The storms battering the South Coast have blown themselves out by the time Club Uncut reconvenes for another year at The Great Escape festival. It’s after midnight and very nearly pitch-black in the Dome Studio just before our first night’s headliners, The Hold Steady, dramatically hit the lights, then the stage. “As the song says,” Craig Finn promises, “we’re gonna have a real good time together.”
As Damon Albarn prepares to release his debut solo album, Everyday Robots, on Monday, and 20 years since the release of Parklife is celebrated, we delve back into the Uncut archive (July 2009, Take 146) and go behind the scenes of the sessions that produced Blur’s classic albums and reveal the conflicts that nearly destroyed the band… Interviews: Nick Hasted
Next month, Arctic Monkeys play two shows at London’s Finsbury Park to more than 100,000 people, which makes it a reasonable moment to look back at the band’s journey from the Sheffield suburb of High Green to their current all-conquering place in a rock pantheon where they are now comfortably settled as one of the great British bands of the last decade.
The Hold Steady and Trans will join Courtney Barnett, Arc Iris, Syd Arthur, The Rails, Alice Boman, PHOX and Ethan Johns on the Uncut stage at this year's Great Escape festival in Brighton.
Meanwhile, the festival, which takes place at 35 venues in Brighton between May 8-10, have also confirmed details of another 100 artists who will be performing.
The War On Drugs’ new album, Lost In The Dream, is out on Monday (March 17). Here, in this feature from Uncut’s November 2011 issue (Take 174), Sam Richards joins Adam Granduciel’s friend and collaborator Kurt Vile on tour in California to uncover the blood ties between Vile’s Violators and The War On Drugs…
The Black Keys have been announced as the final headliner for Latitude Festival 2014.
The band join previously announced headliners Two Door Cinema Club and Damon Albarn at the top of the bill.
Other acts announced today include Editors, James, Crystal Fighters, Kelis, The Afghan Whigs and Tinariwen. Mogwai, Lykke Li, War On Drugs, Temples, Parquet Courts, George Ezra, Conor Oberst and Tom Vek will also play.
Latitude 2014 will take place from July 17-20 at Henham Park in Southwold, Suffolk.
