To celebrate 25 years since the release of their breakthrough album Dubnobasswithmyheadman, Underworld have released a new track called "Appleshine".
Watch a video for it below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIHB72AwpHI
Order the latest issue of Uncut online and have it sent to your home!
The ...
To celebrate 25 years since the release of their breakthrough album Dubnobasswithmyheadman, Underworld have released a new track called “Appleshine”.
The track kicks off a new series of their Drift project, which saw them release new music on a weekly basis last autumn. More new material is expected over the coming weeks.
Underworld also recently posted an album of demos called Coming Out Of Texas, “a collection of rough work in progress material featuring Karl’s guitar”. Listen here.
Explains the band’s Rick Smith: “The recordings are raw and partly inspired by American lo-fi alternative rock, the high desert around Coachella and one of Karl’s road trips across the Texas flat lands. These tracks are part of Underworld’s writing process and were never intended for release but over the years they’ve become part of the late night soundtrack for the live crew on the tour bus going from gig to gig and country to country.”
Vampire Weekend have announced that their fourth album Father Of The Bride will be released by Columbia later this spring.
You can hear two songs from it, "Harmony Hall" and "2021" below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfGEq0JWxGM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWmnjkZEkiA
Order the latest iss...
Vampire Weekend have announced that their fourth album Father Of The Bride will be released by Columbia later this spring.
You can hear two songs from it, “Harmony Hall” and “2021” below.
Both tracks were produced by Ariel Rechtshaid and Ezra Koenig. “Harmony Hall” features additional production from former Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij, while “2021” was co-written by Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haruomi Hosono.
Another “2-song drop” is expected from Vampire Weekend next month.
Californian singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt will release her third album Quiet Signs on February 8 via City Slang.
The latest single to be taken from it is "Aeroplane", Pratt's first electric song. Hear it below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u2aBJWkKAE
Order the latest issue of Uncut online a...
Californian singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt will release her third album Quiet Signs on February 8 via City Slang.
The latest single to be taken from it is “Aeroplane”, Pratt’s first electric song. Hear it below:
In an extensive interview feature in the current issue of Uncut, Pratt discusses her songwriting process: “It’s a bit like a dream. When you wake up, if you don’t keep focusing on it, you start to forget the major parts of it. That kind of dream state, that mental state, is very similar to the one that is utilised when I’m writing.”
You can read much more about Jessica Pratt in the latest issue of Uncut, on sale now with Leonard Cohen on the cover. There is also a Jessica Pratt song on the accompanying free CD.
In the latest issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here – we look back at the making of Bob Marley & The Wailers' greatest albums with the help of key personnel, including Marley's Wailers bandmates Aston 'Family Man' Barrett, Donald Kinsey and Junior Marvin.
...
In the latest issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here – we look back at the making of Bob Marley & The Wailers‘ greatest albums with the help of key personnel, including Marley’s Wailers bandmates Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett, Donald Kinsey and Junior Marvin.
In this extract from Graeme Thomson’s article, the trio discuss the making of their 1977 classic Exodus. Exiled in London, Marley and The Wailers make an album for all-comers: Side One is by turns angry, philosophical and mystical; Side Two offers uplifting party tunes.
JUNIOR MARVIN: I met Bob in London on Valentine’s Day 1977. We started rehearsing right away. My first jam that day was “Exodus”, “Waiting In Vain” and “Jamming” – we played each song for about 45 minutes. Bob was still putting final touches to the lyrics and the music with the keyboard player, Tyrone Downie, who at the time was filling in on bass. Tyrone and myself helped write “Exodus” and “Is This Love?” It was a very electric experience. It was the first time I ever saw somebody’s aura. He was so happy to be alive after the shooting, smiling and having a good time. He was very comfortable in London. There was a great Jamaican and Afro-Caribbean community, people from Ethiopia, Africa…
ASTON BARRETT: We spent some good times in London. Just living life, all of us in the band, doing music as we always did. Recording at Island studios was a vibe. It was nice.
JUNIOR MARVIN: There was no rush in the studio, nobody watching the clock. We had it booked 24 hours a day; for Bob that was a dream come true. The songs on Exodus were generally more recent than the ones on Kaya. “Waiting In Vain” was fresh because he had just fallen in love with Cindy Breakspeare. “Exodus” was partly written because Bob had left Jamaica after the shooting attempt – “movement of Jah people,” meaning everyone is part of that movement, no matter your colour, creed or history. “Natural Mystic” was very current, because he couldn’t believe he was still alive, getting protection from the spiritual vibration. The songs definitely had continuity and a special sense of time and place. It had love songs, too, but it had a militant edge. We had a good time recording live, the organic way. It would be drums, bass, piano, acoustic guitar, lead guitar, and rough vocals. Bob would redo his rhythm guitar, and a lot of the vocals. We spent a lot of time mixing, trying to perfect everything. We’d compare our album with the top albums of the time and see how ours measured up sonically. It wasn’t just great songs, but musically almost perfect. It really revolutionised the sound of reggae.
You can read much more about Bob Marley & The Wailers in the latest issue of Uncut, on sale now with Leonard Cohen on the cover.
Around the time of their last album, 2015’s Fading Frontier, something about Deerhunter changed. It might have had to do with the serious accident the band’s enigmatic frontman and chief songwriter Bradford Cox suffered in the summer of 2014 – he was hit by a car – which left him feeling emo...
Around the time of their last album, 2015’s Fading Frontier, something about Deerhunter changed. It might have had to do with the serious accident the band’s enigmatic frontman and chief songwriter Bradford Cox suffered in the summer of 2014 – he was hit by a car – which left him feeling emotionally numb following the recuperative course of painkillers he was prescribed. You could reason, too, that after a decade of wilfully experimental and wildly indulgent art rock, which resulted in a couple of this decade’s outsider masterpieces in Halcyon Digest and Monomania, the group naturally mellowed and chose to focus their considerable abilities.
Either way, Fading Frontier found them taking stock of their anxieties and reining in their flights of fantasy to compose a very human and heartfelt record, proving, not that it were needed, that Cox could engage in a kind of direct, emotional pop. At the time, he likened Fading Frontier to the first day of spring after a brutal winter. Were we to extend that analogy, its follow-up Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? might be a glorious day in late summer, but on closer inspection things are slightly off: the fruit hanging from the trees is rotten and shrivelled, the animals are lame, and the water in the streams tastes bitter, metallic. The earth is toxic.
Part eco-lament, part eulogy for emotion, part reflection on the 24-hour news cycle in the age of Trump and the threat of nationalism, on WHEAD? Cox delivers a fairly stark status update for humanity – “Walk around and you’ll see what’s fading”, he warns on “Death In Midsummer” – but sugars the pill by wrapping the message in some of Deerhunter’s prettiest songs to date; the dopamine hits we crave while scrolling through our feeds. Baroque harpsichord and mandolin melodies are sprinkled liberally across “Death In Midsummer”, “What Happens To People” and “Element”, which clip along jauntily as if the band were parading down Carnaby Street on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Tucked near the end of the album, the effortless “Plains”, where Cox muses on the actor James Dean’s time in Marfa, Texas, could become the radio hit they’ve so far managed to avoid.
Cox says he has never worked so hard on an album, the fully formed demos he made in the attic studio of his Atlanta home brought to various studios to record with the band and regular producer Ben Allen. What’s new about this record is the involvement of Welsh musician Cate Le Bon, known for her freewheeling lo-fi solo work and as part of Drinks. Cox recruited her as producer after the pair worked together during last year’s Marfa Myths series in the artist outpost of Marfa, where they returned to finish this album. He struggles to pin down her precise qualities, implying that her mere presence in the studio is inspiration enough, but there’s a freshness and looseness to the material not heard before. Her layered vocals on the celestial “Tarnung”, a Visible Cloaks-style marimba shimmer written by Lockett Pundt, provide a moment of tranquillity.
Like Sonic Youth before them, what makes Deerhunter one of today’s great American bands is their ability to absorb their environment and channel this into music that always strives to be different to what they’ve done before and which challenges preconceptions of who they are. In acknowledging that “No One’s Sleeping” is a response to the senseless murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in June 2016, her namesake, the archetypal wildcard dreamer, reveals that in fact he’s very much engaged with reality, though he keeps politics out of this Lodger-period Bowie number, preferring his usual allegory: “In the country there’s much duress. Violence has taken hold. Follow me, the golden void.”
Not everything is a success: on an album that explores relatively formal and concise songwriting, the more abstract pieces fall flat, such as the Numan-ish synth exercise “Greenpoint Gothic’ or “Détournement”’s cybernetic drift. In staking out an oddly agreeable middle-ground for Deerhunter, Cox risks forfeiting that element of danger and weirdness that made his band so special. Having restrained himself in that regard, his questing spirit is manifested in other ways, not least, on this album, in his cautious sense of responsibility and his despair for the planet and society. “Your cage is what you make it”, he sings on “Futurism”. “If you decorate it, it goes by faster.” At the age of 36, Cox is facing the future, and he’s not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Curtis Mayfield's first four solo albums have been remastered for a new box set, Keep On Keeping On, to be released by Rhino on February 22.
The LP or CD set includes Curtis (1970), Roots (1971), Back To The World (1973) and Sweet Exorcist (1974) – though not Mayfield's 1972 Superfly soundtrack. ...
Curtis Mayfield’s first four solo albums have been remastered for a new box set, Keep On Keeping On, to be released by Rhino on February 22.
The LP or CD set includes Curtis (1970), Roots (1971), Back To The World (1973) and Sweet Exorcist (1974) – though not Mayfield’s 1972 Superfly soundtrack.
Back in November, Stephen Malkmus told Uncut that he'd recorded a solo electronic/garage record called Groove Denied.
He revealed that Matador had rejected the album, leading Malkmus to make the more typical, guitar-based effort Sparkle Hard with his regular band The Jicks. But his Groove is not to...
Back in November, Stephen Malkmus told Uncut that he’d recorded a solo electronic/garage record called Groove Denied.
He revealed that Matador had rejected the album, leading Malkmus to make the more typical, guitar-based effort Sparkle Hard with his regular band The Jicks. But his Groove is not to be Denied, and the lo-fi solo effort is now coming out on March 15 via Domino.
Watch a video for the first single “Viktor Borgia” below”
“I was thinking things like Pete Shelley’s ‘Homosapien’, the Human League, and DIY synth music circa 1982,” says Malkmus of the song, “and also about how in the New Wave Eighties, these suburban 18-and-over dance clubs were where all the freaks would meet – a sanctuary.”
Pre-order Groove Deniedhere, including a clear vinyl version with bonus floppy disc and photo print. Check out the tracklisting below:
1. Belziger Faceplant
2. A Bit Wilder
3. Viktor Borgia
4. Come Get Me
5. Forget Your Place
6. Rushing The Acid Frat
7. Love The Door
8. Bossviscerate
9. Ocean of Revenge
10. Grown Nothing
Meanwhile, Malkmus’s former Pavement bandmate Scott ‘Spiral Stairs‘ Kannberg is also releasing a new album in March. Hear the title track from We Wanna Be Hyp-No-Tized – out on March 22 via Nine Mile Records / Coolin’ By Sound – below:
Formed in 1984 and defunct by 1987, Seattle’s Green River didn’t enjoy an auspicious career. They released two EPs of sludgy punk-metal during their time together, both of which were delayed by their labels, and their only U.S. tour was launched with no record in hand and no fans in clubs. Anoth...
Formed in 1984 and defunct by 1987, Seattle’s Green River didn’t enjoy an auspicious career. They released two EPs of sludgy punk-metal during their time together, both of which were delayed by their labels, and their only U.S. tour was launched with no record in hand and no fans in clubs. Another delay meant their first full-length album was released six months after the musicians had gone their separate ways.
Despite such indignities, Green River have had a remarkable afterlife, proving massively influential within the Seattle rock scene. Following their break-up, its members went on to co-found Mudhoney, Love Battery, Mother Love Bone, and later Pearl Jam. More crucially, Green River’s small catalogue — in particular 1986’s Dry As A Bone and 1988’s posthumous Rehab Doll, both of which are being reissued with generous bonus material by Sub Pop — established what became known as the Seattle sound, a rambunctious collision of metal aggression, punk insouciance, classic rock riffing, and industrial-grade sludge. In these two releases lay the foundation of every subsequent Washington State band, for better or for worse, from Nirvana to Alice in Chains to such suspect latecomers as Candlebox.
Produced by Jack Endino (Soundgarden, Tad), Dry As A Bone is arguably Green River’s best and most unhinged album, certainly their rawest and possibly even their funniest. Frontman Mark Arm already exhibits a bizarre charisma, singing like he’s trying to out-Iggy the Stooges, and the band churn up a dank, dramatic sound that doesn’t sacrifice agile for heavy. “Unwind” opens as a grimy blooz-rock strut until the rhythm section turns it all inside out, quickening the pace and stretching the groove like taffy. It’s the most bracing moment in their small catalogue.
Sounding much more professional, Rehab Doll sharpens their blustery attack but burnishes some of Green River’s snottier eccentricities. An early and grimly humorous send-up of the city’s infamous heroin scene, the title track showcases the chops of new guitarist Stone Gossard, who introduces some of the swagger he would later bring to Pearl Jam. The highlight, however, might be their gnarly version of “Queen Bitch,” which shows the band could strut and sashay as confidently as they could lurch and lumber.
Perhaps even more than establishing the musical blueprint for grunge, Green River are noteworthy for embodying two very different, very oppositional attitudes that defined the Seattle scene of the late 1980s and beyond: keeping it real versus selling out. The tension between Arm’s DIY ethos and the more ambitious aims of Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament eventually tore the band apart, and that conflict would outlive grunge and define alt.rock for the next decade. As Arm howls on “PCC”: “What’s dead is now long forgotten / I never let it bother me.”
Hopefully, you'll have spotted a splendid new issue of Uncut in the shops - or you can buy a copy online now - featuring tons of goodies including Leonard Cohen, The Yardbirds, Bob Marley, Crass, Lambchop and Jessica Pratt.
If that wasn't enough, we're delighted to launch the latest magazine from t...
Hopefully, you’ll have spotted a splendid new issue of Uncut in the shops – or you can buy a copy online now – featuring tons of goodies including Leonard Cohen, The Yardbirds, Bob Marley, Crass, Lambchop and Jessica Pratt.
If that wasn’t enough, we’re delighted to launch the latest magazine from the Uncut family – Ultimate Record Collection: The 1960s. A spin-off from our Ultimate Record Collection, this new volume is in shops from Friday but you can buy a copy from our online store now. The 1960s is a 124-page guide to hearing (and buying) the best music of that storied decade, from James Brown to the Beatles, Dylan to John Coltrane and onwards. Here’s John Robinson, our one-shots editor, to tell you more about it.
In the introduction to the decade he wrote for the first Ultimate Record Collection the late writer David Cavanagh recalled John Lennon’s remark about the cultural landscape before Elvis Presley: “Before Elvis, there was nothing.” True enough, David wrote. And after the Beatles there was everything.
So much great new music emerged alongside or in the wake of the Beatles, we’ve dedicated this new magazine to the best ways of listening to it all. You’ll find overviews and recommendations of work by era heavyweights like the Rolling Stones, Cream, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, the Beach Boys (and the Beatles, of course). Featured also are American rock acts like the Byrds, Captain Beefheart, The Doors, Love – whose albums flowered in the warmth of the creative environment to which the Beatles helped give rise. The powerful soul and r&b which inspired them is represented too.
As Joe Boyd – producer of legendary records in the 1960s and beyond; an unofficial godfather to the magazine – reminds us in an exclusive interview inside, the flourishing of the album form was not limited to rock. There was an album tradition, a sense of something having been specifically convened to be consumed in one sitting, in jazz and also in folk music. You’ll find extensive selections of both inside as you perceive the album medium grow.
In this publication the 1960s is our subject, but we’ve been governed by a very 21st century notion: a fear of missing out. When we made the first volume of Ultimate Record Collection in late 2017, we focused on a list of albums which was readily available new, and on vinyl. This time the mission has been to open the floodgates to all great albums from the decade. We’ve compiled over 600 albums here, and we don’t want you to miss out on any of them. Rather than a prescriptive list – to me a bit of a 1950s notion – this is a magazine which hopes to offer the listener some new directions.
Radio 4 have created a new drama for BBC Sounds about The KLF entitled How To Burn A Million Quid.
Available to download now as six-part podcast, it stars Paul Higgins (The Thick Of It, Utopia, Line Of Duty) as Bill Drummond and Nicholas Burns (Nathan Barley, The World’s End) as Jimmy Cauty, with...
Radio 4 have created a new drama for BBC Sounds about The KLF entitled How To Burn A Million Quid.
Available to download now as six-part podcast, it stars Paul Higgins (The Thick Of It, Utopia, Line Of Duty) as Bill Drummond and Nicholas Burns (Nathan Barley, The World’s End) as Jimmy Cauty, with comedian Kevin Eldon as their roadie Gimpo – the only other witness to their fabled burning of a million pounds in cash on the island of Jura in 1994.
New Order and Hot Chip have been unveiled as headliners – alongside the previously announced Kraftwerk – for this year's Bluedot festival, taking place at Cheshire's Jodrell Bank Observatory on July 18-21.
Recent Uncut cover stars New Order will headline on the Sunday night while Hot Chip – w...
New Order and Hot Chip have been unveiled as headliners – alongside the previously announced Kraftwerk – for this year’s Bluedot festival, taking place at Cheshire’s Jodrell Bank Observatory on July 18-21.
Recent Uncut cover starsNew Order will headline on the Sunday night while Hot Chip – who are expected to release a new album this year – will headline the Friday. Kraftwerk top the bill on Saturday with their 3D show, while Manchester’s Halle orchestra will open the festival on Thursday with Lift Off, “a performance of specially selected sci-fi themes and music related to the Moon accompanied by
unique big screen visuals”.
Other acts on the bill include Gruff Rhys, Anna Calvi, John Grant, Les Amazones d’Afrique, 808 State, The Go! Team, Ibibio Sound Machine and Omar Souleyman, alongside various science and space-related shenanigans.
Tickets go on sale at 10am on Thursday (January 24) from here.
Hopefully, you'll have spotted that we have a splendid new issue in the shops - or you can buy a copy online now - featuring Leonard Cohen, The Yardbirds, Bob Marley, Crass, Lambchop and a ton of other great stuff. Talking of great stuff, check out this week's farings from the Uncut office stereo. P...
Hopefully, you’ll have spotted that we have a splendid new issue in the shops – or you can buy a copy online now – featuring Leonard Cohen, The Yardbirds, Bob Marley, Crass, Lambchop and a ton of other great stuff. Talking of great stuff, check out this week’s farings from the Uncut office stereo. Props, particularly, to The Comet Is Coming, Weyes Blood and Terry Allen And The Panhandle Mystery Band…
Originally published in Uncut’s July 2015 issue
After leaving Sonic Youth in 2005, Jim O'Rourke mostly abandoned a multi- faceted career as masterful singer-songwriter, experimental prankster and Wilco associate. Now, though, he has released his first album of songs in 14 years – a prog-pop mas...
When touring for Sonic Nurse concluded, O’Rourke sold all his instruments. He moved to Tokyo, where he spent two years learning Japanese and working towards a visa. Once settled, he made The Visitor: a 38-minute piece which he recorded at home while his neighbours were out. He played every instrument – including the trombone – which he practised for five or six months, simply to get one short part right. After the recording was done, he gave the instrument away to a friend’s son.
“I’m really, really particular,” he admits as he attempts to explain Simple Songs’ six-year gestation. it transpires that much of this period was spent training his band to play in the manner he wanted. “It took a while, and these poor people had to keep playing the same songs over again. It was just driving everyone crazy. If I asked everyone to record it one more time, they would have killed me and put me in a dumpster.”
With Japanese studios inordinately expensive, O’Rourke recorded Simple Songs in the mountainous countryside two hours outside Tokyo. He and his girlfriend had become good friends with a retired dentist – a keen amateur musician who had built a two-storey wooden cabin on his land with the aim of turning it into a home studio. He never did, but was more than happy to host O’Rourke and his band – Ishibashi Eiko on keyboards, Sudo Toshiaki on bass, drummer Yamamoto Tatsuhisa, and Hatano Atsuko providing strings – for weeks at a time recording in the space. After sessions, the group would head off to the local hot springs, leaving O’Rourke to work exhaustively on the mixes and production. “That’s the only reason this record was able to happen,” he explains. “Because we could record there. To record something like this in Japan, especially when you’re recording drums, you need to get far away from people so you don’t get the cops coming. Even singing I can’t do at home, because it will annoy people next door. The walls here are paper. Even watching a movie late at night they may complain.”
O’Rourke reveals that much of Simple Songs harks back to the music of his youth – he pinpoints 10cc, Cockney Rebel and genesis as particular favourites. The latter, along with Peter Gabriel’s ’70s records, are strong influences on Simple Songs, from the complex rhythms and electric piano on “That Weekend”, reminiscent of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, to the evocation of Gabriel’s solo debut on “Hotel Blue”. “I’m a genesis freak,” admits O’Rourke. “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, that’s my DNA. I must have listened to that more than any record in my life. Everyone who plays in the band is a Genesis freak. We keep talking about doing a Genesis cover band, called Japanesis. Of course, I would be Peter…”
At other points on Simple Songs, the spiky “Last Year” recalls Steely Dan’s jazzier excursions into Southern rock, while the beautifully produced, lush “End Of The Road” cheekily nods to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” with its “having a bad time, having a bad time” refrain.
“I’m glad someone picked that up!” O’Rourke exclaims. “It was hard to record that, because I would keep laughing. It was honestly an accident, but one day I realised, ‘Oh, my God, it’s the same thing!’” Lyrically, Simple Songs is a dark, cynical journey into heartbreak, with O’Rourke teasing “Please don’t cry/I might enjoy that” on “All Your Love” and warning, “If you were out at sea/They’d throw you overboard”, on “End Of The Road”. There are no plans to tour the album, aside from one show in Tokyo, yet another song-based record is slowly being developed. There’s also the tricky matter of recording an extended piece for group and orchestra, something O’Rourke has had written since 2000. “I hope that one day I could actually record it,” he says. “But it will take a miracle. There is no way for me to do it, because it would cost money I don’t have – the score includes full strings, a brass section and a woodwind section. It’s kind of a nice feeling to still like something after all this time.” He pauses. “Well, not ‘like’, but it doesn’t make me sick. I hear it in my head so that’s kinda like enough. I don’t think anybody would like it, anyway!”
It seems unlikely, he divulges, that more major-label album production will be forthcoming since record companies started asking the audiophile O’Rourke to provide MP3 mixes. “It was insanity,” he says. “I wanted nothing to do with that work, so I quit.” Meanwhile, Tweedy happily confirms that a new Loose Fur record is in the pipeline, while O’Rourke is spending the rest of 2015 writing a commissioned piece for a ‘new music’ group. “Somebody finally asked me to write something for them,” he confirms. “I don’t know why I went to college for that stuff, because it took this long to get a commission. I finally got the chance to write for ‘new music’ groups and I don’t want to screw it up. All the different things I do are almost like the phases of the moon. They all feed back into each other, in the sense that if I get sick of one thing I go back to another thing, then it helps me see the first thing in a different light.”
Finally settled in Japan and free of the ‘golden handcuffs’ of the music industry, Jim O’Rourke genuinely seems happy, relaxed and content. During our conversations, he merrily discusses his first gig (Wings on their Wings Over The World tour), his dislike of modern mastering, and the time he worked with Richard Thompson and Werner Herzog on the soundtrack to Grizzly Man. “That was the two greatest days of my life. If they exist, Mr Herzog’s an angel that has been put on this earth…”
As happy as he now seems, though, O’Rourke mischievously hopes that Simple Songs doesn’t show it. “I wanted to be good,” he says, “I am trying. This album is like a continuous descent. At the beginning, it sounds like it’s going to be a party, but it just keeps getting more and more depressing.”
The new issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here – features a fascinating history of influential DIY punk band Crass.
The tale begins in an anonymous Waterloo café during the dying days of the Cold War. Penny Rimbaud, co-founder and drummer with Crass, was meet...
The new issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here – features a fascinating history of influential DIY punk band Crass.
The tale begins in an anonymous Waterloo café during the dying days of the Cold War. Penny Rimbaud, co-founder and drummer with Crass, was meeting a sailor who had just returned from the Falklands. The sailor, a former skinhead, had written to Crass attacking the band’s anarchic, anti-authoritarian politics. Steve Ignorant, Crass’s vocalist, had written back in the band’s spirit of engagement; they had become unlikely penfriends and allies. “He came back from the Falklands and told us everything he knew,” says Rimbaud today. “He told us there had almost been a mutiny and about the HMS Sheffield, which the Navy had allowed to be destroyed. We took all that information and put it in the tape.”
But this wasn’t like Crass’s ferocious anti-war songs “Sheep Farming In The Falklands” or “How Does It Feel?”. Instead, Crass’s bassist Pete Wright cut together speeches by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to shape a fictitious telephone conversation between the two leaders. They sent copies to newspapers all over Europe and waited. And waited. And waited. Months later, a story appeared in The Sunday Times about the hoax in which the Pentagon claimed the KGB was responsible. Back in their shared Epping Forest house, Crass stifled giggles. But weeks later they were exposed. In January 1984, The Observer declared it was the work of “anarchist rock band” Crass. To this day, Rimbaud still doesn’t know how The Observer discovered the truth.
“The tape was initially a joke,” says Rimbaud. “We wanted to do anything we could to undermine Thatcher. Because of the tape, we got all this classified information about the Sheffield published on the front pages of The Observer. Suddenly we were being courted by people from all sorts of unpleasant organisations who wanted to know what else we had to offer, the KGB particularly.” He pauses. “To be honest, we were shit-scared. It wasn’t a joke any more.”
Subsequently Crass were invited to a meeting with “a Russian literary magazine” in Cromwell Street. Suspecting this was a KGB front, the band invited along a CBS news crew who wanted to interview them. Then, having liberally enjoyed the vodka on offer, the band scarpered, leaving Russians and Americans together. “We ran down the road like A Hard Day’s Night jumping in the air and clicking our heels,” says Rimbaud. “Naughty little boys arsing round. But it was hellish serious. We’d be shot or locked up for that now.”
Not many bands are involved in front page exposés over episodes of international espionage, but not many bands were like Crass. The band were the product of a unique confluence of people, place and time, punks who lived like hippies and wrote aggressive songs about politics. They recorded five albums between 1978 and 1983 as well as a related body of films, publications and artworks and at times were less a band than “an information bureau”, says Steve Ignorant. “Everything serious or heavy that went on, we felt we had to be saying something about it.”
By the time the band came apart in 1984, Crass had inspired a loyal, motivated and open-minded fanbase, many of whom wear the Crass logo as badge or tattoo and went on to campaign for animal rights, anarcho-feminism and anti-road groups. “Crass touched people very deeply and people want to live their lives the Crass way,” says Ignorant. “And Crass put something in me that I can’t get rid of – a conscience, a sense of injustice. I still live my life according to 99 per cent of what Crass was about.”
You can read much more about Crass in the new issue of Uncut, out now with Leonard Cohen on the cover.
Psychedelic electronic jazz trio The Comet Is Coming – led by Sons Of Kemet's Shabaka Hutchings – have announced that their new album Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery will be released by Impulse! on March 15.
Hear a track from it, "Summon The Fire", below:
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Psychedelic electronic jazz trio The Comet Is Coming – led by Sons Of Kemet’s Shabaka Hutchings – have announced that their new album Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery will be released by Impulse! on March 15.
Talking to Uncut, Hutchings describes his own playing on the album as “a mix between simple, repetitive phrases and total freakouts”. Bandmate Dan Leavers AKA Danalogue The Conqueror adds that “the unifying idea behind this album is one of interconnectivity between people, about the human spirit prevailing against adversity.”
You can read much more from The Comet Is Coming in the new issue of Uncut, in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here.
Paul Weller has announced a new live album and concert film, recorded at one on his orchestral shows in October last year.
Other Aspects: Live At The Royal Festival Hall will be released as a CD/DVD and LP/DVD package on March 8, as well as in select cinemas on February 28.
Order the latest issue ...
Paul Weller has announced a new live album and concert film, recorded at one on his orchestral shows in October last year.
Other Aspects: Live At The Royal Festival Hall will be released as a CD/DVD and LP/DVD package on March 8, as well as in select cinemas on February 28.
For the full list of cinemas participating in the February 28 screening of
Other Aspects: Live At The Royal Festival Hall, go here. Each screening will include a short film featuring never-before-seen studio / rehearsal footage exclusive to the cinema events.
The new issue of Uncut – in shops tomorrow (January 17) but available to order online now by clicking here – explores the untold stories behind Leonard Cohen's greatest albums, as recounted by his closest collaborators.
One of those albums is You Want It Darker: Cohen’s swansong, released 19...
The new issue of Uncut – in shops tomorrow (January 17) but available to order online now by clicking here – explores the untold stories behind Leonard Cohen’s greatest albums, as recounted by his closest collaborators.
One of those albums is You Want It Darker: Cohen’s swansong, released 19 days before his death on November 7, 2016, aged 82. Though gravely ill, he’s working until the very end.
PAT LEONARD [PRODUCER/CO-WRITER/PROGRAMMING]: He was getting really ill. The creative process was fairly normal up to a point, then it got to where he couldn’t do every day, maybe just a couple of days, and even those days were truncated. It got tough. Some days I’d come and all he could do was talk. That lyric, “You Want I Darker”, I certainly know where that came from – yet sometimes we would laugh ourselves sick about just about anything. There was a very light heart there. He said a couple of times how lucky he felt. I have recordings of things we did that were as real and raw as anything I’d ever heard. Live versions with Bill Bottrell playing guitar, me playing piano and bass, and Leonard singing. They were messy and noisy. By then, he wasn’t really playing guitar. We did a couple of things where he would play his ‘chop’. You know how musicians talk about having ‘chops’? He had that fingerpicking pattern that he did, and he called it his ‘chop’. He only had one!
ANJANI THOMAS: I remember Pat Leonard playing me this amazing track for “Treaty”. It was so beautiful, I cried when I heard it. Pat loved it, I loved it. I looked at Len and he said, “You know what, it’s too beautiful.” He said the music was too obviously moving, almost manipulative. Too emotional, too poignant. Too much! It was distracting him. He wanted to control it, he wanted some edge.
LEONARD: Ironically, that early version is the one that’s on the record. We used to talk about ‘Treaty: The Movie’, as I did no less than 25 versions of “Treaty”. There were some really interesting ones – the last one was so interesting, I think it pushed him back to the first one. In fact, his request for me to do a little string arrangement of it was an homage to how much effort went into the damn song. He said to me that ultimately it was about the line that he didn’t have. There were many variations of the chorus, and until he found what he wanted it to say, we just kept trying it.
SHARON ROBINSON [VOCALS]: He knew he was getting sick. It was a quiet time. We’d get together to talk about life and death. Leonard lost a lot of friends during that period – he was almost in a continuous state of mourning, but he was intent on putting out another record and book, as he knew his time was limited. He wanted me to be involved, so he gave me the lyric “On The Level”, and really liked what I wrote. I did the vocals in my own studio, but he played the whole record for me once it was finished, on his little boom box – which I think was the same boom box we worked with back in the ’80s!
LEONARD: At the end of the day, his son Adam finished it with him. There was some father/son stuff that I wasn’t about to get in the middle of. You could see that he couldn’t keep going much longer, it was just a matter of when something was going to happen. I don’t like the ‘tragic end’ thing, because it wasn’t. This was a beautiful man who died in his home with his children around him, and I guarantee the day he passed away he was working. He never stopped. No matter what, he worked. I know he was still looking for something else – looking for better.
You can read much more about Cohen’s greatest albums – as well as a peek into the vaults and the lowdown on new documentary Marianne & Leonard: Words Of Love – in the new issue of Uncut, on sale tomorrow.
50 years ago this week, King Crimson had their first rehearsal in the basement of a cafe on London's Fulham Palace Road. To mark this occasion – and the release of their Top 5 album In The Court Of The Crimson King later in 1969 – the band have announced a glut of activity, including a 50-date w...
50 years ago this week, King Crimson had their first rehearsal in the basement of a cafe on London’s Fulham Palace Road. To mark this occasion – and the release of their Top 5 album In The Court Of The Crimson King later in 1969 – the band have announced a glut of activity, including a 50-date world tour.
The full itinerary is still coming together, but you can view the list of dates announced so far here. It includes three nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall in June.
In February they’ll release King Crimson 1972–74 – the second boxed set of 6LPs, from Larks’ Tongues In Aspic to the expanded USA, on 200 gram vinyl.
That will be followed in May by Heaven And Earth – a multi-disc CD/DVD-a/Blu-Ray set covering the period from the late 1990s–2008, completing the availability of all King Crimson studio albums in 5.1 multi-channel audio.
And to coincide with the anniversary of King Crimson’s debut album in October, there’ll be a limited edition expanded boxed set of In The Court Of The Crimson King including all the live recordings, the expanded multitrack 1969 recording sessions, as well as a new 5.1 remix of the album and a coffee table book.
Starting this week, King Crimson will also be digitally releasing 50 rare or unusual tracks from the archives, along with commentary from King Crimson manager and producer David Singleton. Download the first track, a radio edit of “21st Century Schizoid Man”, here.
Finally, a documentary on the band called Cosmic F*Kc, directed by Toby Amies, will be released late in 2019 along with accompanying soundtrack. For full details of all these releases – and more! – visit King Crimson’s official site.
Following the release of the title track last year, Karen O and Danger Mouse have issued another single from their upcoming collaborative album Lux Prima.
Hear "Woman" below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4yhzATxyz0&feature=youtu.be
Order the latest issue of Uncut online and have it sent t...
“Woman came like a bolt out of the blue when we were in the studio,” says Karen O. “We did a first pass where I was blurting unintelligible words and Danger Mouse and I were like, ‘Dang! That was intense.’ The atmosphere was volatile with it being just after the election. A lot of people felt helpless like you do when you’re a scared kid looking for assurance that everything is gonna be alright. I like to write songs that anyone can relate to but this one felt especially for the inner child in me that needed the bullies out there to know you don’t f*ck with me. I’m a woman now and I’ll protect that inner girl in me from hell and high water.”
Lux Prima will be released by BMG on March 15. Check out the tracklisting below:
Leonard Cohen has admirers in some unexpected places. Over the Christmas break, Prince Charles selected “Take This Waltz” on a special edition of Radio 3’s programme, Private Passions. “I’ve always loved Leonard Cohen’s voice and his whole approach to the way he sang,” said the heir to...
Leonard Cohen has admirers in some unexpected places. Over the Christmas break, Prince Charles selected “Take This Waltz” on a special edition of Radio 3’s programme, Private Passions. “I’ve always loved Leonard Cohen’s voice and his whole approach to the way he sang,” said the heir to the throne. “He was obviously incredibly sophisticated in the way he sang, hut also wrote. I find it very moving.”
Cohen, of course, lived for a short while in London during his mid-twenties; though I’m not certain he ever publicly aired his views of the British monarchy. Nevertheless, Charles’ reminds us of the enduring qualities of Cohen’s music; his abundant gifts as a writer and singer. In the new issue of Uncut – in shops now but available to buy online now – our investigation of Cohen’s musical history – a study of his key albums, illuminated by his principal collaborators – reveals an artist whose work has gained a kind of mythic potency. But what about the craft and art behind this process? Graeme Thomson discovers a remarkable body of work shepherded into existence as much my Cohen’s elusive genius as by the finest caviar, bottles of Château Lafite and glamorous romantic liaisons. We hear tales of a “scruffy dude in his ubiquitous safari suit” whose songs were “threaded with love and loss”. We also preview a revelatory new documentary, Marianne And Leonard: Words Of Love, which premiers in Sundance later this month.
There’s more, though. The Yardbirds recall their sensational breakthrough – and how it led to the departure of their then-guitarist, Eric Clapton (“I wonder what became of him?”, asks one former member). We relive the many peaks of Bob Marley’s career through his long-serving backing band, The Wailers. David Bowie’s “long apprenticeship” is explored, we introduce Jessica Pratt to the Uncut universe and catch up with Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner at home in Nashville. Michael Rother takes us inside Neu! while Crass share some hair-raising stories involving the KGB, Margaret Thatcher and the murky world of teenage magazine giveaways.
If that wasn’t enough, we discover what’s next for The Pretty Things, Sean Ono Lennon explains why he’s not an occultist (he just likes the fab gear), The Long Ryders return and Shabaka Hutchings unveils new plans for his astonishing space-jazz trio, The Comet Is Coming.
There’s new albums from Cass McCombs, Julia Jacklin, Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, Royal Trux, The Specials and Sleaford Mods and buried treasures from Japan (ambient New Age), Britain (landfill glam) and America (Phil Alvin).
