Features

Guitar tech Leif Bodnarchuk spills the beans

Yes yes I know it's only a couple of days since the last one, but I have an interview to prepare for in an hour or so, and yesterday's post brought a bunch of stuff we should probably talk about, or at least flag up, now. Namely. . .

I’ve written about this guy Babe, Terror before here, but he emailed me about a new track he’d posted the other day, and I think it might be his best one yet.

Today: Uncut presents musical director Javier Mas' view of Cohen on the road

A good day for the world, then. Not sure whether this week’s Uncut playlist really reflects the global mood, though I did bring in “Attica Blues” to play this morning. A bunch of unprepossessing-looking indie promos don’t really cut it on a day like this.

A slightly tenuous connection, but it’s odd to think that, when the record I blogged about yesterday, “Brighten The Corners”, first came out, Damon Albarn was at the height of his Pavement phase. I remember going to see Pavement in Oxford on that tour (“Westie Can Drum”, “The Killing Moon”. . .) and Albarn was there with Justine Frischmann, looking conspicuously inconspicuous in a baseball cap pulled down low.

When promos of the latest deluxe Pavement reissue – “Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Ed”, no less – turned up last week, it struck me that perhaps, in 12 months’ time, we might just be talking about a Pavement comeback being one of the key reunions of 2009.

Uncut presents extended transcripts with those on the road with the icon

Not that I take much notice of these things, but it did seem fitting that a copy of the new Sunn 0))) album arrived just in time for Halloween. Like most of their crushingly slow meditations on doom, “Dømkirke” would probably be interpreted by many listeners as an apt soundtrack for the gates of hell opening at an agonisingly slow pace.

I was just re-reading my blog on the first Marnie Stern album, “In Advance Of The Broken Arm”, from last year. I mentioned plenty of stuff about Lightning Bolt and Sleater-Kinney (and slyly avoided a couple of other reference points, more of which later), and about how Stern had certain similarities with early PJ Harvey.