucking small army”. The former Oasis man ran into Rihanna’s sizeable team of advisers and assistants when the two artists were on the same bill at the Holmenkollen Sommerfestival in Oslo, Norway last year (2012).

“I don’t have an entourage, and when I do it’s pathetic. Never more than two people,” Gallagher said. “I was at a festival in Norway and Rihanna’s just arrived with a hundred people. Fucking small army. And I had to go into this room, which was all just racks of clothing and stuff that designers and punters had brought to give to Rihanna. And they all had these cards in front of them, saying: ‘Dear Rihanna, we are such huge fans, please accept this $90,000 handbag from whoever and whoever’.”

Continuing, Gallagher revealed that paying a visit to Rihanna’s room of gifts inspired him to lavish the singer with a present too. “And I’m reading all these cards as I’m waiting to go in,” he recalled, “so I went back to my dressing room and got the little bowl of Cadbury’s Sensations and left it there on her table with a card saying ‘Dear Rihanna, please accept these chocolates on behalf of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’. And she took them. She fucking took them.”

Gallagher was presented with the Icon prize at last night’s GQ Men Of The Year Awards, where other winners included Arctic Monkeys, Lou Reed, Elton John and The Who’s Roger Daltrey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc9_p-I4vtw

Jack White named honorary dean of Mexican music academy

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Jack White has been named as the honorary dean of the Fermatta Music Academy in Mexico City. White made a guest appearance to accept the accolade on August 22, giving a speech about his family and music life. The former White Stripes and Raconteurs frontman is the first artist to be given an hono...

Jack White has been named as the honorary dean of the Fermatta Music Academy in Mexico City.

White made a guest appearance to accept the accolade on August 22, giving a speech about his family and music life. The former White Stripes and Raconteurs frontman is the first artist to be given an honourary title in the history of the Mexican music academy and was given his award by singer-songwriter Elan.

Rolling Stone reports that during White’s speech he said, “The sense of being a musician is making art, and I do not care whether it is solo or as part of a collective project. At all times, I seek to express myself, and different circumstances of my life could also become multiple creative and stylistic channels.” White was also given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the ceremony.

Meanwhile, country singer Loretta Lynn has revealed that she wants to make another album with Jack White following her 2004 album ‘Van Lear Rose’, which became the highest-charting LP of her career on the US albums chart, peaking at Number 24, and went on to win a pair of Grammy Awards.

“I think I’m going to go after Jack White and give him another call to do another album,” Lynn said in a new interview this week. The singer, now 81, also revealed that she has numerous other projects in the works including a Christmas album and a religious album.

White is currently working on new songs with his band The Dead Weather, a tweet from his Third Man Records label revealed last week (August 29). The band are currently holed up in the Third Man studio in Nashville.

The Dead Weather is made up of White, The Kills’ Alison Mosshart, Dean Fertita of Queens Of The Stone Age and Jack Lawrence of The Greenhornes and The Raconteurs. They released their debut album, ‘Horehound’, in 2009 and followed it in 2010 with ‘Sea of Cowards’.

Robbie Basho, Danny Paul Grody, Desert Heat reviewed

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Of all the guitarists associated with the Takoma School, it’s hard to think of one who imbued folk music with quite as much mystical portent as Robbie Basho. 1978’s “Visions Of The Country”, his tenth album, is a fantastic case in point: “I would paint for you a portrait of North America as a beautiful woman,” he wrote in the original sleevenotes, “when she was young and untamed.” Consequently, Basho turns a suite about the American West into a courtly romance; imagine John Renbourn drawing on Native American myth rather than old English legend, perhaps. Visions… has been long out of print, thanks in part to it having been struck out of the catalogue of its original label, Windham Hill, deemed too spirited for the New Age brand. Now, though, it’s revealed as one of Basho’s masterpieces, up there with a personal favourite, “Venus In Cancer” (1969). Alongside the lyrical 6 and 12-string solo pieces (“Elk Dreamer’s Lament” is terrific), there are rare piano etudes, while his reverberant, often-criticised voice has echoes of Tim Buckley on “Blue Crystal Fire”, especially. During “Leaf In The Wind”, Basho also reveals himself to be a highly accomplished whistler. The third solo album by Californian guitarist Danny Paul Grody arrives, serendipitously, around the same time as the Basho reissue. Grody, formerly of post-rockers Tarentel, is very much one of those guitar soli in the Basho mould, who pushes his music away from Primitive American tradition and towards something more meditative. James Blackshaw is perhaps his most obvious 12-string contemporary, but Grody moves further still into ambient and minimalist zones. Subtle electronic drones seem to increase as the album progresses, situating his music as close to an experimental duo like Mountains as that of the new-school Takoma kids. Brooklyn-based guitarist Steve Gunn, meanwhile, is on a hot streak this year. After an exquisite solo set (“Time Off”), and a mellow collaboration with Hiss Golden Messenger (“Golden Gunn”, on the same label as the Grody album, Three Lobed Recordings), “Cat Mask At Huggie Temple” is more exploratory, moving back into the blues-raga territory of his two Gunn-Truscinski Duo albums. The collective responsible is called Desert Heat and, alongside Gunn, John Truscinski returns on drums, again playing Billy Higgins to Gunn’s Sandy Bull. These two long jams are given added heft, though, with the addition of Cian Nugent, an Irishman who’s recently shifted from acoustic fingerpicking to a more psychedelic, electric style. Further evidence, perhaps – alongside forthcoming albums from Chris Forsyth and from Nugent with his own band, The Cosmos - that the prevailing underground fashion is for onetime John Fahey acolytes to plug in, without sacrificing intricacy and nuance. Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

Of all the guitarists associated with the Takoma School, it’s hard to think of one who imbued folk music with quite as much mystical portent as Robbie Basho. 1978’s “Visions Of The Country”, his tenth album, is a fantastic case in point: “I would paint for you a portrait of North America as a beautiful woman,” he wrote in the original sleevenotes, “when she was young and untamed.”

Consequently, Basho turns a suite about the American West into a courtly romance; imagine John Renbourn drawing on Native American myth rather than old English legend, perhaps. Visions… has been long out of print, thanks in part to it having been struck out of the catalogue of its original label, Windham Hill, deemed too spirited for the New Age brand. Now, though, it’s revealed as one of Basho’s masterpieces, up there with a personal favourite, “Venus In Cancer” (1969).

Alongside the lyrical 6 and 12-string solo pieces (“Elk Dreamer’s Lament” is terrific), there are rare piano etudes, while his reverberant, often-criticised voice has echoes of Tim Buckley on “Blue Crystal Fire”, especially. During “Leaf In The Wind”, Basho also reveals himself to be a highly accomplished whistler.

The third solo album by Californian guitarist Danny Paul Grody arrives, serendipitously, around the same time as the Basho reissue. Grody, formerly of post-rockers Tarentel, is very much one of those guitar soli in the Basho mould, who pushes his music away from Primitive American tradition and towards something more meditative. James Blackshaw is perhaps his most obvious 12-string contemporary, but Grody moves further still into ambient and minimalist zones. Subtle electronic drones seem to increase as the album progresses, situating his music as close to an experimental duo like Mountains as that of the new-school Takoma kids.

Brooklyn-based guitarist Steve Gunn, meanwhile, is on a hot streak this year. After an exquisite solo set (“Time Off”), and a mellow collaboration with Hiss Golden Messenger (“Golden Gunn”, on the same label as the Grody album, Three Lobed Recordings), “Cat Mask At Huggie Temple” is more exploratory, moving back into the blues-raga territory of his two Gunn-Truscinski Duo albums. The collective responsible is called Desert Heat and, alongside Gunn, John Truscinski returns on drums, again playing Billy Higgins to Gunn’s Sandy Bull.

These two long jams are given added heft, though, with the addition of Cian Nugent, an Irishman who’s recently shifted from acoustic fingerpicking to a more psychedelic, electric style. Further evidence, perhaps – alongside forthcoming albums from Chris Forsyth and from Nugent with his own band, The Cosmos – that the prevailing underground fashion is for onetime John Fahey acolytes to plug in, without sacrificing intricacy and nuance.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

Scared To Get Happy: A Story Of Indie Pop 1980 – 89

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Now That's What I Call Indie... A five-disc, 130+ track survey of British indie through the 80s that manages to be paradoxically both more and less than meets the eye. With its title – a mangling of the line from Hurrah!’s “Hip Hip” (not included here), which inspired the fanzine, that birthed the Sarah Records label – and sketchy bowlie boy cover star, STGH is selling itself as the definitive, Nuggets-y story of the rise of indie-pop. But the vagaries of compiling such a boxset hamper this aim. The reluctance of key players like The Pastels or The Vaselines to be involved means that, as a reliable historical account, STGH leaves something to be desired. The aegis of Cherry Red also means that certain labels – Mike Alway’s elegantly eccentric él, for example – are more heavily represented than you might expect. The sheer capacious sprawl of the collection means that the genre is stretched to bursting point, with everyone from The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughters to the TV Personalities. Squint and you can just about see Lloyd Cole as indie-pop, for example (especially in the light of Camera Obscura’s homage), but Prefab Sprout? The Milltown Brothers? Big Flame? Still, these contingencies frequently work in the collection’s favour. Post-C86, the reification and overdefinition of “indie-pop” (a well-trodden path leading from Buzzcocks and Orange Juice to Belle and Sebastian, via Pastels, Creation and Sarah) has resulted in a rarefied international scene where new groups base careers on re-creating the ambience of a solitary flexi disc by The Wake or a Shop Assistants B-side. STGH is engaging for its haphazard trip through the back roads of ’80s guitar groups. Like a tape of some random mid-’80s Peel Show or flicking through an old NME, it restores the vivid mess of history, before it was tidied into canons and genres. The chronological sequencing on the first disc canters from Dolly Mixture’s “Everything And More” to Prefab Sprout’s “Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone)” via the The Nightingales, Scars, Jane, Farmer’s Boys, The Room and Weekend. The variety diminishes as the set progresses, (disc three, particularly, is a canonical reunion of the usual C86 suspects). Still, the fact the compilers find space for outliers like Jamie Wednesday and The Shamen encourages the idea of indie as an endearingly varied place. STEPHEN TROUSSÉ

Now That’s What I Call Indie…

A five-disc, 130+ track survey of British indie through the 80s that manages to be paradoxically both more and less than meets the eye. With its title – a mangling of the line from Hurrah!’s “Hip Hip” (not included here), which inspired the fanzine, that birthed the Sarah Records label – and sketchy bowlie boy cover star, STGH is selling itself as the definitive, Nuggets-y story of the rise of indie-pop.

But the vagaries of compiling such a boxset hamper this aim. The reluctance of key players like The Pastels or The Vaselines to be involved means that, as a reliable historical account, STGH leaves something to be desired. The aegis of Cherry Red also means that certain labels – Mike Alway’s elegantly eccentric él, for example – are more heavily represented than you might expect. The sheer capacious sprawl of the collection means that the genre is stretched to bursting point, with everyone from The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughters to the TV Personalities. Squint and you can just about see Lloyd Cole as indie-pop, for example (especially in the light of Camera Obscura’s homage), but Prefab Sprout? The Milltown Brothers? Big Flame?

Still, these contingencies frequently work in the collection’s favour. Post-C86, the reification and overdefinition of “indie-pop” (a well-trodden path leading from Buzzcocks and Orange Juice to Belle and Sebastian, via Pastels, Creation and Sarah) has resulted in a rarefied international scene where new groups base careers on re-creating the ambience of a solitary flexi disc by The Wake or a Shop Assistants B-side.

STGH is engaging for its haphazard trip through the back roads of ’80s guitar groups. Like a tape of some random mid-’80s Peel Show or flicking through an old NME, it restores the vivid mess of history, before it was tidied into canons and genres. The chronological sequencing on the first disc canters from Dolly Mixture’s “Everything And More” to Prefab Sprout’s “Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone)” via the The Nightingales, Scars, Jane, Farmer’s Boys, The Room and Weekend. The variety diminishes as the set progresses, (disc three, particularly, is a canonical reunion of the usual C86 suspects). Still, the fact the compilers find space for outliers like Jamie Wednesday and The Shamen encourages the idea of indie as an endearingly varied place.

STEPHEN TROUSSÉ

The Beatles, The National, the Coens and Jim Jarmusch for this year’s BFI London Film Festival

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The line-up has just been announced for this year’s London Film Festival, and it looks like pretty good – with new films from the Coens (yes, it’s that one), Jim Jarmusch, Alexander Payne, Steve McQueen, Jonathan Glazer and Richard Ayoade at the top of our must see list. It’s worth, too, flagging up this year’s particularly rich selection of music documentaries, including Good O’ Freda, Ryan White’s documentary on Beatles secretary Freda Kelly, Tom Berninger’s National film Mistaken For Strangers, and Sini Anderson’s film about Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKYMHhMeexU Of the big hitters, the films I’ll be queuing down the front to see include Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave, the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis, Alexander Payne's Nebraska and Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUQNjfhlREk Those aside, I’m fascinated to see Frank Pavich’s documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, which explores Alejandro Jodorowsky’s doomed attempt to adapt and film Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel in the mid 1970’s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-oBEGF7uwE You can find a full list of what’s on – and when – over here. See you in the queue for popcorn… The 2013 BFI London Film Festival runs from October 9 to October 20. Tickets will go on sale to the public on September 20. Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.

The line-up has just been announced for this year’s London Film Festival, and it looks like pretty good – with new films from the Coens (yes, it’s that one), Jim Jarmusch, Alexander Payne, Steve McQueen, Jonathan Glazer and Richard Ayoade at the top of our must see list.

It’s worth, too, flagging up this year’s particularly rich selection of music documentaries, including Good O’ Freda, Ryan White’s documentary on Beatles secretary Freda Kelly, Tom Berninger’s National film Mistaken For Strangers, and Sini Anderson’s film about Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKYMHhMeexU

Of the big hitters, the films I’ll be queuing down the front to see include Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave, the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska and Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive.

Those aside, I’m fascinated to see Frank Pavich’s documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, which explores Alejandro Jodorowsky’s doomed attempt to adapt and film Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel in the mid 1970’s.

You can find a full list of what’s on – and when – over here. See you in the queue for popcorn…

The 2013 BFI London Film Festival runs from October 9 to October 20. Tickets will go on sale to the public on September 20.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.