Big brave

See the full line-up on Uncut

Far be it for me to hang around with the popular kids, but the internet seems full these past couple of days with opinion on Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”, culminating in a sort of collective music journalist meltdown in the face of Pitchfork awarding the album a fabled 10.0 rating.

A fairly inhospitable place to be on a Sunday night: just on the edge of the City, near Old Street roundabout, in the cellar of what used to be an almost permanently empty Chinese restaurant. This is the venue for, I think, only the second London show by Emeralds, a night subtitled “A Brave New World In Sound”.

WMD political action thriller ultimately comes up empty-handed ...

The revolutionary jazz poet who turned crack addict is finally forced to face his demons.

Clint Eastwood restages Nelson Mandela's role in South Africa's Rugby World Cup triumph

Today: the Uncut Music Award judges on Dirty Projectors' "Bitte Orca".

The original rock parody; extras up to 11

Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pierce in stunning Kathryn Bigelow war film

I’m not necessarily the best judge of which bands are likely to make some kind of significant hipster/commercial breakthrough. But listening to this Ganglians album, “Monster Head Room”, on Woodsist, it surely makes sense that they should be right at the forefront of this new indie/lo-fi/garage scene that’s coming out of the States right now.