Wonder stuff

The planet’s drollest songwriter shakes hands with his twentysomething self

When Klaus Dinger died a few months ago, I mentioned in an obit here that I had an unpublished interview with Dinger and Michael Rother, from when they briefly reunited to promote the Neu! reissues in 2000.

I’m not, as a rule, fixated on the idea of ‘summer’ and ‘winter’ music, but still, the arrival of the third Brightblack Morning Light album last Friday was incredibly well-timed. I can’t think of a band who make such profoundly horizontal music, who create a soundtrack for being happily paralysed by extreme heat. Or, I suppose, by other stuff.

So, as ever with Latitude, there's as much fun to be had after the official events of the day have wound down...

Let’s start at the end. Julian Cope is standing onstage in the Uncut Arena. The power has just been pulled on him for over-running. He has started half an hour late after a doomed attempt at soundchecking, played two newish songs and a bizarre medley of some old songs, sacrificed a guitar to the goddess, challenged God, Jehovah and Allah to a fight, and ended by announcing, “Children, tell your grandchildren that people like me once walked the earth.” No wonder, I suppose, that he hasn’t played a festival in years.

The Oscar winning actor speaks in depth about his directorial debut

I couldn’t make it to Howlin Rain’s London show the other night, but my colleague Miles did, and came back impressed and bearing a very neat new CD that he bought at the gig. “Wild Life” has two tracks, lasts for about half an hour, and may provide some succour for Ethan Miller fans who’ve been unnerved by his transition from the flat-out psychedelic gloop of Comets On Fire to the sepia-tinted classic rock of the Rain.

Brass Monkey(s): Stunning string-laden debut from Magic Alex (and friend).

I guess it’s become a cliché over the years that, when a Bristol band affiliated to trip-hop make a comeback, they should be somehow darker, and heavier, as if the magisterial doom that they all conjured up from the start somehow wasn’t enough.

90s slack hop opus, remastered and extended with remixes, B-sides and two unreleased tracks