So softly intoned is his music, and so privately consumed is it by his fans, the idea of a Leonard Cohen arena show is possibly a little bizarre. 43 dates into the summer leg of his world tour, as he addresses the 20,000 crowd in London's O2 Arena, it's plain that the 73-year old is well-attuned to the ironies in the situation. "Thank you for joining us," he says, "at a place just the other side of intimacy…"

Suffolk-ing fun is go!

The reconnaissance branch of the Uncut team arrived at Latitude Festival yesterday and realised almost immediately that we were not alone in wanting to hit Henham Park Estate early this year. Thousands of music fans poured into the site a day early to set up camp and drink in the atmosphere before the serious business of deciding what to see on the packed line-up!

Brooklyn heroes confirmed for August 20

Annual event is launched by John Mellencamp

Guitarist Ronnie Wood seeks help for 'battle with alcohol'

As the clouds gather, we’re readying ourselves for a weekend at Latitude. One more reminder that an extensive Uncut team will be blogging there non-stop from tomorrow morning. I’ll be vacating Wild Mercury Sound for the duration, and working on our special Latitude blog, where I imagine I’ll be covering Joanna Newsom, Elbow, Julian Cope, Michael Nyman, Wild Beasts and the children’s play area, amongst other things. Should be fun.

LATITUDE FESTIVAL is gearing up to kick off tomorrow (July 17), and www.uncut.co.uk's tent has arrived and the air mattresses and sleeping bags are packed and we're ready to set off to Suffolk tomorrow.

A bit stretched today, with next month’s issue nearly finished and a load of fiendish strategising to be done in preparation for the Latitude festival (I’ll be blogging live from there all weekend, incidentally, over at our dedicated blog).

Find out what's occuring pre-festival with our countdown here!