Weird serendipities aplenty this week: versions of "O, Death" on two albums I downloaded one after another, by Mike & Cara Gangloff and Bessie Jones; dovetailing into Sea Island overlap between Jones and Loscil. It makes for a nice blurring between time and genre with, say, the Gangloffs using esoteric strategies to achieve a similar kind of transcendence that Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers reach through more orthodox, albeit uncommonly raw, Gospel routes in these Lomax recordings from the early '60s.

Thanks for all the nice feedback about the Liam Hayes/Plush piece I wrote earlier in the week. Lots of other good new arrivals in the list here, and you could do worse than start off by listening to the Cool Ghouls from San Francisco, especially if you're interested in the Allah-Las, the Ty Segall axis, Nuggets ad nauseam and so on.

After my blog about the Aphex Twin the other week, it's a real pleasure to embed the first leaked track from "Syro" this morning. It's called "minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix]", and I think it's excellent.

Such has been the drooling media focus on Kate Bush this week, it might be tough to imagine British music journalists listening to anything else these past few days. I'm not, in fairness, exempt from the hysteria: here's my review of the second Before The Dawn show, in case you missed it (or avoided it) yesterday.

Some logical excitement here this week about the impending Leonard Cohen and Aphex Twin albums; in the event you've missed it these past couple of days, you can hear Cohen's superb "Almost Like The Blues" further down this blog.

Another issue in the bag yesterday, which'll be in UK shops on August 26, and which features, if you're in the mood for guessing games, someone who's never been on our cover before.

As you've hopefully seen now, this month's issue of Uncut has a revealing piece about Richard & Linda Thompson's "I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight", timed to tie in with that great album's 40th anniversary and its vinyl reissue, plus a burst of Thompson activity that includes a show at the End Of The Road Festival at the end of the month. "It is what it is and I like what it is," he calls the album in the piece, somewhat self-effacingly, "and there's a lot of stuff out there that I've done that I like less. That being said, it sold about 30 copies."

After a week away, I've been catching up these past few days, and also trying to remember what I talked about before I went on holiday. Best place to start, maybe, is the Natalie Prass record that Matthew E White has been sitting on for well over a year (he played me some of it at Spacebomb in March 2013). Fantastic song, which I described on Twitter as a kind of nuts Anita Baker/Willie Mitchell/Feist/Charles Stepney thing with a beat that would've been samplefood for Dre 15 yrs ago. Sticking with that for now. Also the red kite feather we found on holiday in Avebury feels serendipitous.

There's a song on this new Purling Hiss album, playing again now, that sounds more or less like "Debaser" played by Dinosaur Jr. Along with the intensely spirited debut by Mary Timony's Ex-Hex and a comp of the pre-Beachwood Sparks, Sebadoh-indebted Further, it feels a little like College Rock revisited week. Deep late '80s/early '90s vibes, good times etc.

A bit of a manic week, for various reasons, not least the fact that we've finished two magazines: the next issue of Uncut, which should be coming your way on July 29; and an Ultimate Music Guide dedicated to the genius of…