Not much time to muck about this morning (not least because the test match starts again in half an hour). So here’s the playlist of stuff that has graced the Uncut stereo over the past couple of days. One of those weeks, I should say, where a mention on the playlist really doesn’t automatically equate with an endorsement. . .
Thanks for all your half-year Top Tens; some interesting choices there, as well as The Charlatans. Keep them coming, and I’ll do some kind of dark mathematics and rustle up a collective Wild Mercury Sound chart next week.
First off, a brand new Brightblack Morning Light track, complete with visuals, has appeared, and it’s fantastic. The second Brightblack album – West Coast acid-folk-funk infused with gris-gris and a sort of horizontal, post-Spiritualized drone-funk, if any of that makes sense – was a huge hit here at Uncut during the ferociously sticky summer of 2006, and “Hologram Buffalo” is every bit as good.
I was just settling down to watch the football last night, when the phone rang. I picked up the receiver, but it was one of those – usually incredibly annoying – calls from a gig, where you can just hear a song reverberating around the venue. After a few seconds I could make out a baritone invocation, some ethereal harmonies in the far distance, and a generally spectral air that was uncannily enhanced by the phoneline. Leonard Cohen, singing “Who By Fire” in Manchester, at his first British date for some 15 years.
So this is what we’ve played thus far this week: a glut of hip-hop; a few selections from the private collections of John Robinson and Mark Bentley; a Walter Becker solo album that doesn’t quite cut it next to all those wonderful Steely Dan and Donald Fagen records; and a Radiohead cover of Portishead, which makes this an uncharacteristically prophetic blog.
You might remember that last week’s playlist contained a Mystery Record, sternly embargoed and so on by the record company, thoroughly underwhelming to listen to. A few of you had a decent stab at guessing the high-security identity of the artist(s), suggesting I was sat on new MP3s by The Verve, Bob Dylan produced by Rick Rubin, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, The Wu-Tang Clan, Blur, Oasis, Ride, Guns N’ Roses, Prince, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Kraftwerk or Rage Against The Machine.
I wandered into the office this morning to hear the new album from Stereolab playing – or at least weirdly and abruptly truncated edits of the songs on the new Stereolab album, which weren’t exactly the best way of getting the measure of “Chemical Chords”. The big discovery this week, though, has been the debut album from the pretty self-explanatory Endless Boogie, which I’ll write about properly in the next few days. There’s also, and I apologise, for this, a “Secret” record in the playlist this week, whose title I’m not allowed to reveal since, “All info on this is being kept under wraps until next week so please don't breathe a word to anyone that you even know a XXXXXX album is coming, let alone have heard it.”
Some interesting correspondence on the blog over the past week or so, not least on the subject of Brian Eno, after I posed a mildly provocative question about his recent work here.
A busy and deeply professional couple of days listening to a backlog of CDs, MP3s, secure streams, dodgy downloads and so on, which involved us having another go at the Coldplay album. Apparently there's some sort of embargo on revealing opinions about "Viva La Vida". One question that occurred to me, however: when was the last time Brian Eno produced a really interesting album? I'm struggling to think of one here, but if you have any suggestions, let me know.
Out of London for a couple of days, and I'm welcomed back by a bunch of new records, including a new Sonic Youth EP which features their extensive - and terribly-received by most of the crowd except me, if memory serves - jam at All Tomorrow's Parties in 2000. It sounds terrific, happily.