Ache

Gearing up for the Atoms For Peace show tonight with this lot: please note (and in some cases listen to) new Forest Swords, Feral Ohms (another Ethan Miller band, this one very much in the Comets On Fire zone) and a reissue for Robbie Basho’s long-unavailable first Windham Hill album. The Desert Heat record sounds better with every play, too…

Sacha Baron Cohen has reportedly quit the forthcoming biopic of Freddie Mercury over creative differences with Queen. The actor has been attached to star as Mercury since September 2010, but Deadline reports that he's now pulled out of the project because he and Queen, who have script and director approval, can't agree on the type of movie they want to make. The band apparently want the biopic to be a PG affair, while the actor is keen to delve into the grittier aspects of Mercury's lifestyle.

Wadjda is the first full-length feature film shot entirely inside Saudi Arabia, a conservative Islamic country where women are denied civic freedoms or any public role. It’s director is Haifaa Al-Mansour, a Saudi-born female filmmaker who now lives in Bahrain. While shooting on location in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Al-Mansour had to hide in a production van, directing her actors via walkie-talkie, because she could not publicly mix with her male crew.

No, unfortunately “Bright Phoebus” isn’t being reissued. But what prompted me to dig it out this week was the news of Bright Phoebus Revisited, a concert tour this autumn that promises the album recreated live by every Waterson they could find, along with various guests including Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley. The dates are London Barbican (11), Warwick Arts Centre (12), Liverpool Philharmonic Hall (14), Brighton Dome (15) and Bristol Colston Hall (16). Could be interesting: amazing record.

100 tracks from the first twenty years of "that Little ol’ band from Texas" By Luke Torn...

Mazzy Star are set to release their first new album in 17 years, Seasons Of Your Day. The band's fourth studio album will come out on September 24 and was recorded in California and Norway. Click below to listen to the first single from the album, "California". The album follows 1990's She Hangs Brightly, 1993's So Tonight That I Might See and 1996's Among My Swan.

God bless Rod Stewart Not even creepy celebrity horse-whisperer Alan Yentob could wholly ruin last week’s highly entertaining BBC Arena special on Rod Stewart. His contributions were laughably witless all the same. “You look just like brothers!” he exclaimed excitedly of Rod and long-time mucker Ronnie Woods, which may have been true 40 years ago. These days they don’t even look like cousins.

When unpleasant right-wing governments seize control by one means or another, a lot of wishful thinking often goes on among radical artists. Hard times, they speculate, will encourage a new counterculture; angry political art will flourish in the face of oppression. We heard a lot of this rhetoric from dissenters trying to put a positive gloss on the election of David Cameron in 2010. But as yet, a provocative cultural revolt against the Tories, if there is one, remains too underground to register on most radar.

Influential former Miracle Legion mainstay breaks a long silence...

Morrissey has apologised for pulling a number of tour dates in Peru and Chile after being struck down with food poisoning.