Rough Trade Shops is releasing a compilation album of the best music released by the indie label over the past 40 years.
Entitled Recorded At The Automat: The Best of Rough Trade Records, the album, which is released March 23, will cover the early years of Rough Trade, when Geoff Travis first started the label in 1978, later to be joined by Jeannette Lee. It includes the likes of Swell Maps, Robert Wyatt, The Fall, The Raincoats, The Smiths, The Strokes, the Libertines, Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens.
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).
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.
No point in messing about this week: scroll down to hear new music from, among others, Neil Young, Cool Ghouls, Bryan Ferry, Frazey Ford, Kendrick Lamar, Joan Shelley and the extremely promising D.D. Dumbo, plus a couple of amazing full gigs from Hiss Golden Messenger and a Purling Hiss/Spacin' supersession, both courtesy of the invaluable www.nyctaper.com.
Weird serendipities aplenty this week: versions of "O, Death" on two albums I downloaded one after another, by Mike & Cara Gangloff and Bessie Jones; dovetailing into Sea Island overlap between Jones and Loscil. It makes for a nice blurring between time and genre with, say, the Gangloffs using esoteric strategies to achieve a similar kind of transcendence that Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers reach through more orthodox, albeit uncommonly raw, Gospel routes in these Lomax recordings from the early '60s.
After last night's Hold Steady-headlined first night, Uncut's stage at The Great Escape continues tonight (May 10) with an opening set from Serafina Steer.
As Damon Albarn prepares to release his debut solo album, Everyday Robots, on Monday, and 20 years since the release of Parklife is celebrated, we delve back into the Uncut archive (July 2009, Take 146) and go behind the scenes of the sessions that produced Blur’s classic albums and reveal the conflicts that nearly destroyed the band… Interviews: Nick Hasted
I’ve alluded a few times in recent weeks to the excellence of the forthcoming “Spiderland” boxset, and especially to the Lance Bangs documentary, “Breadcrumb Trail”, which it contains. “Breadcrumb Trail” tells the odd, low-key, long-obfuscated tale of Slint, revealing much without entirely dismantling the band’s mystique, and focusing on the band’s drummer Britt Walford.
