Features

Dylan fever continues apace here, as you may have seen with our pretty extensive series of transcripts from our current cover story. Now "Tell Tale Signs" is out, though, I wonder if the outrage over the 3CD price that came pouring out over here is still coming? If you've bought the box this week, was the third CD and the book of completely unrelated sleeve art worth that extra £80 or so?

I’ve just been playing this Art Ensemble Of Chicago thing from 1970 on Soul Jazz, “Les Stances A Sophie”, so it seems logical to follow it up with the fourth duo recording by Steve Reid and Kieran Hebden.

Check out the extended transcript with: MALCOLM BURN (Oh Mercy engineer)

I don’t listen to music in headphones that often, but some kind of meeting nearby has meant the stereo has been switched off this morning, and I’ve been forced to listen to the high-end fuzz attack of Times New Viking up close.

A bit late in the day, but I just got round to reading a couple of things in this morning's Guardian. One is Matt Bolton's piece on the class war in British indie. The other is Alexis Petridis' customarily thought-provoking review of Oasis' "Dig Out Your Soul".

Part 1 of 13 of our extended transcripts: Micajah Ryan (engineer)

They should have just started a 35-date European tour as guests of The Hold Steady, who pulled all their shows earlier this week due to the hospitalisation of guitarist Tad Kubler. Instead, Philadelphia’s War On Drugs find themselves stranded in London, where they were probably considering busking as an alternative to starving on the capital’s streets before being added at the last minute to tonight’s Club Uncut bill at the Borderline.

This was in a way like returning to the scene of the crime, or something like it.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve seemed to accumulate a pretty impressive bunch of folk and folk-rock reissues on my desk. The most recent to turn up is a straightforward reissue of Anne Briggs’ first self-titled LP, on the excellent Water label out of San Francisco.

Not much mucking about today before I get into this week’s selection. But can I quickly plug Club Uncut tonight? Now that the Hold Steady tour has been cancelled, their support band War On Drugs will be joining Ladyhawk and The Dudes on the bill.