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We’re New Here – Andrew Wasylyk

Nick Hasted
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We’re New Here – Andrew Wasylyk
Former indie-popster crafts lush ambient jazz inspired by the North Sea coast, in our APRIL 2023 issue of Uncut, available to buy here. Andrew Wasylyk’s mostly instrumental music exists in the soft borders between jazz, post-rock and classical music, with field recordings, minimalist and ambien...

Former indie-popster crafts lush ambient jazz inspired by the North Sea coast, in our APRIL 2023 issue of Uncut, available to buy here.

Andrew Wasylyk’s mostly instrumental music exists in the soft borders between jazz, post-rock and classical music, with field recordings, minimalist and ambient elements underlying quietly grand arrangements of bittersweet, beautiful tunes. His work is rooted in his native Dundee and the Scottish coast. A key member of now defunct indie-pop band The Hazey Janes and current bassist for Idlewild, Wasylyk has also played with School Of Language and The Electric Soft Parade. Since debuting with 2015’s Soroky, his seven solo albums to date form a cohesive, increasingly impressive world.

Once, though, he had very different dreams. “When I was younger, I was obsessed with following in my brother’s footsteps to play football professionally,” says Wasylyk (whose given surname is Mitchell – he uses his Ukrainian grandad’s name for his music). “Then music left this door ajar to another, euphoric world.”

His first influences were auspiciously broad, from Olivia Tremor Control to Fairport Convention, The Beatles to The Meters. “There’s a thread through all those artists of melody and groove,” he explains. Indeed, a love for Philly soul and disco gives a rhythmic kick to his otherwise meditative tunes. “We used to bunk off school to watch Ironside because we loved the Quincy Jones theme tune so much!” he laughs. “Then that pushed me into [David] Axelrod territory. I can be shooting for Axelrod and Talk Talk, but because I don’t have their ability, I always miss. You end up in this grey area that you make your own.” Wasylyk is similarly diffident about his relationship with classical music. “I’m drawn to it because I’m not classically trained. So I don’t have any idea of what I’m listening to, and it washes over you in this beautiful, immersive way.” He could be describing his own indefinable sound.

Wasylyk focused on a sense of place after a commission to write about parts of Dundee led to his second album, Themes For Buildings And Spaces (2017). “The idea of exploring outwards to better understand things within yourself was there already,” he recalls. “The North Sea’s presence and the particular light here in Dundee has an intoxicating quality that gets to you.” 2019’s The Paralian (which means dweller by the sea) resulted from an artistic residency along the coast in Arbroath. Scrambling onto some rocks to tape the sea’s roar, he was almost literally consumed by his subject. “I didn’t realise that this wave was getting bigger and bigger beside me,” he laughs. “It nearly swept me away!”

Collaboration has remained crucial to his solo albums – witness “Dreamt In The Current Of Leafless Winter”, the 16-minute opener to last year’s Hearing The Water Before Seeing The Falls, where Alabaster dePlume’s questing tenor sax interweaves with Wasylyk’s minimalist piano in a mesmeric, jazzy suite. That record was another multimedia commission, responding to an exhibition by Scottish photographer Thomas Joshua Cooper. “I found his work melancholic, but the photos were quietly euphoric as well. That all fed into the album.”

Wasylyk’s latest, Parallel Light, is an “alternative mix” of 2020’s Fugitive Light And Themes Of Consolation, a title that could sum up his music. “It would be incredible if my work does console anyone,” he says modestly, “but I was thinking more of consolation prizes. I like themes for the underdog.”

Parallel Light is out now on Athens Of The North.

Watch Suede cover Patti Smith’s “Because The Night” with an orchestra

Arusa Qureshi
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Watch Suede cover Patti Smith’s “Because The Night” with an orchestra
Suede performed three songs for BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room on February 21, including a cover of Patti Smith‘s "Because The Night". ORDER NOW: Led Zeppelin are on the cover of the new Uncut READ MORE: Suede: “We’ve got to find ways to be uncomfortable” This year’s line-up for BBC...

Suede performed three songs for BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room on February 21, including a cover of Patti Smith‘s “Because The Night”.

This year’s line-up for BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room was announced last month, with award-winning artists due to perform with the BBC Concert Orchestra from January 30 to February 24.

Each artist was asked to perform three tracks – a new song, one of their well-known tracks and a classic cover version from another artist.

Suede performed live from Maida Vale, where they played two of their own tracks – 1999 hit “She’s In Fashion” and new single, “The Only Way I Can Love You”.

Sharing the cover on Twitter, bassist Matt Osman wrote: “Our take on Patti Smith’s ‘Because The Night’ with the fabulous BBC Orchestra”.

The full performance will be available shortly on BBC iPlayer but you can watch the Patti Smith cover below.

Ahead of their performance, Suede’s Brett Anderson said: “We’re delighted to be involved with Radio 2’s Piano Room. It’s so, so exciting to be able to freshly explore our songs old and new with the esteemed accompaniment of the BBC Concert Orchestra. Can’t wait.”

Previous artists to have played Piano Room include Sugababes (February 3), Tom Chaplin (February 7) and Suzanne Vega (February 9).

This week, there will be performances from Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Jake Shears and Stormzy.

In other news, Suede rescheduled their forthcoming Brixton Academy shows and announced a new date in Bexhill.

The band were set to perform at the O2 Academy Brixton on March 25 and 26 in support of their ninth studio album Autofiction as part of their 2023 UK headline tour. But these have now been postponed to December 15 and 16 after the venue’s licence was suspended until April.

The band have also announced an extra date at Bexhill De La Warr Pavilion on March 25.

“He was open about everything”: inside a new documentary Willie Nelson & Family

Stephen Deusner
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“He was open about everything”: inside a new documentary Willie Nelson & Family
A new five-part documentary, Willie Nelson & Family, digs into every chapter of his long and colourful life, in our APRIL 2023 issue of Uncut, available to buy here. In the late 1960s, Willie Nelson spent $150 on a new Martin acoustic guitar that he named Trigger, after Roy Rogers’ horse. H...

A new five-part documentary, Willie Nelson & Family, digs into every chapter of his long and colourful life, in our APRIL 2023 issue of Uncut, available to buy here.

In the late 1960s, Willie Nelson spent $150 on a new Martin acoustic guitar that he named Trigger, after Roy Rogers’ horse. He still plays it more than 50 years later. It’s a story that’s been told many times, but it takes on new significance in Willie Nelson & Family, an upcoming new five-part documentary by co-directors Oren Moverman (The Messenger, Rampart) and Thom Zimny (Bruce Springsteen’s go-to film guy).

“I knew that story,” says Moverman, “but when Willie was telling it to us, he’d share a detail that went just beyond what you knew. And there was a musicality to his voice when he described buying Trigger – and then he’d say he bought a horse and some rope for the same price. Maybe you know all that from a book, but hearing him tell the story gives it some magic. That was one of the many surprises making the film, just the power of his storytelling.”

Willie Nelson & Family, which premiered at Sundance, delves deep into Nelson’s long life and career, allowing the man himself to tell his own story both through new interviews and archival footage. There’s a deep melancholy in his voice when he discusses his childhood in rural Texas, where he and sister Bobbie were raised by their grandparents. There’s no little frustration when he recalls his early professional struggles as a young songwriter in Nashville and no little regret when he describes his poor treatment of his first two wives. Spanning nearly a century, the documentary tells some new stories and sheds fresh light on old ones.

“We wanted to bring Willie from every decade,” says Zimny. “We wanted to bring his voice from the past. We didn’t want it to be a story about an old man looking back on his life. We wanted a 35-year-old Willie to tell us about the late ’60s, and we wanted a 55-year-old Willie to tell us about the ’80s. It took a lot of digging to get every chapter of his life into the story.”

Zimny is keen to stress that “Willie was completely open about everything”, including his divorces, his wild 1971 concept album Yesterday’s Wine, and even the shootout with his wayward son-in-law that inspired his 1973 song “Shotgun Willie”. “He encouraged us to take on the imperfections in his story. If Willie threw us a curveball – and he did that every day – we learned that we just had to embrace it and go with it.”

Nelson, who turns 90 this year, still tours frequently and releases several albums each year (next up in March is his new collection of Harlan Howard covers called I Don’t Know A Thing About Love). He rarely slows down, but when the pandemic forced him to take a breather, Zimny and Moverman flew out to his home in Maui for several long sessions of interviews.

“We stepped into something we called Willie World,” says Moverman. “We had something very rare, which was a Willie Nelson who was not on tour, who was missing the road, who was missing just talking with people. I think he was hungry to communicate and reflect. The road and the bus are home for him, and the audience is his family. Those became the themes for the film.”

Together, the directors present a nuanced portrait of Nelson as someone who keeps moving forward constantly, through tragedies as well as triumphs. “Willie said something really amazing that didn’t make it into the film,” says Zimny. “When he misses the road, he’ll just go out and sit on his tour bus. That summed up Willie World for me. Being on the road makes him happy, so he’ll just sit out there and pretend he’s going somewhere.”

Neil Young and Crazy Horse members announce new album All Roads Lead Home

Emma Wilkes
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Neil Young and Crazy Horse members announce new album All Roads Lead Home
Neil Young and Crazy Horse's Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot and Nils Lofgren have announced a new album. ORDER NOW: Led Zeppelin are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Neil Young with Crazy Horse – World Record review The quartet are set to release the album, titled All Ro...

Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot and Nils Lofgren have announced a new album.

The quartet are set to release the album, titled All Roads Lead Home, under the moniker Molina, Talbot, Lofgren and Young. It is set to drop on March 31 via Reprise.

The 10-track album, which contains songs written by all four members, began life as a pandemic project for the members of Crazy Horse. Young was brought on board later, his sole writing credit being a live solo version of “Song Of The Seasons”, from the 2021 Crazy Horse album Barn, which came together concurrently with this project.

The other members of Crazy Horse wrote three songs each with different musicians for the project.

The quartet have also shared the first taste of the album in the form of the Lofgren-written song “You Will Never Know”. Check it out below:

TRACKLIST:
1. “Rain” (Billy Talbot)
2. “You Will Never Know” (Nils Lofgren)
3. “It’s Magical” (Ralph Molina)
4. “Song Of The Seasons” (Neil Young)
5. “Cherish” (Billy Talbot)
6. “Fill My Cup” (Nils Lofgren)
7. “Look Through The Eyes Of Your Heart” (Ralph Molina)
8. “The Hunter” (Billy Talbot)
9. “Go With Me” (Nils Lofgren)
10. “Just For You” (Ralph Molina)

The album arrives off the back of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s recent project World Record, which came out in November. A few months prior, they released Toast, a scrapped album that was recorded back in 2001.

Young announced his first public performance since 2019 last week. He will be headlining the sixth edition of the Light Up the Blues charity show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on April 22, alongside his CSNY bandmate Stephen Stills. The benefit show – organised by Stills and his family since 2013 – raises money for autism awareness non-profit Autism Speaks.

Nostalgia

Stephen Troussé
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Nostalgia
Two kids grow up inseparable friends in Naples until a shocking teenage incident sees their lives taking very different paths. Deep into midlife they must face a reckoning with their choices and the city that formed them. On the face it, this might be the plot of a novel by Elena Ferrante. Instead M...

Two kids grow up inseparable friends in Naples until a shocking teenage incident sees their lives taking very different paths. Deep into midlife they must face a reckoning with their choices and the city that formed them. On the face it, this might be the plot of a novel by Elena Ferrante. Instead Mario Martone’s film is an engrossing psychodrama about two men travelling towards their own defining rendezvous.

The first half of the film is carried by the magnificently hangdog Pierfrancesco Favino, possibly best known in the English-speaking world playing a gold statue of Columbus in Night At The Museum. He has returned after 40 years away from a successful life in Cairo to the city of his youth to visit his dying mother, and finds it remarkably unchanged – still a seething civil war between the Catholic Church (Francesco Di Leva relentless as the charismatic Father Luigi) and the Camorra gangsters. Nevertheless he longs to make peace with his teenage buddy Oreste, who has matured into a ruthless, self-loathing ganglord.

Though the film settles into familiar gangland tropes, it’s wonderfully alive with the sound and sensations of the modern city – you can almost smell the traffic fumes, ripe garbage, incense and surf. And the soundtrack – a heady mix of Egyptian electropop (“Ya Abyad Ya Eswed” by Cairokee), Bach and Tangerine Dream (including the 1966 psych-pop delight “Lady Greengrass”), is an absolute treat.

Laraaji – Segue To Infinity

Rob Young
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Laraaji – Segue To Infinity
Think of a song, not any particular song, just the idea of a song. Say it’s the late 1970s when Laraaji was roaming the streets and parks of New York with his electrofitted autoharp. A song with its anticipated structure and its lyrical text is there to tell you about an experience. Laraaji’s mu...

Think of a song, not any particular song, just the idea of a song. Say it’s the late 1970s when Laraaji was roaming the streets and parks of New York with his electrofitted autoharp. A song with its anticipated structure and its lyrical text is there to tell you about an experience. Laraaji’s music is the experience.

The life of Edward Larry Gordon, born in Philadelphia in 1943, appears to have been one long chain of serendipity. Raised in New Jersey, he sang in Baptist church choirs as a kid before studying piano at Howard University. A talent for performing, comedy and role play brought him to Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, where he acted as host in the mid-’60s, while also serenading legendary boho hangouts Café Wha?, the Bitter End and the Village Gate with his folkish songbook. He even scored a role as long as a goldfish recall in Robert Downey Sr’s cult ad-men madness movie Putney Swope in 1969. But this is all ancient prehistory.

A little more sand runs through the hourglass and we’re in Washington Square Park, circa 1975. Ed Gordon is by now entrenched up to his scapula in the cosmopolitan alternative lifestyle movement in which everything from yoga and meditation to pot, improvised music and barefoot dancing is involved. His guitar has been pawned and in its stead an autoharp purchased on impulse. Jenny Lynch is passing by in the park and likes what she hears emanating from the autoharp, which he has stripped of its chord bars and amplified with an electric pickup. He taps and strums the pentatonic-tuned wires with chopsticks, brushes and metal slides. Jenny is a luthier who just built a hammered dulcimer for folk musician Dorothy Carter. She writes down his number, recommends him to Carter, and before you know it he’s accompanying her and running workshops on ‘electronic autoharp experiments with tuning and phase shifters’ at the 1976 Boston Globe Jazzfest and Music Fair.

The year 1976 is an epochal time for the age of Aquarius. Progressive music, radical psychiatry and alternative medicine melt together in a quiet counterculture-shock known as New Age. A transitional flap on the mystical wing of popular culture. Hippiedom’s last sigh, impotently puffing a farewell reefer as synths and sinewaves are swung up over the ocean. The dawning of a musical age impossible to imagine even just a handful of years back at Monterey and Woodstock.

This moment is Ed Gordon’s moment. Ed Gordon, Larry G, Laraaji – a morphology of name and identity in mirror sync with his expanding musical consciousness. Punks in dark clubs and dives snarl about music and society being on a road to nowhere. For Laraaji (and fellow voyagers) music is a healing force, a pathway to the mindful zone, a daily microdose of aural Ambien. On the two unbroken sides of Celestial Vibration from 1978, he made a record of the sort of stardust he was sprinkling around at creative dance companies, holistic drop-in centres and yoga classes at that time. “Bethlehem” and “All-Pervading”, 24 minutes each, only cease because the needle must skate to the stillpoint at the centre.

They’re both here at the start of Segue To Infinity, the first of four discs. The rest are parts of this period of Laraaji’s history we’ve never heard before. They are taken from ultra-rare acetates – spotted on eBay by a sharp-eyed collector. The mint A++ white labels, credited to Edward Larry Gordon, had been retrieved from a storage unit, sold at a flea market and finally offloaded online where a college student recognised the name and made a winning bid of $114. They are now in the safe hands of the archive label Numero Group, who have form when it comes to independent and private-press New Age re-releases.

Celestial Vibration has been aired once already on Soul Jazz Records. The remaining dug-up tracks won’t disappoint anyone familiar with Laraaji’s blissful lakes of kundalini stretching beneath billowing cumulonimbi of bliss. “Ocean” would be the ideal headphone accompaniment for standing too close to a Rothko canvas. A deep enveloping background accented with scudding strokes on the zither strings. “Koto” is composed of similar sonic ions, signposting the way ahead to beatless milestones like Steve Hillage’s Rainbow Dome Musick – which in turn thumbs its way towards The Orb and other ’90s ambient noodle bowls.

So far so rapturous, but the three tracks titled “Kalimba” provide the real revelations in this collection. Here Laraaji uses the zither both as a drum and a marimba. The first of them is 18 minutes, the others upwards of 22. These are audibly a far more physical test of endurance than the other tracks here. Thrumming sequences falling somewhere between central African logdrum rituals and one of Can’s Ethno-Forgery jams. He keeps up a meditative yet somehow surging two-handed groove, striking rattling blows on the strings with wooden or metal beaters roughly four to six times per second. These “Kalimba” pieces are the most exciting addition to Laraaji’s canon – beautiful, intricate little cosmic clockwork mechanisms that must have been mesmerising to observe while they were being played. The track “Segue To Infinity”, that gives its name to the boxset, pairs Laraaji’s orcabone harp tones with lark-ascending flute from Richard Cooper. It’s the one that conforms to the most recognisable ‘New Age’ tropes although is still vastly more appetising – and less kitsch – than most of what you’ll hear on the stereo down your local crystal-and-tarot boutique.

Down on the street, Laraaji visualises his ideal record producer. The universe makes it so. A scrap of paper left in his zithercase in 1979 contains a phone number. At the end of the line is Brian Eno. Sleevenotes by Vernon Reid of Living Color, who has known Laraaji since the ’70s, and Numero Group archivist Douglas McGowan, perform admirable detective work without being able to conclude exactly when, where or for what precise purpose these unearthed tracks were recorded. Irreconcilable facts place them either just before or just after the 1980 release of Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance on Eno’s EG label.

In any case, these beautiful, vaporous exercises in musical mindfulness restored to us on Segue To Infinity are convincing proof that Laraaji didn’t need any Eno to help him read the map.

Yes – Ultimate Music Guide

Uncut
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Yes – Ultimate Music Guide
The deluxe, 148 page Ultimate Music Guide to one of the world’s most popular and enduring classic rock bands. Revolving stages! Many keyboard players! Health food! Buy a copy of the magazine here. Missed one in the series? Bundles are available at the same location…...

The deluxe, 148 page Ultimate Music Guide to one of the world’s most popular and enduring classic rock bands. Revolving stages! Many keyboard players! Health food!

Buy a copy of the magazine here. Missed one in the series? Bundles are available at the same location…

“You have to give as much as you take”: Rick Wakeman introduces our Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Yes

John Robinson
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“You have to give as much as you take”: Rick Wakeman introduces our Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Yes
BUY THE YES DELUXE ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE Rick Wakeman is chasing a dog out of his office as he starts his call with Uncut to introduce our latest Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide. The intruder banished, the office door finally closed, Rick embarks on a far-reaching conversation which covers his se...

BUY THE YES DELUXE ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE

Rick Wakeman is chasing a dog out of his office as he starts his call with Uncut to introduce our latest Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide. The intruder banished, the office door finally closed, Rick embarks on a far-reaching conversation which covers his session musician work, praise for the material which Yes made after he left, and how his solo successes once led to him being greeted by a brass band on an airport runway, to the dismay of the other members of Yes – though it ultimately led to them all being offered solo album contracts too.

As you’ll learn from the features and in-depth reviews in our expanded, deluxe Ultimate Music Guide, the band’s journey – with Rick and without him – has been an incredible one. From orchestral psyche-pop to pastoral prog drama. Out the other side to encounter jazz fusion, and synth pop. The band have evolved to meet the times, and are now retrenching in the ecological mode of their classic era albums to the delight of a new generation of listeners.

From his first rehearsal, it was Rick’s job to make the collaborative jigsaw of Yes music fit together. “It started with Steve saying he had a riff, which was very nice,” Rick recalls in his introduction, “so we played it. Chris had a line. Bill said he had a fill. Then I said “Well I’ve got something which sort of goes with all of that,” and they thought it was good. But Chris said, they’re all in different keys – how are we going to put it all together? I said, ‘I know how to do that…’

“That was one of my jobs: when things were in ridiculous keys, all over the shop, to make things link up. I did all that. And by the end of that rehearsal we’d pretty much put ‘Roundabout‘ together.”

For Rick it’s remembering the joy of the collaboration, more than any of the material rewards, that has the retained magical.

“Yes music means a lot to me, it’s a major part of my musical life and career,” he says. “With Yes you have to give as much as you can take or it’s not going to work.”

Get your copy in stores now, or here with free UK P&P.

The Kinks announce two-part anniversary anthology, The Journey

Ellie Robinson
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The Kinks announce two-part anniversary anthology, The Journey
To celebrate the 60th anniversary of their formation, The Kinks have announced a two-part anthology series called The Journey. ORDER NOW: Led Zeppelin is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: The Kinks – Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One review Both r...

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of their formation, The Kinks have announced a two-part anthology series called The Journey.

Both releases will compile hits and other choice cuts from the London legends’ sprawling catalogue – which from 1963 to 1993, spanned 24 studio albums – by themes. The first part is due out on March 24 via BMG, and comes with its 30-song tracklist split into four themed mini-compilations (one per side for the two-disc vinyl set).

The first chunk of 10 songs will cover themes of “becoming a man, the search for adventure, finding an identity and a girl”, while the second chunk spans seven songs about “ambition achieved, bitter taste of success, loss of friends, [and when] the past comes back and bites you in the back-side”. The third part will also feature seven songs, with those being about “days and nights of a lost soul, songs of regret and reflection[s] of happier times”.

Finally, the last bracket of songs in part one of The Journey comprises six songs billed under the banner: “A new start, a new love, but have you really changed? Still haunted by the quest and the girl.”

In addition to the gatefold vinyl, The Journey, Part 1 will be released in a two-disc CD package and in both standard and HD digital formats. The physical editions will include booklets featuring exclusive photos and personal liner notes from each the band’s three remaining members (co-frontmen Ray and Dave Davies, and drummer Mick Avory), diving into all 30 songs individually with “memories of the time these tracks were recorded”.

In a press release, Ray said of the effort: “Ask yourself the question, is this journey really necessary? …Yes!”

Dave echoed his brother’s excitement, adding for himself: “I’m delighted with what I think is an inspiring selection of timeless and magical Kinks music.”

See the artwork and tracklisting for The Journey, Part 1 below, and find pre-orders for the record here.

The Kinks The Journey Part 1
The Kinks’ ‘The Journey – Part 1’ vinyl. Credit: Press/Supplied

SIDE 1: ‘SONGS ABOUT BECOMING A MAN, THE SEARCH FOR ADVENTURE, FINDING AN IDENTITY AND A GIRL’
1. “You Really Got Me”
2. “All Day And All Of The Night”
3. “It’s All Right”
4. “Who’ll Be The Next In Line”
5. “Tired Of Waiting For You”
6. “She’s Got Everything”
7. “Just Can’t Go To Sleep”
8. “Stop Your Sobbing”
9. “Wait Till The Summer Comes Along”
10. “So Long”

SIDE 2: ‘SONGS OF AMBITION ACHIEVED, BITTER TASTE OF SUCCESS, LOSS OF FRIENDS, THE PAST COMES BACK AND BITES YOU IN THE BACK-SIDE’
1. “Dead End Street”
2. “Schooldays”
3. “The Hard Way”
4. “Mindless Child Of Motherhood”
5. “Supersonic Rocket Ship”
6. “I’m In Disgrace”
7. “Do You Remember Walter?”

SIDE 3: ‘DAYS AND NIGHTS OF A LOST SOUL, SONGS OF REGRET AND REFLECTION OF HAPPIER TIMES’
1. “Too Much On My Mind”
2. “Nothin’ In The World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout That Girl”
3. “Days”
4. “Where Have All The Good Times Gone”
5. “Strangers”
6. “It’s Too Late”
7. “Sitting In The Midday Sun”

SIDE 4: ‘A NEW START, A NEW LOVE, BUT HAVE YOU REALLY CHANGED? STILL HAUNTED BY THE QUEST AND THE GIRL’
1. “Waterloo Sunset”
2. “No More Looking Back”
3. “Death Of A Clown”
4. “Celluloid Heroes”
5. “Act Nice And Gentle”
6. “This Is Where I Belong”

Details on part two of The Journey are yet to be revealed, with the band assuring fans that an announcement will be made later in 2023. Also confirmed is that “a host of global events and activities” will be detailed for both this year and next, with details rolling out on a gradual basis.

The Journey adds to a growing list of The Kinks’ archival releases, which in recent times have included a deluxe twin reissue of Muswell Hillbillies and Everybody’s In Show-Biz, and a 50th anniversary edition of their album Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround Part One. Last year also saw Dave Davies release an autobiography, called Living On A Thin Line.

Tame Impala announce Lonerism 10th anniversary box set

Alex Gallagher
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Tame Impala announce Lonerism 10th anniversary box set
Tame Impala have announced a 10th anniversary box set for their seminal second studio album, 2012’s Lonerism. ORDER NOW: Led Zeppelin is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Tame Impala – The Slow Rush review The limited-edition box set, which is set to arrive on May ...

Tame Impala have announced a 10th anniversary box set for their seminal second studio album, 2012’s Lonerism.

The limited-edition box set, which is set to arrive on May 26, will include three vinyl records and a 24-page booklet. Among the bonus tracks featured will be unreleased demo versions of “Retina Show” and “Sidetracked Soundtrack”, two songs from the Lonerism sessions that didn’t make the final album.

The reissue will also feature an entire vinyl side dedicated solely to “assorted sketches” from between 2010 and 2012. See images of the box set’s contents below – pre-orders are available here.

Tame Impala Lonerism 10th anniversary vinyl box set
Tame Impala’s ‘Lonerism’ 10th anniversary vinyl box set

Last October, Tame Impala celebrated a decade since Lonerism arrived by performing the album in full during the band’s headline set at California’s Desert Daze. Album track ‘
“She Just Won’t Believe Me” was performed for the first time ever, while closer “Sun’s Coming Up” was played for the first time since 2010.

The same month, bandleader and songwriter Kevin Parker reflected on the album’s creation on Instagram. “Difficult to sum up what the album means to me at this point. It was a pretty special time for me making the music,” he wrote. “In a way it’s when I truly discovered myself as an artist. Coming off the back of [2010 debut] Innerspeaker I had this new sense of purpose… calling… whatever you want to call it.

“I had finally given myself permission to let music take over my being completely… to become totally immersed in my own world of recording music. So I had this new sense of creative freedom. I felt free to be ambitious, weird, pop, experimental, whatever, and didn’t feel judged because I was finally just doing it for myself and believed in myself.”

‘Lonerism’ isn’t the first Tame Impala record to get the deluxe reissue treatment. In 2021, Parker and co. released a 10th anniversary edition of Innerspeaker with unreleased demos, instrumentals and more. Last year, the band released a deluxe edition of their most recent album, 2020’s The Slow Rush, featuring remixes by Four Tet, Blood Orange and others.

Tame Impala’s Lonerism 10th anniversary box set tracklist is:

Side A
“Be Above It”
“Endors Toi”
“Apocalypse Dreams”

Side B
“Mind Mischief”
“Music To Walk Home By”
“Why Won’t They Talk To Me?”

Side C
“Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”
“Keep On Lying”
“Elephant”

Side D
“She Just Won’t Believe Me”
“Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control”
“Sun’s Coming Up”

Side E
“Retina Show” (Unreleased Demo)
“Sidetracked Soundtrack” (Unreleased Demo)

Side F
Assorted Sketches, 2010-2012

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy announces new book, World Within A Song

Tom Skinner
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Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy announces new book, World Within A Song
Jeff Tweedy has announced a new book, World Within A Song: Music That Changed My Life And Life That Changed My Music. ORDER NOW: Led Zeppelin is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Wilco: “We value ourselves based on what’s on the horizon” Described as “an exciti...

Jeff Tweedy has announced a new book, World Within A Song: Music That Changed My Life And Life That Changed My Music.

Described as “an exciting and heartening mix of memories, music, and inspiration”, the memoir is due to arrive on November 7 via Dutton. You can pre-order it here.

World Within A Song… serves as the Wilco frontman’s third book following on from 2018’s Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) and 2020’s How To Write One Song.

The forthcoming title sees Tweedy explore “50-plus songs that changed his life, the real-life experiences behind each one, as well as what he’s learned about how music and life intertwine and enhance each other”, per an official listing.

Included are tracks by the likes of Billie Eilish, The Velvet Underground, The Replacements, Mavis Staples, Joni Mitchell, Otis Redding and Dolly Parton, with Tweedy also opening up about his own material.

Within the pages, the musician looks to answer the following questions: “What makes us fall in love with a song? What makes us want to write our own songs? Do songs help? Do songs help us live better lives? And do the lives we live help us write better songs?”

Check out the announcement tweet above.

Earlier this month saw Jeff Tweedy pick up the Best Historical Album award at the Grammys 2023 for the 20th anniversary reissue of Wilco’s fourth album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001).

The band’s 12th and most recent studio record, Cruel Country, came out last May.

Exclusive! Lenny Kaye unveils his new Nuggets box set

Nick Hasted
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Exclusive! Lenny Kaye unveils his new Nuggets box set
In the current (April 2023) issue of Uncut, we track down many of the original bands who appeared on Lenny Kaye's 1972 garage/psych/head compilation Nuggets to find out what happened next. By startling coincidence, a newly expanded box set of Nuggets has just been announced for this year's Record...

In the current (April 2023) issue of Uncut, we track down many of the original bands who appeared on Lenny Kaye’s 1972 garage/psych/head compilation Nuggets to find out what happened next.

By startling coincidence, a newly expanded box set of Nuggets has just been announced for this year’s Record Store Day, which takes place on April 22. Here, Kaye exclusively reveals all about a very special edition of this much-loved comp…

Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968, the 1972 compilation which helped define garage-rock and inspire New York’s punk revolution, is to be celebrated with the release of a 5-LP vinyl box-set for Record Store Day.

The new tracklisting both greatly expands the original release and revises Rhino’s 1998 CD box-set. “It’s going to be a beautiful thing,” Kaye tells Uncut. “The original double-album is remastered from the original tapes. Two discs represent my vision of what Volume 2 would have been in 1973. Then there’s The Also Dug-Its – a fifth, mongrel disc of tracks left by the wayside that makes me smile. I’ve done new liner notes and biogs for the new discs. The original notes stay with what I knew in 1972.”

Kaye lists some of the highlights we can expect. “At the end of Nuggets’ original liner notes I said, ‘Please write to Elektra and let them know if you think the magic’s in the music, or the music’s in you…’ So disc 3 starts with ‘Do You Believe In Magic’ by The Lovin’ Spoonful. I finally got ‘96 Tears’ by ? And The Mysterians in after 50 years, and ‘The Spider And The Fly’ by The Monocles. You really have to hear this one! ‘The First Cut Is The Deepest’ by The Koobas is just about the only English record on Nuggets – a Cat Stevens song as if Vanilla Fudge did it. And when Nuggets came out, I got letters and 45s from a guy from Long Island called Joe Dokko, who thought his group The Mystic Tide would be perfect for it – and I’m using their cut ‘Frustration’.

“The Also Dug-Its starts with the E-Types’ ‘Put The Clock Back On The Wall’ – because that’s what I’m doing. It also includes Luke & the Apostles’ ‘Been Burnt’. I saw them live supporting the Dead at the Cafe au Go Go in 1967 and they were fucking amazing. I don’t think it even came out as a real record. Then there’s, sorry for the self-indulgence, ‘Crazy Like A Fox’ by Link Cromwell [Kaye himself, on a 45 from 1966]. There’s also ‘99th Floor’ by Billy Gibbons’ band The Moving Sidewalks and ‘Going Back to Miami’ by Wayne Cochrane And CC Riders – a blistering record. And I close it out with ‘I’m Five Years Ahead Of My Time’ by The Third Bardo. And of course that’s true, because five years ahead of Nuggets’ release was 1977, when a certain shit hit the fan.

“There will be come related concerts, where we’ll hopefully find some of the original Nuggets to reprise their greatest hits,” Kaye concludes. “It’s really a celebration.”

You can browse the full list of Record Store Day releases here.

Uncut’s Wilco CD Crosseyed Strangers comes to vinyl for Record Store Day

Michael Bonner
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Uncut’s Wilco CD Crosseyed Strangers comes to vinyl for Record Store Day
Wilco made their long overdue debut as Uncut cover stars on our September 2022 issue. As part of the celebrations, the issue came with a free CD, Crosseyed Strangers - which included alternate studio takes, live tracks and Jeff Tweedy solo cuts taken from the band's mammoth 20th-anniversary Yankee H...

Wilco made their long overdue debut as Uncut cover stars on our September 2022 issue. As part of the celebrations, the issue came with a free CD, Crosseyed Strangers – which included alternate studio takes, live tracks and Jeff Tweedy solo cuts taken from the band’s mammoth 20th-anniversary Yankee Hotel Foxtrot box set.

Now a limited edition of 8,000 copies pressed on 140g vinyl is coming on Record Store Day (April 16) courtesy of Nonesuch.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot won two Grammys recently, for Best Historical Album and in the Album Notes category.

Crosseyed Strangers is the second compilation Wilco have curated for Uncut: our 2019 Wilcovered CD was also released on vinyl for Record Store Day in 2020.

“Revisiting Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has been a collaboration with our audience,” Tweedy told us at the time. “We are a band that likes to make people happy. The tour. The boxset. And now this compilation is all a part of letting everyone in as much as they want to come in. The songs pulled for this release come from a variety of places over the years. Versions that fans have responded well to. If you ever wondered what a time traveling-enabled alternate version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would sound like, here’s your chance.”

The tracklisting for the Record Store Day vinyl edition of Crosseyed Strangers is:

Side A
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart (from Together At Last)
Camera (from Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994 – 2014)
Radio Cure (Live at United Palace Theater, NYC 4/19/22)
War On War (Alternate Take)
Jesus, Etc. (Live at United Palace Theater, NYC 4/19/22)
Ashes Of American Flags (From Together At Last)

Side B
Heavy Metal Drummer (Live at The Pageant, St. Louis, MO 7/23/02)
I’m The Man Who Loves You (Alternate Take)
Pot Kettle Black (Live at The Pageant, St. Louis, MO 7/23/02)
Poor Places (Live at United Palace Theater, NYC 4/19/22)
Resverations (Live at United Palace Theater, NYC 4/19/22)

You can browse the full list of Record Store Day releases here.

Neil Young announces return to stage with first headline show since 2019

Alex Gallagher
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Neil Young announces return to stage with first headline show since 2019
Neil Young will return to the stage in April, with the singer-songwriter announcing his first public headline performance since 2019. ORDER NOW: Led Zeppelin is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Neil Young with Crazy Horse – World Record review Young will headline ...

Neil Young will return to the stage in April, with the singer-songwriter announcing his first public headline performance since 2019.

Young will headline the sixth edition of the Light Up the Blues charity show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on April 22, alongside his CSNY bandmate Stephen Stills. The benefit show – organised by Stills and his family since 2013 – raises money for autism awareness non-profit Autism Speaks. This year’s edition will also feature performances from Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real, a tribute to the late David Crosby by his son James Raymond, and more.

In a statement to Rolling Stone, Young confirmed his upcoming appearance. “We’ll be there to ‘Light Up the Blues’ with Stephen, [his wife] Kristen, and the family, doing our first show in four years with old friends for our autistic people around the world,” he said.

A week after Young headlines the Light Up the Blues benefit, he’ll perform as part of Willie Nelson‘s star-studded 90th birthday celebrations. Over two nights (April 29 and 30) at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, a line-up that includes Young, Nelson, Beck, Snoop Dogg, Kacey Musgraves, Orville Peck and many more will perform to mark Nelson’s nonagenarian milestone.

Young last performed in September 2019, headlining a benefit concert in Lake Hughes, California alongside Norah Jones and Father John Misty. Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in early 2020, Young has been an outspoken advocate for protections against the virus. That has included a reluctance to return to the stage for large concerts, even as many other artists began announcing tours and venues abandoned requirements such as masks.

Last year, Young said with a statement on his website that he would not be performing at that year’s edition of Farm Aid because of his concerns over COVID-19 transmission. “I am not ready for that yet. I don’t think it is safe in the pandemic,” Young said at the time. “I miss it very much.”

In 2021, Young also called on promoters to cancel “super-spreader” gigs while a pandemic was ongoing. “The big promoters, if they had the awareness, could stop these shows,” he wrote in a blog post on his site. “Live Nation, AEG, and the other big promoters could shut this down if they could just forget about making money for a while.”

Last year, Young also protested Spotify, pulling his music from the streaming service for platforming the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which Young accused of spreading “false information about vaccines”.

The likes of Joni Mitchell, Crazy Horse guitarist Nils Lofgren and others withdrew their music from the platform in solidarity. In response to Young’s boycott, the streaming platform announced it would be adding content advisories to all relevant podcast episodes addressing the pandemic.

Watch Elvis Costello pay tribute to Burt Bacharach at first night of New York residency

Ali Shutler
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Watch Elvis Costello pay tribute to Burt Bacharach at first night of New York residency
Elvis Costello paid tribute to Burt Bacharach at the opening night of his ten-night residency at The Gramercy Theatre last week – check out footage below. ORDER NOW: Led Zeppelin is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: “Burt is an extremist for sure. Extreme in love and ...

Elvis Costello paid tribute to Burt Bacharach at the opening night of his ten-night residency at The Gramercy Theatre last week – check out footage below.

The legendary composer passed away of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, California on Wednesday (February 8). He was 94 years old.

During the first show of Costello’s 100 Songs And More residency at New York’s Gramercy Theatre on Thursday (February 9), he performed Bacharach’s “Baby, It’s You”.

Bacharach co-wrote the song with Luther Dixon and Mack David, with the Shirelles releasing it as a single in 1961. It was later covered by The Beatles for their 1963 debut album Please Please Me.

“A really great man left us yesterday,” Costello said before performing “Baby, It’s You”. “People say when somebody reaches a great age, ‘Well, it was a good inning.’ [But] it’s never time to say goodbye to somebody if you love them. I’m not ashamed to say I did love this man for everything he gave, Mr. Burt Bacharach.”

Later in the set, Costello covered “Anyone Who Had a Heart”, which was co-written by Bacharach and Hal David, before it was released by Dionne Warwick in 1963.

Elvis Costello confirmed the residency last year while on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. At the time, he explained that fans will “never hear the same song twice” over the course of the ten-nights and that the setlists would add up to “200 songs [played] over 10 nights.”

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds share live gig and launch new website to celebrate 10 years of Push The Sky Away

Damian Jones
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Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds share live gig and launch new website to celebrate 10 years of Push The Sky Away
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds have shared a live concert to mark the 10-year anniversary of their album Push The Sky Away. ORDER NOW: Led Zeppelin is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: This Much I Know To Be True review The band performed tracks from the record at Los A...

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds have shared a live concert to mark the 10-year anniversary of their album Push The Sky Away.

The band performed tracks from the record at Los Angeles’ Fonda Theatre on February 21, 2013. Three days earlier the album was released.

For a limited time the band are allowing fans to stream the concert, watch a performance of “Mermaids” from the show and a video showing how the album was made. You can stream the concert here on Spotify or via email here and watch the other videos below.

In addition the band are launching a new website celebrating Push The Sky Away along with video, audio, imagery, lyrics and exclusive merchandise. You can access it here.

The Bad Seeds at the time consisted of Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Jim Sclavunos, Martyn Casey, Thomas Wydler and Conway Savage, with Barry Adamson and George Vjestica each joining for two tracks.

“Push The Sky Away was the start of a new, wild adventure for the Bad Seeds. The record opened up a whole different approach to the way we created our music. It was the beginning of a way of writing – a kind of controlled improvisation. Because of this shift, the record was to some extent divisive – but it was the necessary reinvention that the Bad Seeds desperately needed,” Cave said via press release.

“For that reason Push The Sky Away continues to stand as one of my most loved of all the Bad Seeds’ albums.”

The setlist for Push The Sky Away at Fonda Theatre was as follows:

“We No Who U R”
“Wide Lovely Eyes”
“Water’s Edge”
“Jubilee Street”
“Mermaids”
“We Real Cool”
“Finishing Jubilee Street”
“Higgs Boson Blues”
“Push The Sky Away”
“From Her To Eternity”
“O Children”
“The Ship Song”
“Jack The Ripper”
“Red Right Hand”
“Deanna”
“Love Letter”
“The Mercy Seat”
“Stagger Lee”

Earlier this year, Cave confirmed that he had started work on a new Bad Seeds album, sharing some early lyric ideas in the process.

The Making Of “The Magic Number” by De La Soul

Tom Pinnock
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The Making Of “The Magic Number” by De La Soul
This feature originally appeared in Uncut Take 232, September 2016 “We were all walking through Macy’s to a local mall,” remembers MC and producer Dave Jolicoeur, “and I saw a Mickey-Mouse T-shirt with a big daisy on it. It just looked great, and I was like, ‘How could I incorporate som...

This feature originally appeared in Uncut Take 232, September 2016

“We were all walking through Macy’s to a local mall,” remembers MC and producer Dave Jolicoeur, “and I saw a Mickey-Mouse T-shirt with a big daisy on it. It just looked great, and I was like, ‘How could I incorporate something that looks so cool to me into what we’re doing? What could daisy mean and be really cool?’”

With that revelation, Dave (then known as Trugoy) invented the ‘DAISY Age’ – ‘Da Inner Sound, Y’All’ – the concept that would embody De La Soul’s intelligent, sensitive lyrics, colourful style and sly humour. It would also quickly lead to them being labelled “the hippies of hip-hop”, a term they hated.

“At that time it was all about challenging yourself to be different,” says producer Maseo. “Run-DMC wasn’t the Beastie Boys, LL wasn’t Rakim, Rakim wasn’t Big Daddy Kane, Public Enemy wasn’t De La. Everybody was different.”

While the likes of Public Enemy and NWA took a harder, more streetwise approach to their sound, Pos, Maseo and Dave, who had grown up in similarly tough environments, sampled children’s TV and rapped about their unbreakable friendship and railed against hip-hop conformity on infectious tracks such as “Me, Myself And I” and “The Magic Number”. The end result was their classic debut 3 Feet High And Rising, co-produced by fellow Long Island DJ Prince Paul.

“We realised that there were no boundaries with it,” says rapper Pos aka Posdnuos. “We could hear Chicago’s ‘Saturday In The Park’ on the radio and realise, ‘Hey, this is a great record’ – all it needs is a beat that’s kind of accepted within a hip-hop realm to make it work.”

“We wasn’t high that much at that time,” says Dave, “but I think we were just kids who saw things a different way. We were obviously eyes wide open.”

DAVE: We must have demoed “The Magic Number” no later than ’86. At that time we were in Long Island – I had probably just graduated from high school [Amityville Memorial] and Pos and Mase were still in school. I used to go to Pos’s house after school and write concepts and talk about music and hip-hop and ideas.

MASEO: I came to Long Island in 1984 as a DJ. I met Prince Paul around the neighbourhood at different backyard parties, and parties at a centre called the Dugout. I actually talk about the Dugout on [1991’s] “Ring Ring Ring”: “party at the Dugout on Dixon Ave/Haven’t been to the jam in quite a while”. When Paul was in town he used to come to all the parties and get on the turntables for 10 or 15 minutes. He was a battle DJ, not only a producer. He wasn’t much of a party DJ like he is today – back then he was into tricks. We became friends, and Paul and I put a demo together of a guy in our neighbourhood, Eric, who called himself Gangster B. But privately, since 1985, me, Pos and Dave had been working on music. Nobody knew they were MCs.

DAVE: At that time, a lot of hip-hop solo artists were braggers and boasters, lyricists who talked about how good they were and were up for any battle. Those were things that we loved and respected, ’cause it was hip-hop, it was happening and it was amazing. But for us it was a little different to how we planned on approaching it.

POS: I was born in The Bronx, and Dave and Mase came from Brooklyn. We still knew that struggle, still knew the pain of being stopped by police because we were black, so nothing that NWA were saying was foreign or alien to us. It’s just that we chose not to express ourselves as De La Soul like that. Even Mase, who could be very honest about his early dealings in the streets and what he saw in Brooklyn and what he needed to do to support his family, he just chose that that wouldn’t be the element that he talked about in De La Soul. But we were always very familiar with it, and we could relate to it.

DAVE: Absolutely – we didn’t live in any fancy neighbourhoods, our friends were good students as well as kids on a corner selling drugs. We could’ve touched on a lot of those things, but we wanted a different perspective. We kinda approached those subjects in a different way, like “My Brother’s A Basehead’ or “Millie Pulled A Pistol On Santa”. We felt comfortable doing that stuff ’cause it felt like that’s who we were – interesting, humorous young kids having a good time.

POS: Unfortunately people think ‘the MCs, they rhyme, and maybe the DJ or whoever else produced’, but the quite honest truth is that we all produced. We all participated, and we all nourished each other’s ideas. What was really great about Paul is that he made sure that everyone was allowed to express themselves on the records.

MASEO: My first love is DJing and producing, [Pos and Dave’s] first love is MCing and producing. Our roles are what we chose, but the dynamics of how we create come from many different places. So it’s not like anybody has a designated position, some cuts on the records are done by Dave, and every now and again over the years I’ve challenged myself lyrically. Every now and again you’ll hear me rap on something. No-one really had a designated role – an idea can always spark from anyone. We’re in the song-making business, so it’s all about making a great song, whether it’s a hit or not.

DAVE: We grew up with television. Saturday morning obviously, for any kid, was the highlight of the week, when you’d wake up early and watch all these kiddy shows.

POS: Multiplication Rock was one of those great educational commercials that would play in between your favourite Saturday morning cartoons. There were different songs like “Three Is A Magic Number” or “The Letter A”. My parents purchased the music for us, as a complete set. So later, once we were using music for hip-hop purposes, that set was just the easiest place to go to. It was a great soundtrack to our lives, and therefore a great place to pull from to manipulate in a hip-hop sense. There were also three of us, so it was like ‘Yo, how about this?’

MASEO: It was just an idea that Pos had for so long – it never really had no lyrics, just had the records.

POS: When we came up with “The Magic Number”, we were working in Mase’s basement. We took the main sample from [Bob Dorough’s] “Three Is A Magic Number” on Multiplication Rock, then took Double Dee and Steinski’s “Lesson 3” for the drums [the famed “Amen” break, originally from The Winstons’ “Amen, Brother”].

MASEO: We sampled them at my mother’s house, on this little keyboard we had, a Casio SK1. It didn’t even have an input on it so you could get a clear sample, you just had to put it right next to the speaker. So that’s how we were doing pre-production then, before we even knew what pre-production meant! I finally played Prince Paul things we had been working on on a four-track, dubbing cassettes and that. Paul was excited about what he heard, he was just as excited as I was. He was like, ‘Man, I gotta meet with your guys. I can’t make no promises, but we could definitely go in the studio and clean all of this up and put all this together. I’m gonna do my best to shop for a record deal for you guys.’ I wish I’d had the concept the guys from the South had, which is just to sell your music out of the trunk of your car, I think that was a more lucrative mission! But in the very beginning it was all about trying to get a record deal, because that’s what it seemed like you had to do. How long did it take to record? Probably a day.

DAVE: That’s crazy, I feel like we were in the studio forever! Calliope Studios was basically just a loft where the owners had made it really comfortable. It was a big, empty space – you could fit 100 people in there. It was such a big space, you wanted to invite people over just to fill it up a little bit. And that’s what we did – there were probably a good 15 to 25 people in there at some points, and we’d be pulling people into the booth and saying, ‘Hey, go up and say that part.’ There was a big window by the mixing desk – the view was 36th and Broadway, and you could see the corner and everything going on. Calliope was on something like the 17th floor. So many people would drop by – sometimes people who you didn’t even know who were going to be somebody. I remember the singer Joe, he used to always be there! Then he becomes this R&B star. It always felt like something special was happening in Calliope.

MASEO: Calliope had this S900 sampler by Akai, that was my first introduction to Akai, and that’s what we used on the whole of 3 Feet High And Rising. That was the go-to device for us. We were always kind of relying on the engineer in the studio, because we didn’t really know those machines, but we knew that was the machine that was needed. But this is something I learned early on – engineers will bullshit just to make their money! They used to pretend that it was so hard and it took forever to catch the loop on the S900. Until one day, Paul got frustrated and he bought an S950. So when Paul bought an S950, I bought an S950 – and sure enough Paul learnt it, and he taught me some basic stuff. I was like, ‘Yo, this shit is not hard’, and that’s when we sussed out the engineer. That’s when we said, ‘OK, we’re not working with certain engineers anymore.’ Prince Paul was the first one who actually let me touch the equipment in a studio too. When we got to Calliope, Paul was like, ‘Look man, come over here – Mase, look at this board. It’s a 24-track board, look at every track on this board like the radio in your car. You’ve got bass, mid and highs. There’s other frequencies around that you’ll learn, but here’s your basic frequencies. And there’s your gain, right there. Look at this like 24 radios in your car.’ And I was like, ‘You couldn’t have made it any more simpler for me to grasp.’ The mixing desk used to look like Chinese letters to me, but then I got it when he pointed it out to me.

POS: One of the things that really blew my mind in Calliope was this device called an Eventide Harmoniser, which took different sounds and changed the tones or keys of one of the samples. That helped me present early works like “Say No Go”, where I took a Daryl Hall and John Oates record and changed the key so it worked with Sly & The Family Stone’s “Crossword Puzzle”. On “Eye Know”, I took “Peg” by Steely Dan and made it match with The Mad Lads’ “Make This Young Lady Mine”.

MASEO: The way we used to do the studio back then was the way we’d be in class – you’ve gotta come to school with your work! But the way we had things outlined, we always had room for more improvisational stuff, and being able to come up with some weird ideas on the spot.

DAVE: “The Magic Number” came out towards the end of our recording period of 3 Feet High And Rising, I don’t know if it was the very last song but I think it was towards the end of the recording process. We never intended on doing a title track or anything like that, but it really was a nice record that kind of was a manifesto of who we are, a song saying that this unit, Pos, Mase and Dave, is really important. I think how we respect each other’s ears, respect each other’s musical opinions, and just respect each other as friends, you know, this whole thing became something because of that. I think the combination of us three, the way we are, was magical, and the record spoke for itself. There is a double track of my rhymes on there. That was cool – again to compliment Paul, he liked to try different things. Often mistakes were kept. Maybe we said, “Oh, it’s double…”, and Paul would be the first to say, “It sounds cool double, maybe we should leave it. Anyone mad at that?” It was important to have Prince Paul around for something like “The Magic Number”.

POS: My rhyme honestly was just supposed to be about what I thought about me, and about what I was going through, but also coming together to give off the feeling of being three guys who have this magic bond. I sing first at the top, then I do my rhyme, and then I sing right after myself again, then Dave comes in and does the same thing – he sings, he rhymes, and he sings at the end when he goes “three times one, what is it?”. Singing was a very big part of hip-hop at the time – you would take a disco record or whatever was big at the time, and you would then battle someone and sing the actual R&B verses, but make it work for your name, your crew. So it was really simple to do with “The Magic Number”.

DAVE: One thing that was really amazing about “The Magic Number” was the end, where all those records were being scratched. It was funny, because it was just a pile of records that we were listening to, and on the spot trying to figure out what was cool to throw in there, from comedy records to cartoons to R’n’B and reggae stuff, just pulling out the next record and saying, ‘Ok, that sounds good, throw that one there. What’s next?’ That spontaneity in the record is what I’ll always remember.

POS: That’s what was great about back then – we were just so open to anything because we were just so happy to be living our dream and doing what we wanted. We were just really big on not doing what everyone else was doing. I mean, even when you look at some of our later work, when on the scene people were going in a more experimental way, we’d turn around and be more minimalistic in our approach, letting you know the message that we presented. We tried different cadences and different themes that might have been considered light-hearted compared to what was going on. It just kinda naturally felt that way.

DAVE: We felt like we were doing good music, but I also know that we sat back and said, “Wow, we’re pulling out some cool stuff.” We didn’t know 3 Feet High And Rising was going to be as huge as it was, we weren’t thinking that [i]at all[/i]. But we definitely were satisfied and proud of what we created.

POS: As much as we appreciate and love “Me, Myself And I”, I think we’ve been very vocal about the fact we got tired of it, but “The Magic Number” really wasn’t a song like that. Funnily enough, we just did a bunch of shows in the UK and Belgium and we do “The Magic Number” as one of the last songs, and the reaction to it was very fresh and genuine. It’s one of those songs that has always had this great energy and freshness, because it brings everything together at the end, and it means a lot – three friends who’ve stuck through everything and have been through so many ups and downs, and have maintained what people consider a magic bond. It just means a lot, so it always comes off well when we perform it live.

DAVE: We try to recapture that energy, and for a couple of old guys it’s funny, so we do it as best as we can, and it’s humorous and it’s silly. We were just talking about good times, and good messages, a lot of it pointed to yourself. There’s always room to grow, to learn and to acknowledge things.

MASEO: The childhood dream became a profession, and we still love it – that’s really the reality of it all.

FACTFILE

Written by: Prince Paul (Paul Huston), Pos (Kelvin Mercer), Dave (David Jolicoeur), Maseo (Vincent Mason), Bob Dorough
Recorded at: Calliope Studios, Manhattan, New York
Producer: Prince Paul, De La Soul
Personnel: Pos (vocals, production), Dave (vocals, production), Mase (production), Prince Paul (turntables, production)
Released: March 14, 1989
Label: Tommy Boy, Warner Bros
UK/US chart position: 7/-

TIMELINE

1985
On Long Island, Amityville Memorial High School students Pos, Dave and Mase begin demoing their own music

1986
Pos comes up with the idea for combining the chorus of “Three Is A Magic Number” with the “Amen” break

Late 1988
The trio record their debut album, 3 Feet High And Rising, in Manhattan’s Calliope Studios with Amityville DJ and producer Prince Paul

December 1989
“The Magic Number” is released as a single in the UK and Europe

Inside Led Zeppelin’s meteoric rise to the top during their 1973 Houses Of The Holy U.S. tour

Peter Watts
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Inside Led Zeppelin’s meteoric rise to the top during their 1973 Houses Of The Holy U.S. tour
By 1973, LED ZEPPELIN were on their way to becoming the biggest rock’n’roll band in the world. Embarking on an American tour to promote their new album Houses Of The Holy, they shattered box office records, rewriting the blueprint for rock’n’roll tours as they went. Peter Watts climbs aboard...

By 1973, LED ZEPPELIN were on their way to becoming the biggest rock’n’roll band in the world. Embarking on an American tour to promote their new album Houses Of The Holy, they shattered box office records, rewriting the blueprint for rock’n’roll tours as they went. Peter Watts climbs aboard the Starship to hear tales of glorious, transcendent music in the latest issue of Uncut magazine – in UK shops from Thursday, February 9 and available to buy from our online store.

July 29, 1973. Inside Madison Square Garden, the ground was shaking. It was the final night of Led Zeppelin’s 1973 tour of the United States and Eddie Kramer was recording the show behind the stage in Wally Heider’s Mobile Studio Truck. The three sold-out nights at the Garden marked the climax of a gargantuan trek in support of March’s multi-million selling album Houses Of The Holy. Over three months, Zep blazed across the States, playing to crowds that eclipsed The Rolling Stones’ huge American tour the previous year and breaking box office records held by The Beatles. From packed stadiums and surreal album covers to trashed hotel rooms, Zeppelin crafted a new reality, one that could even make the earth move.

“I was in the truck with my hands on the fader and all of a sudden it began moving up and down,” recalls Kramer. “It was like an earthquake. The audience was going crazy, cheering and stomping. When you can feel 20,000 people jumping up and down… well that gives you a moment to remember.”

Kramer was taping the Madison Square Garden show for The Song Remains The Same, a live album eventually released in ’76 alongside a rather bovine motion picture. It seemed apposite that Kramer should record the Garden show: after all, he’d been there the previous year, when the band had recorded Houses Of The Holy during unforgettable spring days at Mick Jagger’s Hampshire mansion. Back then, the band were looking to follow the blockbuster success of Led Zeppelin IV, expanding on their razor riffs and electric mayhem by embracing multiple styles and textures. While Zeppelin experienced the thrill of liberation in the studio, they also knew it was important to capture the vibe correctly.

“None of us really knew what we were doing,” admits Robert Plant. “We’d had a great deal of success, but it didn’t follow there would be more success as times move on. We wanted to spend time doing it properly and it was time well spent.”

America – a land Led Zeppelin had set out to conquer in 1969 – went wild. It seemed appropriate that the album title was a reference to the almost religious fervour experienced in the concert arena. Watching in New York from the side of the Garden stage – and sporting a knotted hankie and carrying a rubber monkey – was musician Roy Harper. Part of the entourage, the “emotional protection unit” that travelled with the band, Harper spent the tour in luxury hotels – the Drake in New York and the Hyatt in LA – before travelling to shows on the Starship, the band’s luxurious Boeing 720 private jet. Amid parties with George Harrison, cake fights with Robert Plant and motorbikes ridden along hotel corridors, Harper saw Zeppelin produce the goods on stage every single night. On this tour, he believes, the West was finally won.

“‘Unique’ is one of those words like ‘genius’ that is thrown around quite a lot, but Zeppelin were unique,” says Harper. “They pulled a crowd because of the bite, the sheer bite, of that. It became a thing – a walking, talking monster – and as the venues got bigger, they got better, heavier, because they could exercise control. It was a kind of magic and you were blasted into the middle of next week. You paid attention, because attention was being demanded. That wasn’t the same as being in England. You couldn’t pull that off in the Marquee.”

BP Fallon, the band’s effusive press officer, recalls the impact Led Zeppelin had the moment they arrived in a city on the Starship. Band and entourage were ushered into a fleet of limousines before speeding through the streets with a police escort, sirens wailing towards a stadium where 50,000 people awaited in feverish anticipation. “The Stones sang about sex,” he says. “The music of Led Zeppelin was sex. The audience knew that, the girls dug it and the guys too. This wasn’t a knitting lesson. And remember too, you can do a lot during a wild drum solo – especially if you’re not the drummer.”

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Ryuichi Sakamoto – 12

Michael Bonner
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Ryuichi Sakamoto – 12
On December 11, 2022, Ryuichi Sakamoto returned to public performance after an absence of two years. Recorded at Tokyo’s prestigious 509 Studio and streamed online, Playing The Piano 2022 found Sakamoto dressed in black, hunched over his grand piano, playing a selection of music from throughout hi...

On December 11, 2022, Ryuichi Sakamoto returned to public performance after an absence of two years. Recorded at Tokyo’s prestigious 509 Studio and streamed online, Playing The Piano 2022 found Sakamoto dressed in black, hunched over his grand piano, playing a selection of music from throughout his career. It brought into focus the Sakamoto we’re most familiar with – the artist in communion with his instrument of choice, playing music that is both delicate and fluid. But Sakamoto has travelled far and wide since his beginnings in the late ’70s with the pioneering techno-pop trio the Yellow Magic Orchestra – his work has encompassed Oscar-winning film soundtracks, critical electronic touchstones like “Riot In Lagos”, aesthetically heightened piano compositions and, as a tireless collaborator, he has recorded with everyone from David Sylvian to Caetano Veloso and Austrian digital adventurer Christian Fennesz.

Playing The Piano 2022 also marked Sakamoto’s first performance since his cancer diagnosis – his second in a decade. In a brief video interview to accompany the concert film, Sakamoto admits he finds concert projects too taxing, even when filmed one song at a time; live performance has been paused, at least, for the foreseeable future. As a consequence, the film – shot in crisp, atmospheric monochrome – captures a sense of quiet dignity and reflection suitable for the occasion. This mood extends further to Sakamoto’s first album of new solo material since 2017’s async. 12 was recorded following this latest diagnosis, the dozen pieces titled and sequenced by the dates each were written, culminating in what Sakamoto describes as a “sound diary” of this challenging period.

The album opens with “20210310”, a synthesiser piece that passes slowly through a series of softly sustained chords, occasionally moving far down the instrument’s lower register to create a more apprehensive effect. “20211130”, meanwhile, finds Sakamoto at his piano, picking out melodies while a crepuscular keyboard sound rises slowly and quietly in the background. Close listening is the key here: you might catch the sound of Sakamoto’s foot lifting off the piano pedal or the keys move as he lifts his hand. At the start of “20211201”, you hear Sakamoto breathing, then towards the end of the piece there’s a faint but quite defined sound, as if he’s shifting his position on his piano stool. The deeper you immerse yourself in the album, the more compelling these random, vérité details become; moments of intimacy and humanity that physically insert the composer into the music he’s performing. Sakamoto’s 21st-century output has tended towards ambient and abstraction, music that doesn’t naturally come with built-in narratives. Yet the emotional gravity of 12 is so palpable, one wonders how much our response is to the music, or to the context. During his treatment for throat cancer in 2014, Sakamoto collaborated with the ambient heavyweight Taylor Deupree and Corey Fuller and Tomoyoshi Date, known as Illuha, on Perpetual, which they improvised live at an event in the Japanese city of Yamaguchi. A mix of piano, processed guitar, pump organ and synthesisers, along with field recordings and found objects, Perpetual’s most radical quality was its silence – the way the music gradually dissipated like fine mist leaving nothing behind. In some ineffable way, the disappearance of sound on Perpetual seemed entwined with Sakamoto’s condition; a notion that reasserts itself on 12, particularly in the pauses where Sakamoto raises his hands above the piano keyboard and the room beyond him is still.

The most conventional pieces on 12 are “20220302 – sarabande” (the only song from 12 on the setlist for Playing The Piano 2022) and its companion piece “20220302”. A sarabande, a courtly dance popular during the Baroque period, seems to be a suitable reference point for Sakamoto’s precise, geometric configurations here.

As you might imagine, the ghosts of Erik Satieand John Cage are summarily evoked. On “20220302”, though, he introduces sudden, inquisitive flurries of notes that provides a playful interlude to these elegant, nuanced though ultimately melancholic compositions. Though “20220307” and “20220404” are also piano pieces, Sakamoto begins to gently disrupt the atmospherics: unlike the close-mic conditions of the earlier piano pieces, “20220307” sounds like it was recorded at a distance, while on “20220404” the music threatens to disappear in places until its final eight seconds experience a gradual falling away of sound. “20220304”, 12’s final track, consists entirely of bells. Perhaps because Sakamoto switches instrument, this track feels like a coda; a point where you sense things are being wrapped up, when the music has become so abstracted it disappears. As sparse as 12 is, we’ve worked hard to engage with it, and for it to gradually, finally vanish is a strangely disquieting experience.

Incidentally, the album is released on January 17 – which is also Sakamoto’s 71st birthday. As much as these graceful and meditative pieces became threnodies for Sakamoto’s condition, 12 is also something of a personal and creative victory for the composer. Once again, I guess, context is everything.

Lisa O’Neill – All Of This Is Chance

Stephen Troussé
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Lisa O’Neill – All Of This Is Chance
A couple of years ago Lisa O’Neill fulfilled a lifetime ambition by headlining at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. However, because of Covid restrictions she had to perform in an empty theatre. Or almost empty. Conscious of all the ghosts lingering around the stately Victorian auditorium, she ...

A couple of years ago Lisa O’Neill fulfilled a lifetime ambition by headlining at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. However, because of Covid restrictions she had to perform in an empty theatre. Or almost empty. Conscious of all the ghosts lingering around the stately Victorian auditorium, she called out to some friendly spirits to become her audience: Hilda Moriarty, who had been a medical student in the 1940s, back when the hall was still part of University College Dublin. Patrick Kavanagh, the infatuated poet twice her age, whom she mocked for only writing about turnips, and who in response wrote “Dark Haired Miriam Ran Away”. And The Dubliners, who set the verse to an ancient folk tune, and recorded it in 1971 as “On Raglan Road” – which Lisa performed in haunting a cappella, feet up on the seats into the dark of theatre.

But she conjured other spirits too, performing songs by Tom Waits, Ivor Cutler, Nina Simone and, in memory of a beloved relation, “My Pony, My Rifle And Me”, as sung by Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo. “I think I saw Ivor Cutler with Hilda and Paddy earlier,” she muttered, drifting into a brief reverie between songs. “Nobody’s social distancing in the Ghost Green Room…”

There’s no social distancing in O’Neill’s art either – it’s all here rolling around, hugger-mugger, in one big jamboree bag: the love, the grief, the rage, the strangeness, the humour and the wide-eyed wonder. And on All Of This Is Chance, she brings these elements together as never before, creating an album that feels like the first indisputable classic of 2023.

You may have heard the lead single “Old Note” already. It’s another of the songs that she debuted at the National Concert Hall, but here in radically different form. Back then, performed with just an acoustic guitar, it felt like some ancient folk song she’d plucked from oblivion. But the version as it appears here is entranced, born along on some starsailing, celestial drone. The arrangement was conjured by The Frames’ Colm Mac Con Iomaire as an experiment and it succeeds magically in casting O’Neill’s song as free on the breeze as the dandelion seeds gathering around the moon on the album’s cover.

Which isn’t to say that the songs are still rooted in the muck and clay of the everyday. The album begins with the title track, and some harsh words borrowed from Kavanagh: “Clay is the word and clay is the flesh / Where the potato-gatherers like mechanised scarecrows move / Along the side-fall of the hill…”

In 2020 The Abbey Theatre invited Lisa to perform in their adaptation of Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger on the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham. The experience of immersing herself in Kavanagh’s poem stuck with her and liberated her. On 2018’s stunning Heard A Long Gone Song, O’Neil pulled up old tunes by the roots, and delivered them with all the shock of new hurt. Here it feels like all her research, all her time in the archive, has spurred her ambition, sent her out voyaging into the universe afresh, like the long-buried tune on “Old Note” that longs to be resurrected and live among the songs of birds, in their “lawless league of lonesome lonesome beauty”…

Birds like the iridescent peacock on “Birdy From Another Realm”, which is like William Blake bringing his subversively psychedelic vision to play on the ancient Cuckoo songs. Or the puffins and gannets that dance around a damned lover in “Whisht, The Wild Workings Of The Mind”. Or the wild dreaming sparrow on “Silver Seed”.

While …Long Gone Song was released on Rough Trade’s folk imprint, River Lea, All Of This Is Chance is very clearly a Rough Trade record. Which isn’t to say that it “transcends” folk or anything so daft. O’Neill’s bitter, bruised but boundless voice is clearly coming from a very particular time and place.

But for all that it’s come out of a singer steeped in traditional music, this record’s peers might be Astral Weeks, Starsailor, Music For A New Society, New Skin For The Old Ceremony and, in particular, Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Miss America. She’s not out of place among these ghosts either. If you’ve ever been spellbound by those songs of love, loss, wonder and despair, you need to listen to Lisa O’Neill.

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