Popol Vuh

One or two auspicious things amidst this lot, though check out Weyes Blood and Robert Stillman, too. Very conscious of cryptic hyperbole here, but Record 14 is as good as anything I’ve heard this year, this morning at least.

A nice surprise in the post yesterday, when a big box full of their beautiful CDs, records and cassettes turned up from Natural Snow Buildings. Seeing these actual objects for the first time – as opposed to just hearing their rapturous music – confirmed that they were as beautiful as their reputation suggested, further proving the meticulous craft and care with which Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte go about their work.

Worth mentioning the subtitle of this straight off: “Experimental German Rock And Electronic Musik 1972-83”. “Elektronische Musik” is a 2CD comp that pulls off a fine trick that'll be familiar to those of you who’ve enjoyed other Soul Jazz surveys (not least last year’s amazing “Freedom, Rhythm And Sound” revolutionary jazz comp).

A strange experience this morning. As I write, I’m listening to what seems to be a perfect recording of the Mountains show I saw last night at Club Uncut. As with a previous tour, which resulted in the superb “Etching” album, Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp rehearsed a new piece for the tour, recorded an early take on it, then produced CD-Rs to sell after each show.

The last time I wrote about Mountains, the sole comment I received at the bottom of the blog read, “No offense dude, but that review was kind of useless” – a warning maybe, not to try it again.

Some talk on the last couple of blogs (Wavves and Playlist 20) about the Ducktails record and Matthew Mondanile’s various other products, so today seems a good time to tackle his stuff properly – not least because I think he may be playing London over the weekend.

Weird prompt, but a TV ad last night for the forthcoming Formula One coverage reminded me that I’d been sat on Pocahaunted a bit too long. Specifically, it was the snatch of the BBC’s old theme tune, Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain”, which Pocahaunted covered to mesmeric effect on their “Chains” album last year.

Apologies for yesterday’s grouchy digression. Back to business today, and one of a bunch of new records that have been exciting me over the past week or two.

A while back, someone at Uncut pointed out to me that one of the words I overused when writing about music was “feral”. He was right, too: I’d got into a habit of using the term whenever the psychedelia and crypto-primitive folk jams that I listen to so much got a little wilder and smellier, became a bit more instinctual, or at least convincingly pretended to be instinctual.

A surprising lack of indignation over at yesterday's Bob Dylan vs Mark Ronson blog, where everyone seems to have responded to the "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)" remix with commendable restraint.