Neon

Cabaret Voltaire's Steel City noir, now rewired with extras...

Directed by Steve McQueen Starring Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan When the Manhattan branch of the Standard Hotel opened for business in summer 2009, it instantly became the hot topic of conversation among New Yorkers. Not as you might think for its stunning views across the Hudson river – but because people were flocking to the park below to watch guests having sex in front of the hotel’s floor to ceiling windows.

One (or rather, three) from the heart of Coppola’s American Zoetrope dream...Hammett was intended by Francis Ford Coppola to be one of his American Zoetrope studio’s first movies, a calling card for the Zoetrope vision and the American debut of German director Wim Wenders. In the event, the film, an homage to novelist Dashiell Hammett boasting a rare lead from Coppola regular Frederic Forrest, did become synonymous with the studio. Just not the way Coppola had hoped.

Top-drawer retrospective from the super-sessioneer turned solo great...

Kind of out of practice with blogging, I’ve been so distracted by other stuff these past few weeks. I have a long list of stuff to cover, though, and this album by Weyes Blood & The Dark Juices seems a good place to start.

All about Virender Sehwag as I type, but I’ve also just taken delivery of a bunch of new Mego releases that look great, including the Mark McGuire comp that’s playing now.

SFA man sees what condition his conditioner’s in...

Following from yesterday's transcript of the Paul Weller debate, here are the Uncut Music Award judges on the Arcade Fire.

First up, if you’ve been enjoying the Nick Cave business in the new issue of Uncut, something useful showed up on our Twitter feed the other day: a Spotify playlist of our Top 30 Cave tracks compiled by Wavey Davey 001. Thanks for that.

Win Butler's troupe retain the capacity to astonish. But on this mature, melodic and elegant third album the surprise is a welcome one...