Arbouretum

A reminder, first off, that the excellent Arbouretum will finally be playing Club Uncut, next Monday, July 27, at the Lexington on Pentonville Road. Full details here, if you’re interested.

“It’s hot as a witch's tit in this room,” says Club UNCUT headliner Jesca Hoop. “I’m going to have to retune my guitar real quick… cos it sounds like a witch's tit. So if you’ve ever wondered what a witch's tit sounds like, then this is it.” Today has been the hottest day of the year so far in the capital. Despite the welcoming evening cool outside, temperatures in the newly-refurbished Upstairs At The Garage in north London are unforgivingly high. But in some respects, you couldn’t have wished for a better line-up at Club UNCUT in heat like this.

A message that one of the Uncut team, Bud Scoppa, had filed his Top 25 tracks of the last six months inspired me this morning to do something similar.

Iowa country bluesman leaves the farm to perform this April

Reeling slightly from the bad news about John Martyn, here are the records played in the Uncut office over the last couple of days. Mildly weird mix this week: the glut of Smog is due to me trying to review the new Bill Callahan album, which I'll try and blog about in the next few days.

Yesterday’s playlist provoked a bunch of requests from a few of you, requesting more info about the new things from Bon Iver, Six Organs Of Admittance, Arbouretum and Alela Diane (the Neil Young presence is caused by an Uncut staffer buying a bunch of CDs on the cheap, incidentally, rather than any new reissue campaign. Looks like “Toast” has slipped off the schedules again, by the way, while we’re on the subject of Neil’s capricious archives management).

Three days into a new working year, and I've put together the first office playlist of 2009. Usual rules apply, in that what we play isn't necessarily what we like - though that said, I can't spot any total stinkers among this 16.

Just looking idly through the Top 40 this morning, I can’t see any sign of Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah”, which apparently turned up in the midweeks as a result of some X-Factor shenanigans.

All the times you need for the Robert Plant headlined event are listed here