Ocean

Another issue in the bag, and these are the records that have got us through the last couple of days of production. Mostly very good, with a few probably glaring exceptions.

Twenty years of touring and recording, of inspiration and graft for moderate acclaim, and it comes down to this. Mark Kozelek, the pivot of first Red House Painters and now Sun Kil Moon, is engaged in one more slog around Europe. It is not going well.

Following music on Twitter, it sometimes feels as if a hyped album or a track is listened to for, at best, six hours now before it becomes in some way obsolete: if it’s not trending, it must be passé.

Radiohead have teamed up with Jude Law to produce a campaign film for Greenpeace. The film tells the story of a polar bear forced out of her Arctic habitat due to climate change and features the Radiohead track "Everything In Its Right Place" from the band's 2000 album Kid A. Speaking of the film, Thom Yorke said: "We have to stop the oil giants pushing into the Arctic. An oil spill in the Arctic would devastate this region of breathtaking beauty, while burning that oil will only add to the biggest problem we all face, climate change."

Sun Kil Moon’s excellent Among The Leaves is Uncut’s lead review in the new August 2012 issue, out now. In this feature from September 2010 (Take 160), Mark Kozelek looks back over the highlights of his recording career, from Red House Painters to his current wrestling-indebted incarnation. Words: Graeme Thomson –––––––––––––––––––––––––

Plenty of gold in this week’s haul, and not much better than the Duane Pitre album whose sleeve is posted above – a truly excellent record that I must admit I missed when it was released a few months back.

A serene beginning this morning, with a new Terry Riley album, “Aleph”. Over on my 40 Favourites Of 2012 Thus Far blog, however, things became a little less genteel yesterday, as you can see in the comments thread at the bottom of the chart.

Here we go, then: my 40 favourite albums of 2012 thus far. A very personal list, I should say, so please don’t think it constitutes any kind of canonical Uncut pronouncement.

Smashing Pumpkins' frontman Billy Corgan has laid into Radiohead, declaring them "pompous". The singer, whose band release their new studio album Oceania on Monday (June 18), said that Oxford band were a symbol of the current culture of "valuation" which he despises.

A busy few days, with No Direction Home last weekend, thenMikal Cronin in Dalston on Monday, and a lot of good records to play while we’re winding up the next issue (I’ve embedded a couple of choice Youtube links this week in the list).