One of a bunch of interesting Record Store Day exclusives just turned up for this week’s playlist; a lovely EP from Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy that involves Jonathan Wilson in some capacity, and features covers of Leon Russell and Merle Haggard.

Business somewhat overshadowed this morning by the awful news about Levon Helm. Over the past couple of days though, these are the records we’ve been playing in the Uncut office.

BBC4’s fine night of Southern Rock programming was still on my mind yesterday morning when I arrived back at Uncut, and a bit of chat about the shows at my Twitter feed eventually lead to a crowdsourced Southern Rock Playlist.

Dodgy list last week, really good one this. A few things to flag up, not least the Jimmy Page “Lucifer Rising” soundtrack which has been distracting us from finishing the issue this morning.

After last week’s notable arrival of Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s “Americana”, Playlist 14 is somewhat sketchier. Harder than usual for me to get behind a fair bit of this list, as a consequence – though as you can see, there’s still at least one very interesting new entry…

Hopefully those of you who subscribe to Uncut will be starting to receive your copies of the new issue this morning (For the rest of you, it should be on sale tomorrow).

Back in the office after a day off, but this is more or less what we played earlier in the week. First up this morning is the new Hot Chip album, which makes for a very good start to the day.

Thanks for all your kind words over the past couple of weeks about the relaunched mag. I know this will undoubtedly read like self-justifying hype on our part, but we have been genuinely thrilled and overwhelmed by how positive the response has been.

A lot on today, so I’ll have to be swift. But as you can see, a lot of exciting new things on the playlist this week, especially near the start. The Hans Chew track, incidentally, is a free download, and is hugely recommended.

Up to our necks in it here, finishing the first Uncut Ultimate Music Guide of 2012. Hopefully a good few of you will have now seen our relaunched new issue with Bowie on the cover: please let me know what you think, either in the Facebook Comments below or via Twitter - www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey.