In haste this week, as we're finishing our end-of-year review issue and our next Ultimate Music Guide (on Paul McCartney, I can reveal), I've just completed writing up an interview with one of 2014's key figures, and I have a review of this 4CD Wilco retrospective to file as soon as possible.
On the morning of July 29, 1966 Bob Dylan became distracted while out riding his Triumph motorbike. Writing about the incident later in Chronicles Volume 1, Dylan rather gnomically recalled, “I had been in a motorcycle accident and I’d been hurt, but I recovered.” Of course, there is more to Dylan’s accident than that. After a period of retreat and convalescence at his Woodstock home, he began recording songs with his touring band, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Levon Helm.
Bob Dylan, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Genesis and Sharon Van Etten all feature in the new issue of Uncut, dated December 2014 (Take 211) and out tomorrow (October 28).
A glut of very exciting 2015 music this week, but before you get to that, maybe check out the Milton Nascimento track below which, as KidVinil Vinil pointed out in the comments section beneath last week's Uncut Playlist, is worth comparing with David Bowie's "Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)".
Bob Dylan, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Genesis and Sharon Van Etten all feature in the new issue of Uncut, dated December 2014 (Take 211) and out tomorrow (October 28).
In our cover feature, on the eve of the complete Basement Tapes’ release, renowned Dylan scholar Clinton Heylin takes an in-depth look at the fascinating period in the late-'60s when Dylan wrote and recorded with The Band and recuperated from his motorcycle accident and the pressures of fame.
A month, perhaps, of surprises. On the rather intimidating new Scott Walker and Sunn O))) album, there appears to be a joke about Michael Flatley's testicles. Somewhere in the elevated aesthetics of Kate Bush's Before The Dawn, there's an equally dubious comedy routine that hinges on the punchline, "HP and mayo, it's the badger's nadgers." And then, just as we were finishing the new issue of Uncut (out today in the UK, as you may have seen), a U2 album suddenly materialised in iTunes, a bullish play to reassert them as the biggest pop group in the world.
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.
Emotional times, as this is Allan’s last day as editor of Uncut. Before we get down to that, though, here are the records we’ve been playing in the office this week.
A new office this week, although a good few crates remain. These, though, are the tunes that’ve sensitively assisted our transition. Special props to Bob Carpenter’s rediscovered album from ’74, very much kin to “No Other”; to the Mauritanian desert rock of Noura Mint Seymali; to the reissue of an old Imaginary Softwoods ambient set from John Elliott, ex of Emeralds; and to the enduring usefulness of Pye Corner Audio and Girma Yifrashewa.
