Features

A couple of months ago here, I raved some about a self-titled album on Woodsist by White Fence, who turned out to be a guy from LA called Tim Presley with some kind of connection to The Strange Boys. I neglected to mention, however, that Presley was also the leader of another band, Darker My Love, who I’d never really heard, to be honest. I suspect the gothic implications of the name put me off.

Business as usual today after yesterday’s somewhat neurotic post. Many thanks to Dave C for hooking us up with a killer Endless Boogie jam from Primavera, which I’m in the thick of as I type.

Funny how some records take a while to bed in, no matter how much you play them, nor how often people you trust tell you how good they are. I’ve had something of an uncharacteristic writer’s block for the past week or so (hence the shortage of blogs; sorry about that), but when we had another go at the Avi Buffalo album yesterday, a few thoughts crystallised.

When a bunch of musicians start hanging out, journalists have always been keen on anointing a new scene. The musicians themselves, of course, are usually determined to run a mile from stifling classifications. They’re not a movement, they’ll almost invariably claim, they just happen to be good friends.

As I maybe mentioned the other week, I’ll put some stuff up here soon about the whole ongoing Great Lost Albums thing. It also occurred this morning, though, that I should have a crack at a 2010 halftime Top 20 or 30, as I managed last year.

As part of our Great Lost Films feature in the current issue of UNCUT, I wrote a piece on the making of The Last Movie, Dennis Hopper's follow-up to Easy Rider. One of the people I spoke to was The Last Movie's screenwriter Stewart Stern. At one point during our interview, Stern mused dryly: "It was never quiet around Dennis." Certainly, Dennis Hopper - who died today aged 74 – was too tempestuous a personality ever to be considered quiet, even by Hollywood's colourful standards.

To Dalston, and Barden’s Boudoir, where Sir Richard Bishop is brandishing a magic stick, with a feather on the end of it, that has been balanced precariously on Ben Chasny’s amp for the duration of Rangda’s show. As ever with Bishop, it’s hard to tell whether he’s drawing on or satirising a world of arcane knowledge. Powerful forces are undoubtedly at work here, but maybe that’s just down to the kinetic virtuosity of Bishop, Chasny and Chris Corsano.

Many years back -- the last century, in fact -- when we were putting UNCUT together, Allan and I drew up a list of canonical film makers whose work would become central to the magazine’s editorial remit. Our A list included Scorsese, Tarantino, Peckinpah, Coppola, Stone, Hill, Hawks, Ford, Eastwood, and so on. In the intervening years, the list has pretty much stayed the same. With, arguably, one exception: Francis Ford Coppola.

One of my highlights at Club Uncut last year was an epic show by Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile, which spiralled off into some phenomenally unstructured solo reveries, during which Vile seemed to be carving an unusual and comparatively original new space for folkish singer-songwriters.

A good week for new arrivals, actually, though there is one record here that, somewhat unexpectedly, I never want to hear again. Hopefully you’ve got your hands on the new issue and the “Transition Transmission” CD; pretty nice one, I think.