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Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Paul Simon pay tribute to Muhammad Ali

Charlotte Treadaway
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Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Paul Simon pay tribute to Muhammad Ali

Bob Dylan said Muhammad Ali was “truly the greatest” in his written tribute, the latest in a series of musician-penned commemorations to the boxer.

A longtime admirer of the boxer, Dylan wrote on his website: “If the measure of greatness is to gladden the heart of every human being on the face of the earth, then he truly was the greatest. In every way he was the bravest, the kindest and the most excellent of men.”

Boxers have inspired Dylan songs “Who Killed Davey Moore” and “Hurricane“. Following the release of the latter, which was a protest song against boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter’s wrongful conviction for murder, Ali joined Dylan on stage at a New York concert in 1965 and rung Carter in prison during the show.

Dylan also sang about Ali, who was then called Cassius Clay, in a verse of “I Shall Be Free No 10” in 1964 LP Another Side of Bob Dylan. The track was recorded after Ali beat Sonny Liston to become heavyweight champion for the first time.

I said ‘Fee, fie, fo, fum, Cassius Clay, here I come

26, 27, 28, 29, I’m gonna make your face look just like mine

Five, four, three, two, one, Cassius Clay you’d better run

99, 100, 101, 102, your ma won’t even recognize you

14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, gonna knock him clean right out of his spleen.

Also paying his respects was Paul McCartney, who first met Ali with The Beatles in February 1964. He wrote on his site: “Besides being the greatest boxer, he was a beautiful, gentle man with a great sense of humour who would often pull a pack of cards out of his pocket, no matter how posh the occasion, and do a card trick for you… The world has lost a truly great man,”

Ali died aged 74 last Friday (3 June) after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. Paul Simon was doing a concert at the time of his death, and stopped midway through a rendition of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” to inform the audience.

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Prince’s pro-vegan song “Animal Kingdom” re-released by PETA

Charlotte Treadaway
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Prince’s pro-vegan song “Animal Kingdom” re-released by PETA

Prince’s song Animal Kingdom has been re-released by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) in celebration of what would have been his 58th birthday.

Prince, a committed vegan and a strong supporter of animal rights, donated the song to the charity in 1999 for its 20th anniversary.

According to The Guardian, Prince’s ex-wife Marte Garcia is encouraging Prince fans to make a “veg pledge” in support of the legacy of the singer, who died of opoid overdose in April.

She said: “My mission every 7 June is not only to celebrate his birth, but also with PETA to remember this man by making 7 June a day where Prince fans go vegan to see how much better they feel and to honour his kind legacy.”

Paying tribute to him after his death, PETA wrote “A committed vegan who never shied away from speaking the truth, Prince laid out the reasons why animals are not ours to eat in these stirring lyrics from his song ‘Animal Kingdom’.”

The lyrics are:

No member of the animal kingdom nurses past maturity
No member of the animal kingdom ever did a thing to me
It’s why I don’t eat red meat or white fish
Don’t give me no blue cheese
We’re all members of the animal kingdom
Leave your brothers and sisters in the sea

Prince attended a gala organized by the charity in 2005, and in 2006 was crowned their “Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity. He stated that he doesn’t “eat anything with parents,” because “thou shalt not kill means just that.” He once refused the gift of a leather jacket from a fan at a gig and also famously declared: “we need an animal rights day when all slaughterhouses shut down.”

He died aged 57 on April 21 of this year, of what was confirmed last week to be an opoid overdose.

The song is available as a free download, which can be streamed and downloaded on the PETA website

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Glastonbury finalises plans for tributes to David Bowie, Prince and Lemmy

Charlotte Treadaway
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Glastonbury finalises plans for tributes to David Bowie, Prince and Lemmy

In a year of major musical loss, it is fitting that the world’s most major music festival mark these – and Glastonbury is finalising plans for tributes to David Bowie, Prince and Lemmy.

According to The Guardian, organisers told of plans for hundreds of commemorations celebrating the music of the three to be staged at the upcoming festival – including what they dubbed “participatory aspects” for the crowd to honour David Bowie, who died of liver cancer on 10 January this year. It is thought that attendees will be asked to join in a “flash mob” set to Starman.

Hot Chip has been confirmed to pay tribute to Prince, whose death in April has been recently attributed to an opoid overdose. Details of the tribute to Lemmy, who died in December of last year, are yet to be revealed – but it is said to be a set involving a giant sculpture.

The festival spokesperson said attendees can expect a great number of cover versions of Bowie and Prince’s songs particularly. They told The Guardian: “Some of the stuff we don’t even know about because there’s so much happening, particularly Bowie, because he was such a key character.”

David Bowie played for free to an audience of 6,000 at the Somerset festival in 1971 – he was aged 24 and a relative unknown. He returned to the farm as an icon in 2000, playing to 100,000 festivalgoers.

Lemmy played the festival just last year with Motorhead, but Prince had never performed there – despite the efforts of organiser Michael Eavis.

Glastonbury’s full 3,062 act strong line up was revealed last week. Beck, PJ Harvey and LCD Soundsystem are among the acts confirmed.

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band live

Michael Bonner
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Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band live

As “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” fades out on Wembley’s in-house radio station, the DJ informs us that Bruce Springsteen will be on stage in 30 minutes. He tells us that a fan called Dave has Tweeted from the stadium floor to say that it’s 26 degrees in the Venue of Legends. Back in his booth, the DJ cues up another track: “More music now, from Sting.” Meanwhile, TV screens inside the cavernous stadium corridors play an advert for a mobile phone network on repeat, where Kevin Bacon walks through the same cavernous stadium corridors before bursting out onto the pitch itself.

At 6.15, Bruce Springsteen walks casually onto the stage, saluting the crowd with a bellowed “Hello, Wembley!” Swerving back to the piano, he opens tonight’s 33 song set with “Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?”, a comparative live rarity dating back to Springsteen’s first formal studio audition for CBS back in 1972. The E Street Band arrive for another deep cut: “Seeds”, from the Born In The USA sessions. At which point, it seems like all bets are off.

But the River tour has been remarkable for a number of reasons. Springsteen’s first tour since reuniting the E Street Band in 1999 that hasn’t been tied to a new album, it is an undertaking that seems almost to have happened by accident. Originating from the idea to support The Ties That Bind: The River Collection with a couple of shows, it has since blossomed into a full-blown 37-date American tour. Along the way, it has added 28 European dates before looping back for a final 10 shows in the States. All that is stopping it, presumably, is the publication of Springsteen’s autobiography, which is released on September 27 – 13 days after the final River date. The proposition of the tour has changed, too. What began as a plan to play The River in its entirety, complemented by a selection of catalogue cuts has now become a broader celebration of Springsteen’s songs, with tracks from The River album at its core.

It’s possible to view the original iteration of The River tour as a reflective experience for Springsteen. The album itself was written at a turning point in his career, the first time he really grappled with the challenges of adulthood. As he told biographer Dave Marsh in 2004: “I finally got to the place [with The River] where I realised life had paradoxes, a lot of them, and you’ve got to live with them.” The album gave Springsteen his first No 1 while the original 1980/1981 River tour represented Springsteen’s first major foray into Europe – including a six-night stand next door, at Wembley Arena. The tour also took place in the shadow of Reagan’s election of John Lennon’s assassination: it’s hard not to find strange, historical resonances today, as America similarly readies itself for an election and Springsteen and the E Street Band also pay homage to other, departed icons. Tonight, “Tougher Than The Rest” is dedicated to Muhammad Ali.

Although the number of River songs has been cut back – from tonight’s set, only 5 come from The River – nevertheless the album continues to exert an influence, however subtle that may be. The album comes closest to outlining the span of Springsteen’s live show – the perennial themes of togetherness, hope and redemption played out as upbeat rockers, soulful testifying and moments of somber reflection.

“Seeds” appears key to the tour’s stripped-back line-up: a lean, muscular garage rocker that features a surprisingly vicious guitar solo from Springsteen. It is followed in quick succession by “Johnny 99”, which maintains the thrilling power of “Seeds” but manages to add fiddle, guitar, cowbell and sax solos. The run, then, continues through “Wrecking Ball”, “The Ties That Bind”, “Sherry Darling”, “Hungry Heart”, “No Surrender”, “Candy’s Room” and more, each one kick started by Springsteen before the previous song has properly finished. It’s 12 songs before he pauses to take a breath, for “I’ll Work For Your Love” – a sign request from the audience. There is an opportunity here for more comedy – he starts off on the wrong harmonica, fluffs the intro, squints into the crowd, looking for “the card with the chords”. It is followed by “Spirit In The Night”, and some terrific messing about: this time, he helps himself to a pair of glasses and a conical silver hat from audience members as he works his way along the crowd barrier. He ends up taking a pint from a girl at the front and downs it. The jollity continues with “Out In The Street” and “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)” before taking a swerve into darker territory.

The run of songs that consists of “Death To My Hometown”, “American Skin (41 Shots)”, “The River” and “The Promised Land” are among Springsteen’s finest moments. Certainly, the narrative strengths of “The River” are undiminished with familiarity or the passing of time: a perfect short story set to music. The power of these songs, nestled in between more rousing stands, feels central to Springsteen’s observation about life’s paradoxes: rock’n’roll can be celebratory, but it can also be used to explore the kind of weighty issues detailed in this cluster of songs.

There are customary set-pieces. The walkabouts – which begin as early as “Johnny 99” – the sign requests, whooping cheers whenever Jake Clemons takes a sax solo, and on “Waitin’ On A Sunny Day”, he plucks a child from the audience to sing along. He sees her waving a placard reading “I’ve got school tomorrow but tonight I’m waiting on a sunny day”. It’s evidently too good an opportunity to resist. The main set concludes with “Because The Night”, “The Rising” and “Badlands”, which showcase the key themes in Springsteen’s songs: romance, politics and the search for a better life.

The River tour marks an interesting point in Springsteen’s career. The Ties That Bind: The River Collection is the latest assiduously curated archival box set, documenting a time when Springsteen was a young, blue collar songwriter from New Jersey trying to find his voice. It’s a theme, you imagine, that he will return to in his imminent autobiography. We can deduce that, now aged 66, Springsteen has one eye on his legacy; that this tour is part of a wider sense of the artist taking stock of his achievements. It has long been rumoured that there’s a Born In The USA box set in the works: another key point on the road to Springsteen’s success. After which, we’re told, there is a new solo album to come. What that will consist of is as yet known, but it’s tempting to wonder whether Springsteen will finally turn the focus inward and look at himself, as he passes his mid-sixties. He is almost a decade older than Bob Dylan was when he wrote Time Out Of Mind, but perhaps now is the time for a record of similar ruminative power.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band set list, Wembley Stadium, June 5, 2016:

Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street
Seeds
Johnny 99
Wrecking Ball
The Ties That Bind
Sherry Darling
Hungry Heart
No Surrender
Be True
Candy’s Room
She’s The One
My City Of Ruins
I’ll Work For Your Love
Spirit In The Night
Out In The Street
You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
Death To My Hometown
American Skin (41 Shots)
The River
The Promised Land
Darling County
Waitin’ On A Sunny Day
Tougher Than The Rest
Because The Night
The Rising
Badlands

Encore
Jungleland
Born To Run
Dancing In The Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Shout
Bobby Jean

Encore
Thunder Road

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Inside Fairport Convention’s Liege And Lief: “We were on a crusade…”

Michael Bonner
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Inside Fairport Convention’s Liege And Lief: “We were on a crusade…”

They were a bunch of uptight Londoners who wanted to be The Byrds. But after a tragic road crash, Fairport Convention holed up in the countryside, tapped into mystical traditions and reinvented English folk-rock. Nearly 40 years later, they remember: “We were on a crusade…”

Originally published in Uncut’s September 2007 issue (Take 127)

___________________

Turning off the motorway south of Winchester, you find yourself in an older England. A chain of villages and secluded country churches are strung together by twisting lanes. If you didn’t know Farley House existed, you’d never run into it by accident, but we do, and there is the muddy driveway, and the cows, and finally the creamy 17th century façade, its flat lawn and surrounding meadows hacked long ago out of the Hampshire forest alongside the village of Farley Chamberlayne.

Today Farley House is a shell, gutted in preparation for major refurbishment. But it’s still recognisably the building that appears on the sleeve of Fairport Convention’s Liege And Lief, the record that invented – and set the benchmark for – folk rock in Britain. During a three month stay here, Fairport Convention piped fresh air into a stagnating tradition, drawing on a very British heritage to generate a glorious mixture of new songs, turbo-jigs and supernatural ballads. The crackling energy of “Tam Lin”, the sinister slink of foxy “Reynardine”, the bloody fate of “Matty Groves” and the rousing battle cry of “Come All Ye” asked the question: could traditional folk song be claimed and owned by the rock generation, and what could rock learn from the process?

Fairport-Conventions-Liege-And-Lief

The story of Liege And Lief begins, however, far from the idyll of Farley House. At around 4am on 12 May 1969, on the M1 motorway leading into North London, Fairport Convention’s van was roaring down the tarmac on its final stretch before dropping off at the six occupants’ various homes. The next moment it was cartwheeling off the verge with guitars, drums, speakers and amplifiers bursting out of the back doors and bouncing all over the road. The vehicle contained all bar one member of one of British rock’s most eager hopefuls. Fairport Convention’s drummer, Martin Lamble, died instantly in the crash, as did Jeannie Franklyn, girlfriend of guitarist Richard Thompson. Bassist Ashley Hutchings and rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol suffered lesser injuries, while Fairport’s vocalist, 23 year old Sandy Denny, had driven back in a different car. Their roadie/driver had fallen asleep at the wheel, and was later convicted of causing death by dangerous driving.

Eric Clapton – I Still Do

Andy Gill
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Eric Clapton – I Still Do

Half a century ago, Eric Clapton’s instrumental prowess was forged in the fiery cauldron of Cream, the guitarist forced to battle for space with two equally gifted, ferociously combative egos. The result was that when he grasped the spotlight, he held onto it for dear life, pursuing improvisational threads with the delirious focus of a Coltrane, drilling deeper and deeper into a solo until the actual song was left far behind.

It was a mode which, executed with formidable technique, acquired him the unwelcome nickname “God”, and it became a reliable backbone of live performances through subsequent decades. But look back at Clapton’s solo career and you’ll notice that virtually from the start, he was drawing back from that kind of excessive, egotistical approach, keener instead to serve the song. Key to this change were two acts: Delaney & Bonnie, the blue-eyed soul troupe with whom he spent some time in retreat from Cream; and most notably JJ Cale, the reclusive Okie guitarist who became such a touchstone of excellence for Clapton that he considered him “one of the most important artists in the history of rock, quietly representing the greatest asset his country has ever had”.

Cale became, Clapton later asserted, a “beacon” for his own attempts to discard the ensnaring lures of amplitude, speed and complexity in search of the fundamentals of purity and simplicity. And so, in curious contrast to the usual progress of musical endeavour in rock, Clapton’s career became a process of self-denial, shifting from noisy, boastful indulgence to more modest, poised refinement – and if he never quite reached the point of minimal musical satori that Cale represented, the effects are more evident than ever throughout his 23rd studio album I Still Do.

There’s a cover of Cale’s “Somebody’s Knockin’”, EC’s set-opener in recent years, and a good way to ease into a show – though ironically, here it provides a platform for the album’s most old-school Clapton solo; while “Can’t Let You Do It” is a neat, toe-tapping shuffle with nimble, spartan picking, just enough to carry the song along, in the liquid tone favoured by JJ. And another Latin-tinged shuffle, “Catch The Blues”, features a deliciously understated JJ-style guitar break, delivered with touches of the creamy wah-wah flavour employed by Mac Gayden on “Crazy Mama”.

The album, which reunites the guitarist with Slowhand and Backless producer Glyn Johns for the first time in four decades, offers a typical Clapton mix of covers and original material. The former are rather more impressive than the latter, particularly the lullaby “Little Man, You’ve Had A Busy Day”, which is a winsome but forgettable trifle. He returns several times to the blues wellspring, opening proceedings with a slow, earthy version of Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell’s “Alabama Woman Blues”, in which Chris Stainton’s piano and Dirk Powell’s accordion occupy the space around Clapton’s snaking, snarling lead lines, delivered with a tone of dirty elegance, like a battered top hat.

Powell’s accordion features prominently on several other blues covers, lending the album a swampy flavour akin to that which David Hidalgo brought to Dylan’s Together Through Life. Skip James’ “Cypress Grove”, for example, employs a similar instrumental blend on a slow rolling groove, through which EC’s guitar crawls like a surly water-moccasin gliding through a bayou: the arrangement’s gritty, sluggish tenacity brings to mind Little Feat’s version of “44 Blues”. “Stones In My Passway” features sharp, biting guitar and vocal, as befits one of Robert Johnson’s more enigmatically troubled songs. The spindly interplay of lines during the guitar break – presumably shared with Andy Fairweather-Low – is delightful, while the handclaps accenting the third beat animate the song with a subtle syncopation.

The album closer is a languid piano stroll through the standard “I’ll Be Seeing You”, with Clapton in relaxed crooner mode, though perhaps the most surprising and successful cover is of Dylan’s “I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine”, a song which is usually hard to perform without slipping into a certain ponderous, sententious solemnity. Ingeniously, Clapton injects a light, funky offbeat into his vocal delivery, which combined with the piano and accordion lifts the mood in buoyant, jubilee manner, with Fairweather-Low and Paul Carrack’s background vocals adding a lovely, restrained gospel flavour. Clapton’s solo is likewise understated and neat, twining around the melody rather than sprouting away from it.

The gospel tone is extended by the male and female backing vocals of the subsequent “I’ll Be Alright”, an old spiritual forebear of “We Shall Overcome”. Its restful, consolatory mood applies balm to the album’s bruised blues, characterised elsewhere in “Spiral” as a kind of welcome affliction: “You don’t know what it means,” claims Clapton, “to have this music in me.” There’s further comfort offered in the light reggae groove of “I Will Be There”, driven by Paul Carrack’s pulsing organ, Henry Spinetti’s deft rimshots, and springy guitar vamping. “Just call on me,” sings Eric, “…don’t be afraid, when you are lost, I will be there.”

Intriguingly, the song contains a credit for “Angelo Mysterioso”, a variant of the pseudonym famously employed by George Harrison when anonymously guesting on friends’ recordings, most notably on Cream’s “Badge”. Clapton, however, has already denied it refers to George. Which would, let’s face it, be somewhat miraculous anyway.

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Ennio Morricone marks 60 years in music with major new record deal

Michael Bonner
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Ennio Morricone marks 60 years in music with major new record deal

Ennio Morricone has signed a major new record deal with Decca Records.

The label will release an album, Morricone 60, on October 7, just ahead of his 88th birthday.

It is the first album of the composer’s greatest hits conducted, recorded and curated by Morricone himself and will include some of his greatest film music from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly to his recent score for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, which was released by Decca last year.

“After the success of The Hateful Eight score, I’m delighted to be returning to Decca with my own record deal – an extraordinary moment in my 60th professional anniversary year,” said Morricone. “It’s been a wonderful experience to be able to conduct my scores and to record these with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. The quality of their performance of my work is truly outstanding.”

The tracklisting for Morricone 60 is:

‘The Man with the Harmonica’ (from Once Upon a Time in the West)
‘The Fortress’ (from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
The Good the Bad and the Ugly – Main theme (from the film)
‘Jill’s Theme’ (from Once Upon a Time in the West)
A Fistful of Dynamite (from the film with the same name)
‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ (from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ (from The Mission)
‘Falls’ (from The Mission)
‘On Earth as it is in Heaven’ (from The Mission)
‘Nuovo Cinema Paradiso’
‘Abolisson’ (from Quemada)
‘Chi Mai’
‘H2S’
‘Metti una Sera a Cena’ (from the film)
‘Croce d’Amore’ (from Metti una Sera a Cena)
‘Deborah’s Theme’ (from Once Upon a Time in America)
‘Stage Coach to Red Rock’ (from The Hateful Eight)
‘Bestiality’ (from The Hateful Eight)

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Watch The Strokes’ new video for “Drag Queen”

Michael Bonner
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Watch The Strokes’ new video for “Drag Queen”

The Strokes have released a video for their new single “Drag Queen“.

“Drag Queen” is one of three new songs that appear on the band’s latest EP, Future Present Past.

The tracklisting for the EP is “Drag Queen”, “OBLIVIUS“, and “Threat Of Joy“, along with an additional remix of “OBLIVIUS” by Strokes’ drummer, Fab Moretti.

This is the Strokes’ first new material since 2013’s album, Comedown Machine.

Future Present Past is released today [June 3], in both digital and physical formats.

The 10” vinyl edition also includes two stickers and a digital download of all four songs as 320 bit MP3s or 16 bit wav files.

The band’s Julian Casablancas recently said a full album would be recorded “if the collective will could be summoned and caroused”.

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Hear Beck’s new single, “Wow”

Michael Bonner
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Hear Beck’s new single, “Wow”

Beck has released a new single, “Wow“.

The track coincides with the announcement of a new album, which is scheduled for October 21 on Virgin EMI.

“Wow” is out now; you can hear the track below.

The track is Beck’s first new material since the single “Dreams“, released last summer.

Beck’s new album – as yet untitled – has been produced by Greg Kurstin, a veteran of Beck’s live band circa Sea Change.

This will be Beck’s first album since 2014’s Grammy-winning Morning Phase.

In an interview on Los Angeles radio station Alt.98.7 last year, Beck said of this new album, “It started out as a heavy garage rock thing and became much more of a dance — some kind of hybrid.”

Beck plays the following UK shows this month:

FOLD Festival, London June 25
Glastonbury Festival, Pilton June 26
O2 Brixton Academy, London June 28
Albert Hall, Manchester June 29

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Watch PJ Harvey’s new video for “The Orange Monkey”

Michael Bonner
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0
Watch PJ Harvey’s new video for “The Orange Monkey”

PJ Harvey has released a video for her song, “The Orange Monkey“.

The track is taken form her current album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, and has been directed by photo-journalist and film-maker, Seamus Murphy.

The track to be taken from Harvey’s album, the video for “The Orange Monkey” was shot in Afghanistan and follows videos for “The Wheel” and “The Community of Hope“, also directed by Murphy.

Said Murphy, “With the films I make for Polly Harvey’s music I try to reflect the song’s tune and mood, which means tapping into emotion. I find emotion a truer compass than intellect when it comes to finding images and creating sequences for music.

“‘The Orange Monkey’ has warm, earthen colours with a pleasant, unrushed feel to it. There’s an underlying melancholy, which is leavened by the strength and energy of the Afghan people. We know there is tragedy but what we see is resilience.

“All the material for the film was shot in Afghanistan over two trips I made in 2012 and one in 2014. In December 2012 Polly joined me and we travelled together in Afghanistan. Places featured are Kabul, Parwan, Nangarhar and Helmand Provinces.

“The country is different each time; different politics, different conditions, different dangers and then there’s the physical differences brought about by the change in seasons. Songs gets drawn from many experiences and events in a writer’s life and some elements could equally fit other songs about other things. Films work in similar ways. Would the shot of the baker drinking his Chai Sabz (green tea) be any different had it been taken on an earlier or later trip? This film comes from work made over several recent trips but also from a reservoir of memories dating back to my first visit to Afghanistan in 1994.”

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

The Rolling Stones collaborating with Eric Clapton on their new album?

Michael Bonner
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The Rolling Stones collaborating with Eric Clapton on their new album?

The Rolling Stones are reportedly recording with Eric Clapton.

According to The Sun, Clapton and the Stones recently ran into each other at a west London recording studio and have since recorded two songs together with producer Don Was.

Ron Wood had previously revealed that that the band have been on “a blues streak” in the recording studio, covering standards by the likes of Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter.

“They really sound authentic,” Wood said of the band’s new tracks in April. “We went in to cut some new songs, which we did. But we got on a blues streak. We cut 11 blues in two days… When we heard them back after not hearing them for a couple of months, we were, ‘Who’s that?’ ‘It’s you.’ It sounded so authentic.”

Last year the Stones shared a previously unreleased version of “Brown Sugar” featuring Eric Clapton from their deluxe reissue of Sticky Fingers.

Speaking to Uncut about this unreleased version of “Brown Sugar“, producer Chris Kimsey recalled, “Keith and Bobby Keys had a joint birthday party at Olympic [Studios]. I remember Al Kooper and Eric Clapton being there. I recorded this ‘Brown Sugar’ jam that went on for 15 minutes. Alan O’Duffy, who was booked to engineer the session, fancied a bit of this lovely birthday cake that was going around. It was hash cake. 15 minutes later he was gone, so I had to engineer that evening’s session. It was quite terrifying. All these people came in. We recorded this extended version of ‘Brown Sugar’. Everyone was playing live, like a big club. I remember George Harrison turning up as well.”

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Beach Boys exclusive! Hear a previously unreleased version of “Sloop John B”

Michael Bonner
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Beach Boys exclusive! Hear a previously unreleased version of “Sloop John B”

A special 50th anniversary edition of the Beach Boys‘ classic album Pet Sounds is in shops next week, June 10.

Voted Uncut’s Greatest Album Of All Time, Pet Sounds needs no introduction, of course. The 50th anniversary edition, however, is available in several forms including a 4CD/Blu-ray Audio collectors edition.

Presented in a hardbound book, it features the remastered original album in stereo and mono, plus hi res stereo, mono, instrumental, and 5.1 surround mixes, session outtakes, alternate mixes, and previously unreleased live recordings.

We’re delighted to give you an exclusive preview one of those unreleased tracks – a live recording of “Sloop John B” from 1966.

The tracklisting for the 4CD/Blu-ray Audio collectors edition is:

CD 1
Pet Sounds (Mono)
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
You Still Believe In Me
That’s Not Me
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
I’m Waiting For The Day
Let’s Go Away For Awhile
Sloop John B
God Only Knows
I Know There’s An Answer
Here Today
I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times
Pet Sounds
Caroline No

Pet Sounds (Stereo)
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
You Still Believe In Me
That’s Not Me
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
I’m Waiting For The Day
Let’s Go Away For Awhile
Sloop John B
God Only Knows
I Know There’s An Answer
Here Today
I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times
Pet Sounds
Caroline No
Additional Material
Caroline No (Promotional Spot #2)
Don’t Talk. . . (Unused Background Vocals)
Hang On To Your Ego (Alternate Mix)
Caroline No (Promotional Spot #1)

CD 2
The Pet Sounds Sessions
Sloop John B (Highlights from Tracking Date)
Sloop John B (Stereo Backing Track)
Trombone Dixie (Highlights from Tracking Date)
Trombone Dixie (Stereo Backing Track)
Pet Sounds (Highlights from Tracking Date)
Pet Sounds (Stereo Track Without Guitar Overdub)
Let’s Go Away For Awhile (Highlights from Tracking Date)
Let’s Go Away For Awhile (Stereo Track Without String Overdub)
Wouldn’t It Be Nice (Highlights from Tracking Date)
Wouldn’t It Be Nice (Stereo Backing Track)
Wouldn’t It Be Nice (Stereo Track with Background Vocals)
You Still Believe In Me (Intro – Session)
You Still Believe In Me (Intro – Master Take)
You Still Believe In Me (Highlights from Tracking Date)
You Still Believe In Me (Stereo Backing Track)
Caroline No (Highlights from Tracking Date)
Caroline No (Stereo Backing Track)
Hang On To Your Ego (Highlights from Tracking Date)
Hang On To Your Ego (Stereo Backing Track)
I Know There’s An Answer (Vocal Session) [previously unreleased]
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) (Brian’s Instrumental Demo)
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) (Stereo Backing Track)
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) (String Overdub)
I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times (Highlights from Tracking Date)
I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times (Stereo Backing Track)
That’s Not Me (Highlights from Tracking Date)
That’s Not Me (Stereo Backing Track)

CD 3
The Pet Sounds Sessions (continued)
Good Vibrations (Highlights from First Tracking Date)
Good Vibrations (Stereo Backing Track)
I’m Waiting For The Day (Highlights from Tracking Date)
I’m Waiting For The Day (Stereo Backing Track)
God Only Knows (Highlights from Tracking Date)
God Only Knows (Stereo Backing Track)
Here Today (Highlights from Tracking Date)
Here Today (Stereo Backing Track)

Alternate Versions
Wouldn’t It Be Nice (Mono Alternate Mix 1)
You Still Believe In Me (Mono Alternate Mix)
I’m Waiting For The Day (Mono Alternate Mix, Mike sings lead)
Sloop John B (Mono Alternate Mix, Carl sings first verse)
God Only Knows (Mono Alternate Mix, with sax solo)
I Know There’s An Answer (Alternate Mix) [previously unreleased]
Here Today (Mono Alternate Mix, Brian sings lead)
I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times (Mono Alternate Mix)
Banana & Louie
Caroline No (Original Speed, Stereo Mix)
Dog Barking Session
God Only Knows (With A Cappella Tag)
Wouldn’t It Be Nice (Mono Alternate Mix 2)
Sloop John B (Mono Alternate Mix, Brian sings lead throughout)
God Only Knows (Mono Alternate Mix, Brian sings lead)
Caroline No (Original Speed, Mono Mix)

CD 4
Live Recordings [all previously unreleased]
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
Sloop John B
God Only Knows
Michigan State University, October 22, 1966
Good Vibrations
God Only Knows
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall, Washington DC, November 19, 1967
God Only Knows
Carnegie Hall, New York, November 23, 1972 (2nd Show)
God Only Knows
Jamaican World Music Festival, Montego Bay, Jamaica, November, 26, 1982
Sloop John B
Universal Studios, Universal City, California, May, 23, 1989
Caroline No
You Still Believe In Me
Paramount Theater, New York City, November 26, 1993
Stack-O-Vocals
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
You Still Believe In Me
That’s Not Me
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
I’m Waiting For The Day
Sloop John B
God Only Knows
I Know There’s An Answer
Here Today
I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times
Caroline No
Bonus Track
Good Vibrations (Master Track with Partial Vocal) (previously unreleased)

Blu-ray Pure Audio Disc
5.1 Surround Sound: 96kHz/24-bit
Mono; Stereo; Stereo Instrumental (new to hi res): 192kHz/24-bit
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
You Still Believe In Me
That’s Not Me
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
I’m Waiting For The Day
Let’s Go Away For Awhile
Sloop John B
God Only Knows
I Know There’s An Answer
Here Today
I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times
Pet Sounds
Caroline No
Additional Material in 5.1 Surround and Stereo
Unreleased Backgrounds (Unused Intro for “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)”)
Wouldn’t It Be Nice (Session Highlights)
Wouldn’t It Be Nice (Alternative Mix without Lead Vocal)
God Only Knows (Session Highlights)
God Only Knows (Master Track Mix with A Cappella Tag)
Summer Means New Love

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

The 18th Uncut Playlist Of 2016

John Mulvey
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The 18th Uncut Playlist Of 2016

The arrival of the Avalanches’ comeback single this morning has prompted us to fall down a bit of a weird rabbit hole, culminating in finding the Fatboy Slim NME mixtape I had some hand in back in 1997. Still sounds terrific.

Probably bigger news in our world this week, though, is the new Ryley Walker album, which moves on from “Primrose Green” to enter a space where he’s referencing Kozelek, Eitzel, O’Rourke and Alice Coltrane as well as Jansch, Martyn etc, and at the same time developing a much more defined voice of his own. One of the albums of the year, I’d risk suggesting (If you missed my characteristically over-generous round-up of the year’s releases so far, btw, you can find it here.

Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey

1 Ryley Walker – Golden Sings That Have Been Sung (Dead Oceans)

2 Marielle V Jakobsons – Star Core (Thrill Jockey)

3 Protein – The Secret Garden (Alien Transistor)

4 Thee Oh Sees – A Weird Exits (Castleface)

5 The Strokes – Future Present Past (Cult)

6 De La Soul – And The Anonymous Nobody (Kobalt)

7 JJ Cale – Really (Mercury)

8 Connie Acher – For Giving (Golden Lab)

9 The Deslondes – Tres Grand Serpent (New West)

10 Horse Lords – Interventions (Northern Spy)

11 Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – Ears (Western Vinyl)

12 Kate Carr – I Had Myself A Nuclear Spring (Rivertones)

https://soundcloud.com/caughtbytheriver/risingwatersaloneinthedarkkatecarr

13 Factory Floor – Dial Me In (DFA)

14 Watery Love – Ned’s Dreamcatcher/Meg’s Dreamcatcher (Richie Records/Testoster Tunes)

15 Psychic Temple – III (Asthmatic Kitty)

16 Floating Points – Kuiper EP (Pluto)

17 The Avalanches – Frankie Sinatra (XL)

18 Bentley Rhythm Ace – Bentley’s Gonna Sort You Out (Skint)

19 Sabres Of Paradise – Wilmot (Warp)

20 Various Artists – Beat Up The NME: Mixed By Fatboy Slim (NME)

The Avalanches announce new album, share “Frankie Sinatra”

Michael Bonner
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The Avalanches announce new album, share “Frankie Sinatra”

The Avalanches have announced details of their first new album for 15 years.

Wildflower will be released on July 8 by XL Recordings.

The album has been created by the band’s core duo – Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi.

Said Chater, “What kept us going during the making this record was a belief in the day-to-day experience of music as a life force – as life energy. Hearing a certain song on a certain morning can change your day; it can make the world look different, changing the way you perceive light refracting through the atmosphere for the rest of the afternoon. Literally changing the colour and feeling-tone of your world.”

The band have shared a video for “Frankie Sinatra“, which features Danny Brown and MF Doom on vocals, and also includes works by calypsonian Wilmoth Houdini and Rodgers & Hammerstein.

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

John Coltrane mono box set announced

Michael Bonner
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John Coltrane mono box set announced

A number of John Coltrane‘s mono albums from the Atlantic label will be released in CD and LP boxed sets.

John Coltrane: The Atlantic Years – In Mono is due from Rhino on June 10.

Newly remastered, the collection includes a replica of the original ‘My Favorite Things Part I & II’ as a 7″ single, exclusive to the vinyl set.

TRACK LISTING:
DISC 1: GIANT STEPS
1. Giant Steps
2. Cousin Mary
3. Countdown 4. Spiral
5. Syeeda’s Song Flute
6. Naima
7. Mr P.C.

DISC 2: BAGS & TRANE (with Milt Jackson)
1. Bags & Trane
2. Three Little Words
3. The Night We Called It A Day
4. Be-Bop
5. The Late Late Blues

DISC 3: OLE COLTRANE
1. Olé
2. Dahomey Dance
3. Aisha

DISC 4: COLTRANE PLAYS THE BLUES
1. Blues To Elvin
2. Blues To Bechet
3. Blues To You
4. Mr. Day
5. Mr. Syms
6. Mr. Knight

DISC 5: THE AVANT-GARDE (with Don Cherry)
1. Cherryco
2. Focus On Sanity
3. The Blessing
4. The Invisible
5. Bemsha Swing

DISC 6: THE COLTRANE LEGACY
1. 26-2
2. Original Untitled Ballad
3. Untitled Ballad
4. Centerpiece
5. Stairway To The Stars
6. Blues Legacy

DISC 7: MY FAVORITE THINGS 7″ SINGLE (Vinyl Boxed Set Only)
1. My Favorite Things Part I
2. My Favorite Things Part II

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Ryley Walker announces new album, shares “The Halfwit in Me”

Michael Bonner
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0
Ryley Walker announces new album, shares “The Halfwit in Me”

Ryley Walker has confirmed details of his new album.

Golden Sings That Have Been Sung will be released on August 19 by Dead Oceans. It is the follow-up to his 2015 album, Primrose Green.

Walker has debuted a track from the new album, “The Halfwit In Me”, which you can hear below.

The tracklisting for Golden Sings That Have Been Sung is:

The Halfwit In Me
A Choir Apart
Funny Thing She Said
Sullen Mind
I Will Ask You Twice
The Roundabout
The Great And Undecided
Age Old Tale

Walker has also announced a run of live UK dates around the release.

He will play:

Wednesday 15th June – LONDON – Oval Space

Friday 29th July – CORNWALL – Port Eliot Festival
Tuesday 2nd August – HEBDEN BRIDGE – Trades Club (with Danny Thompson)
Wednesday 3rd August – NOTTINGHAM – Glee Club (with Danny Thompson)
Thursday 4th August – NORWICH – Arts Centre (with Danny Thompson)
Friday 5th August – HASTINGS – St Mary’s in the Castle (with Danny Thompson)
Saturday 6th August – LONDON – Caught By The River Thames
Monday 8th August – CARDIFF – The Globe
Tuesday 9th August – LEAMINGTON SPA – Zephyr Lounge
Wednesday 10th August – YORK – The Crescent
Friday 12th August – GUILDFORD – St Mary’s
Saturday 20th August – BRECON BEACONS – Green Man festival

Sunday 13th November – BRIGHTON – The Haunt
Monday 14th November – MANCHESTER – Ruby Lounge
Tuesday 15th November – GLASGOW – Broadcast
Thursday 17th November – LONDON – Islington Assembly Hall

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

Kraftwerk lose legal battle over sampling dispute

Michael Bonner
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0
Kraftwerk lose legal battle over sampling dispute

Kraftwerk have lost a legal battle in Germany’s highest court over the sampling of one of their songs.

The sample came from band’s 1977 song “Metall auf Metall“. The dispute centres on a short drum sequence looped repeatedly in the song “Nur Mir (Only Me)” by Sabrina Setlur.

Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hutter sued producer Moses Pelham, alleging that his use of the clip, without asking, infringed the band’s intellectual property rights.

But the German Constitutional Court decided that the impact on Kraftwerk did not outweigh “artistic freedom” and ruled that Pelham can sample the two-second beat from without infringing copyright.

The Guardian reports that court, based in Karlsruhe in south-west Germany, said the sequences were only seconds long and “led to the creation of a totally new and independent piece of work”.

“The economic value of the original sound was therefore not diminished,” the court said, adding that banning sampling would in effect spell the end of some music styles.

“The hip-hop music style lives by using such sound sequences and would not survive if it were banned.”

The ruling overturns a previous decision by the federal court of justice.

The dispute began in 1997, when Hütter claimed that Pelham had infringed Kraftwerk’s intellectual property rights without permission.

In 2012, Germany’s highest court for non-constitutional legal matters ruled in Kraftwerk’s favour.

Pelham’s lawyer, Udo Kornmeier, subsequently appealed to the highest court in Germany.

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – Nonagon Infinity

Tom Pinnock
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King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – Nonagon Infinity

By their very nature, King Gizzard have always appeared to value loose spontaneity over the close approach of the craftsman. Since emerging from Melbourne in 2010, this seven-headed psych-rock monster have released seven diverse albums, each capturing quick-fire bursts of inspiration, and thrilling in their imperfections and impulsiveness.

On I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, their garage-punk breakthrough from late 2014, they managed to create half a concept album about mind control, before losing concentration and filling Side Two with slower, disjointed songs recorded at a different studio. As their notoriety grew, their restless, relentless muse last year spawned two albums exploring different tangents of their scattershot sound – Quarters was a laidback, semi-improvised effort with four tracks each lasting exactly 10 minutes and 10 seconds (it bizarrely bagged a Best Jazz Album nomination at the ARIAs), while autumn’s Papier Mâché Dream Balloon consisted of uncustomary pastoral, acoustic rambles.

Yet we now learn that these two albums were merely stopgaps, recorded while singer and guitarist Stu Mackenzie and his six cohorts secretly toiled on a project that would finish what they attempted with I’m In Your Mind Fuzz – a bona fide concept album, unified in sound and vision. While the last decade has undoubtedly been a fertile time for the kind of underground rock that takes inspiration from garage, punk, prog and psychedelia, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees and their ilk have so far attempted little on this scale.

Although it was tracked in four days at the all-analogue Daptone House Of Soul in Brooklyn, New York, Nonagon Infinity was meticulously planned beforehand, then the subsequent recordings were subjected to endless tinkering back in Australia. The need for this work becomes clear when the album is heard – each song on Nonagon segues into the next, while the end of the final track, “Road Train”, can even be looped straight back to careen headlong, Möbius strip-style, into the opening song, “Robot Stop”, their beats matched and primed. What’s more, various melodies, riffs and refrains pop up repeatedly throughout the album, making it more akin to a 41-minute suite than nine separate songs.

On first listen, Nonagon is a hard-driving, exhausting beast; powered by two drummers, “Road Train” edges into Motörhead hard-rock, while “Big Fig Wasp” continues King Gizzard’s adoration for Thee Oh Sees, mixing a motorik beat with Mackenzie’s echoed whoops and demonic guitars (chief Oh See John Dwyer fittingly released I’m In Your Mind Fuzz on his Castle Face label in the US). The seven-minute “Evil Death Roll” harks back to the manic momentum of Hawkwind’s Space Ritual version of “Master Of The Universe”, with distorted organ and super-wah’d guitars adding to the onslaught. There are few simple thrills here, as beats are dropped and riffs gallop along in unwieldy time signatures – “Gamma Knife” might be the most driving song ever conceived in 6/8, while “Nonagon infinity opens the door” is an earworm in 7/8 time. Though Mackenzie barks out vague orders on “Robot Stop” – “Loosen up/Time to jump/Fuck shit up/Don’t forget about it” – his lyrics are often unintelligible through the fuzz, with Hammer horror images of “corpses”, “pitchforks” and a “final hearing” breaking through the haze.

With repeated listens, however, what first seems like an oppressively flat landscape – giant steppes, perhaps – gradually reveals relief, and a lot more nuance that rewards repeated immersion. Subtler elements begin to peek out from the hard-driving tempos: the electric saz solo on “Robot Stop”; the synth storm swelling up in “Big Fig Wasp” that seems to mimic said insect’s mighty buzzing; the middle of “Invisible Face” that echoes the cool-jazz labyrinths of Quarters opener “The River”; the sections on “Wah Wah” that nod to the acoustic reveries of Papier Mâché…. The entirety of the punning “Mr Beat” is five minutes of relative respite, its clowning keyboards and falsetto reminiscent of Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Elsewhere, fidelities shift between (and even within) songs, with Mackenzie deliberately moving microphones around between takes to get more sonic variation.

As King Gizzard’s frontman tells Uncut, making Nonagon Infinity was a gruelling experience compared to the relatively breezy gestation of their previous work, and yet this prolonged concentration has resulted in by far King Gizzard’s most cohesive record to date – a hyper-detailed punk opera that few of their peers have matched for intensity, ambition or sheer derangement. It’s no accident that the end of the album links up to the start: those who listen may find it difficult to get off this particular Möbius strip.

Q&A
Stu Mackenzie
Where does your fascination with concept albums come from?
It gives you a drive, a reason or a motive to make music. I wouldn’t want to make the same record over and over again. Before we’ve started every record we’ve always had a little idea or a little direction. That’s always been the motive, to figure out the pathway to get to that end point.

With all the repeating refrains and cut-ups, how was it structuring the album?
It was a nightmare, but we got there in the end. A lot of it was stitched together digitally, because it was kind of the only way I could figure out how to do it. But there are quite a lot of tape edits in there. I think it’s my favourite album we’ve done, we just spent so much more time on this than anything before. I kind of hate it as well, just because of how much I listened to it.

Presumably you already have another album lined up…
I think we’re gonna need to take a little break after this one. It was a bit of a mind-melter, this one, just devastatingly difficult in some ways. We kind of crunched our little minds, so we might chill for a little bit. We’ve got some ideas, but I don’t know whether we’ll get another record out this year – probably just this one. Maybe we can do something more turbo next year, but I think it’s time to chill out!

INTERVIEW: TOM PINNOCK

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

The Best Albums Of 2016: Halftime Report

John Mulvey
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The Best Albums Of 2016: Halftime Report

Someone asked me on Twitter the other day when I might put together a list of the albums I’ve enjoyed thus far this year, and this morning seemed as good a time as any to make a stab at it. Here, I think, are the albums I’ve enjoyed that were released, or will be released, between January and the end of June 2016.

I patched this together from my weekly playlists in haste, so there’s a fair chance I may have missed one or two things; I only just remembered “Blackstar”, of all things, for instance. Still, it’ll hopefully prove to be a useful primer, or conversation-starter, on a typically strong six months of new music. I’ve arranged them in alphabetical order for now, but early garlands maybe should be heading, on this morning’s whim, towards Chris Forsyth, Brigid Mae Power, Psychic Temple and The Skiffle Players.

Dig in, anyhow – and please let me know your own favourites and alert me to what I might have missed…

Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey

  1. Chris Abrahams – Fluid To The Influence (Room40)
  2. Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids – We Be All Africans (Strut)

https://soundcloud.com/philophon/idris-ackamoor-the-pyramids-rhapsody-in-berlin-part-1#t=0:00

  1. Marisa Anderson – Into The Light (Bandcamp)
  2. Animal Collective – Painting With (Domino)
  1. Autechre – Elseq 1-5 (Warp)
  2. Beyonce – Lemonade (Parkwood)
  3. Big Thief – Masterpiece (Saddle Creek)
  1. Bitchin Bajas & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Epic Jammers And Fortunate Little Ditties (Drag City)
  1. Black Mountain – IV (Jagjaguwar)
  2. Karl Blau – Introducing… (Bella Union)
  1. Bombino – Azel (Partisan)
  1. David Bowie – Blackstar (Isolar)
  2. Charles Bradley – Changes (Daptone)
    1. Brian Case – Tense Nature (Hands In The Dark)
    2. Case/Lang/Veirs – Case/Lang/Veirs (Anti-)
      1. Cavern of Anti-Matter– void beats/invocation trex (Duophonic)
      2. Christine & The Queens – Christine & The Queens (Because)
      1. Coypu – Floating (MIE Music)
      2. The Dead Tongues – Montana (Self-released)

https://soundcloud.com/winsome-management/graveyard-fields-by-the-dead-tongues

      1. Dreamboat – Dreamboat (MIE Music)
      2. Bob Dylan – Fallen Angels (Columbia)
      1. Brian Eno – The Ship (Warp)
      2. Christian Fennesz & Jim O’Rourke – It’s Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry (Editions Mego)
      1. Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band – The Rarity Of Experience (No Quarter)

      1. Eleanor Friedberger – New View (Frenchkiss)
      2. Steve Gunn – Eyes On The Lines (Matador)

27 PJ Harvey – The Hope Six Demolition Project (Island)

      1. Tim Hecker – Love Streams (4AD)
      1. Heron Oblivion – Heron Oblivion (Sub Pop)
      1. Dave Heumann – Cloud Hands (2020)
      2. Glenn Jones – Fleeting (Thrill Jockey)

https://soundcloud.com/thrilljockey/flower-turned-inside-out-1

      1. Khun Narin – II (Innovative Leisure)
      2. King – We Are King (King Creative)
      1. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Nonagon Infinity (Heavenly)
      1. Konono N°1 – Konono N°1 Meets Batida (Crammed Discs)
      2. Kendrick Lamar – Untitled Unmastered (Top Dawg)
      1. Laraaji & Sun Araw – Professional Sunflow (W.25th/Superior Viaduct)
      2. Mary Lattimore & Jeff Zeigler – Music Inspired By Philippe Garrel’s Le Révélateur (Thrill Jockey)
      3. Mary Lattimore – At The Dam (Ghostly International)

      1. The Limiñanas – Malamore (Because)

      1. Jenks Miller & Rose Cross NC – Blues From WHAT (Three-Lobed)
      2. Mogwai – Atomic (Rock Action)

      1. Kevin Morby – Singing Saw (Dead Oceans)
      1. Marissa Nadler – Strangers (Bella Union)

      1. Cian Nugent – Night Fiction (Woodsist)
      2. Pita – Get In (Editions Mego)

      1. Iggy Pop/Tarwater/Alva Noto – Leaves Of Grass (Morr Music)
      2. Iggy Pop – Post Pop Depression (Rekords Rekords/Loma Vista/Caroline International)
      3. Brigid Mae Power – Brigid Mae Power (Tompkins Square)

      1. Margo Price – Midwest Farmer’s Daughter (Third Man)
      1. Mark Pritchard – Under The Sun (Warp)
      1. Psychic Temple – Plays Music For Airports (Bandcamp)
      2. Psychic Temple – Psychic Temple II (Asthmatic Kitty)
      3. Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool (XL)
      1. Savages – Adore Life (Matador)
      2. The Skiffle Players – Skifflin’ (Spiritual Pajamas)
      1. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – Ears (Western Vinyl)

      1. Spacin’ – Total Freedom (Testoster Tunes)
      2. The Still – The Still (Bronzerat)
      3. Prins Thomas – Principe Del Norte (Smalltown Supersound)

      1. Protein – The Secret Garden (Alien Transistor)
      2. Tortoise -The Catastrophist (Thrill Jockey)
      3. Allen Toussaint – American Tunes (Nonesuch)
      4. William Tyler – Modern Country (Merge)
      1. Underworld – Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future (underworldlive.com/Caroline)
      1. Matt Valentine – Blazing Grace (Timelag/Child Of Microtones)
      2. Various Artists – Songs To Fill The Air (WFMU)

      1. Various Artists – Day Of The Dead (4AD)
      2. Ryley Walker & Charles Rumback – Dhoodan (Dead Oceans)
      3. Tony Joe White – Rain Crow (Yeproc)
      4. White Denim – Stiff (Downtown)
      5. Woods – City Sun Eater In The River Of Light (Woodsist)
      6. Olivia Wyatt + Bitchin Bajas – Sailing A Sinking Sea (Drag City)
      7. Neil Young & The Promise Of The Real – Earth (Reprise)

Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton score Top 10 Albums

Michael Bonner
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Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton score Top 10 Albums

Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton have both scored Top 10 albums on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the UK album chart, Dylan’s new Fallen Angels album debuts at No 5 with Clapton’s latest, I Still Do, entering the chart at No 6.

In America, these positions are reversed, with Clapton at No 5 and Dylan one place behind him.

According to Billboard, Clapton’s album sold 44,000 copies with a further 2,000 streams sold.

Dylan, meanwhile, sold 42,000 copies – nearly all from traditional album sales. Fallen Angels is Dylan’s 22nd Top 10 album.

Mudcrutch, featuring Tom Petty and his fellow Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, arrive at No 10 in the American album chart with their second album, 2.

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.

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