“I think I was reaching quite high from the beginning. I may not have had any right to be, but I was. I was always interested in people that were older than me and I looked up to them – people really from a different era to me: Johnny Cash, John Lee Hooker, even writers like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. I wasn’t particularly influenced by my contemporaries. They weren’t very good.”
The full line-up for this year’s Great Escape festival in Brighton was announced today and along with it the line-up for the Uncut Stage at the Pavilion Theatre, where we’ll be hosting three nights of great music from May 16-May 18, with four bands each night. It’s probably our strongest-ever Great Escape bill and includes several of my own current favourites, among them Phosphorescent, Allah-Las, Lord Huron and Mikal Cronin, although there’s no one I’d really want to miss.
The full line-up for the Uncut stage at this year's Great Escape festival in Brighton has been confirmed.
The festival runs from May 16 - May 18 and Uncut will be taking over the Pavilion Theatre for the duration, presenting four live bands on each night.
The complete line-up for the Uncut stage at the Great Escape is:
Thursday, May 16
PHOSPHORESCENT
LORD HURON
DEAN McFEE
RED RIVER DIALECTFriday, May 17
MIKAL CRONIN
ALLAH-LAS
CHARLIE BOYER & THE VOYEURS
C JOYNESSaturday, May 18
WOODS
A fairly eclectic selection here this week, including some great proto-Takoma guitarists from the 1920s, chamber music reimaginings of the Kompakt back catalogue, that lost Romanian kosmische record you’ve always been looking for, and Prince making a stoner jam out of “Let’s Go Crazy” (which you can hear below, along with a bunch of interesting other stuff).
Five more acts have been confirmed for the Uncut Stage at this year's Great Escape festival.
Lord Huron, Mikal Cronin, Woods [pictured], The Strypes, White Fence will be playing the Uncut Stage - along with the Allah-las and Phosphorescent, who have already been confirmed.
Until I woke up this morning and checked Twitter, I had planned to write something about the new Low album today. The enormously unexpected return of Bowiemania put paid to that; I’ll try again with Low tomorrow, unless in the intervening 24 hours Kevin Shields is finally shamed into pulling his finger out.
Ladies and gentlemen... please enjoy our Top 75 new albums of 2012, with links to the original reviews where possible. Tomorrow, we'll post the Top 30 best reissues, box sets and compilations.
While rolling out my Top 112 albums list last week, a couple of people understandably asked what some of those records actually sounded like. Maybe this’ll help: ten of my favourite tracks of 2012…
The last 25, then. A few of you have asked for some help as to what these records sound like. I’ll try and put some links into these lists over the next few days, and also a blog of favourite track clips that might help a bit. See you what you think, anyhow…
Previously: 112-76Previously: 75-51Previously: 50-26