For the current issue of Uncut, I interviewed Damon Albarn as part of my piece on his “Dr Dee” project (you can read it here). There wasn’t room for all of his answers in the mag, but today’s announcement of extra Blur dates prompted me to post the whole thing here.

Mick Jagger is set to host US comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live on May 19, and reports are suggesting that he will perform alongside the evening's other musical guests, the Arcade Fire and Foo Fighters. The Rolling Stones frontman has confirmed that he will perform on the show as well as host, but Rolling Stone magazine is stating that he might play with the programme's fellow musical performers.

Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner has admitted that he and drummer Matt Helders dressed up and pretended to be Oasis in their school assembly. Speaking to Pitchfork, the frontman named Oasis' 1995 album (What's The Story) Morning Glory as one of the LPs which had had the most influence upon him as a teenager, and revealed that he had performed tracks from the record in front of his peers while brandishing a tennis racquet.

Radiohead's Thom Yorke has said he can see why the band's eighth album The King Of Limbs alienated people. Speaking to Rolling Stone, the singer said of the album, which was released as a download with just a week's notice with no publicity by the band: "It was amazing just to put the record out like that. But then it didn't feel like it really existed…But that was the consequence of what we chose to do. You can either get upset about it, or say, 'well, that's not good enough.'"

The Black Keys' forthcoming documentary will be a "buddy movie" rather than a conventional tour film. Noah Abrams, the director behind the yet-untitled film, has said he had no plans to shoot a straight band documentary and revealed that the movie would be a "buddy movie with perhaps the greatest soundtrack of all time". The film-maker told Spin: "A lot of music documentaries spend too much time trying to make people cool. I'm fortunate enough to know these guys pretty well and their relationship is pretty incredible and very funny."

Blur have announced an intimate UK tour for this August. The Britpop icons will play four shows on the tour, beginning at Margate's Winter Gardens on August 1. They will then play two shows at Wolverhampton's Civic Hall on August 5 and 6, before finishing off at Plymouth's Pavilions on August 7.

Animal Collective have revealed that their new studio album will be titled Centipede Hz. The Baltimore electro-psychedelic band will release the album, which is the 10th LP of their career, in September via Domino Records. The band made the announcement via a video on their official website, which revealed the record's title, a September release and a number of song titles.

What better way to kick off the final night of Club Uncut at The Great Escape than with a Brooklyn bar band – or indeed, a bar solo artist, the wily R'n'B raconteur Hans Chew.

Bassist Donald 'Duck' Dunn, who played with Booker T. & the M.G.'s, has died in Tokyo aged 70. The M.G.'s were the house band for STAX records and Dunn can be heard on a number of tracks including Otis Redding's "Respect" and Albert King's "Born Under A Bad Sign". The bassist had been in the Japanese city to play a series of concerts as part of a STAX show, featuring Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd, and had played two gigs on Saturday night. Cropper posted on his Facebook page that Dunn had died in his sleep this morning (May 13).

Neil Young has debuted a second video from his forthcoming album with Crazy Horse, Americana. The video for "Jesus' Chariot (She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain") follows "Oh Susannah", the video for which Young released on May 1. Americana, Young's first album with Crazy Horse since Greendale in 2003, is set for release on June 5.