Burial

From the lofty vantage point of SE1, I haven’t heard much buzz from South By Southwest this year, or at least very little in the way of real surprises and completely new discoveries (If you know different, of course, please share).

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

Fictional story references the Moors Murderers

Potent two-disc set of The Mule’s onstage artistry, drawn from his 2008 tours of America and Europe.

Joe Jackson speaks about plans

Apologies for not coming up with the annual skree of indignation when the Mercury shortlist was announced a couple of weeks ago. To be honest, I couldn’t be bothered to get worked up about it this year, not least because it would’ve been quite a struggle to come up with a dozen British albums I could genuinely enthuse about that have come out in the last 12 months.

If last night was loosely the folk night of Club Uncut’s Great Escape bill, this is probably the ‘rock’ or ‘psych’ night.

Find out who will be joining Crystal Antlers and The Delta Spirit here...

Guy Garvey scoops prize 17 years after his band formed

Just back from the Mercury Prize shortlist announcement which, as you might imagine, was a hotbed of hype and low-level grumbling about the 12 nominations. I was doing some media-slag punditry, a lot of which revolved around the high-profile absentees: Coldplay, Duffy, The Ting Tings, Kate Nash and the one which actually annoyed me, Portishead. But before I start ranting, here’s the shortlist if you haven’t seen it yet: