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PJ Harvey to play one-off Royal Albert Hall show in October

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PJ Harvey to play one-off Royal Albert Hall show in October
PJ Harvey has announced plans to play a one-off show at London's Royal Albert Hall on October 30. The show will mark her very first appearance at the historic venue and will see her playing alongside her live band of Mick Harvey, John Parish and Jean-Marc Butty. The performance will mostly be made...

PJ Harvey has announced plans to play a one-off show at London‘s Royal Albert Hall on October 30.

The show will mark her very first appearance at the historic venue and will see her playing alongside her live band of Mick Harvey, John Parish and Jean-Marc Butty. The performance will mostly be made up of material from her most recent album ‘Let England Shake’, which is currently the favourite to win this year’s Mercury Music Prize.

PJ Harvey recently spoke to NME and called most modern music “largely unoriginal”. She added: “Everybody is different in that way. I’m not saying there isn’t great work existing now – for many people there is – but for my own personal taste there’s nothing that really grabs me and makes me want to go out and do more investigation into this music.”

She went on to say: “I feel much more inspired by other avenues of artwork these days, personally. I find theatre very inspiring. I might get great inspiration from going to exhibitions, but very rarely do I feel stimulated by a piece of music from contemporary artists.”

Tickets for the October 30 Royal Albert Hall show go on sale on August 12.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

SCREAMING TREES – LAST WORDS: THE FINAL RECORDINGS

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SCREAMING TREES – LAST WORDS: THE FINAL RECORDINGS

A happy ending was the last thing anyone would have predicted for the Screaming Trees. From Washington State, recording for the likes of SST and Sub Pop before a step up to the major labels, theirs was the familiar grunge narrative of a band cursed by drug addiction and bad luck, only without the pay-off of commercial success. In 1996, the band recorded their finest album, Dust, but by then they were in poor shape. One journalist’s meeting with Mark Lanegan at this time consisted of accompanying the singer on a trip to pawn musical equipment in order to buy drugs. Dust had been a critical favourite, filled with Zepplinesque psych-rock and propelled by Lanegan’s vengeful god baritone, but the band, and this thrilling music, proved a difficult sell in the age of MTV-appropriate alternative rock. If the heroes of grunge found in their music cathartic release, the Screaming Trees seemed to belong to an earlier tradition: their music seemed to be doing battle against biblical forces, a conflict played out in their ragged, turbulent but ultimately fated rock music. Drummer Barrett Martin, who financed and later oversaw the mix of these, their final recordings, rightly calls the band “mystical”. The period following Dust could have been exclusively a dark one. This great record having failed to propel them to a new level, they were let go by Epic, but returned to Seattle in 1998 with mixed feelings: on one hand, liberated to have been released from their contract after having felt the pressure with Dust and its predecessor, 1992’s Sweet Oblivion, to make a breakthrough record; on the other, knowing that on some level, the writing was on the wall. Songs, however, the band still had. They also had strength in numbers. Alongside the lineup of Lanegan, Van Conner (bass), Gary Lee Conner (guitar) and Barrett Martin (drums), their final sessions in late 1998 and early 1999– chiefly at Martin Feveyear’s Jupiter Studios in Seattle, and Stone Gossard’s Studio Litho – called on the services of good friends: Peter Buck on 12-string guitar (“Reflections” particularly), and, for a sojourn at Ocean Way in LA, touring guitarist Joshua Homme, then readying Queens Of The Stone Age. The mood was relaxed. As the opening “Ash Grey Sunday” illustrates, that didn’t necessarily mean that the mood of the material was now miraculously upbeat – as rollicking as is the opening riff, the skies immediately darken with Lanegan’s vocal, as he recounts a tale of a doomed tryst, rich in religious imagery. It might be tempting to ascribe to Last Words an elegiac quality, but really it’s more like a rowdy wake. For all the blues portent and emotional chaos that stalks the record, Last Words is, on “Revelator” and the superb “Black Rose Way”, a reminder of the band’s pop instincts, and a possible key to the band’s ultimate lack of a breakthrough. Their music was like a trapdoor: accessible at times, but ultimately leading to a dark and unsettling experience. Pain, the currency of the era, was not something you could count on Screaming Trees to simply share. Theirs was a more dignified code, with its own traditions and language. If there’s a criticism to be levelled, it’s that while songs like “Crawlspace” and “Door Into The Summer” are testaments to the band’s elemental rock, the draft-like nature of some of the material reveals a lack of focus, suggesting the band responded well to more arduous production regimens. Still, where others had failed to do so, the Screaming Trees had lived to tell the tale, and if their number was up, the very last thing they were going to do was go out quietly. John Robinson

A happy ending was the last thing anyone would have predicted for the Screaming Trees. From Washington State, recording for the likes of SST and Sub Pop before a step up to the major labels, theirs was the familiar grunge narrative of a band cursed by drug addiction and bad luck, only without the pay-off of commercial success. In 1996, the band recorded their finest album, Dust, but by then they were in poor shape. One journalist’s meeting with Mark Lanegan at this time consisted of accompanying the singer on a trip to pawn musical equipment in order to buy drugs.

Dust had been a critical favourite, filled with Zepplinesque psych-rock and propelled by Lanegan’s vengeful god baritone, but the band, and this thrilling music, proved a difficult sell in the age of MTV-appropriate alternative rock. If the heroes of grunge found in their music cathartic release, the Screaming Trees seemed to belong to an earlier tradition: their music seemed to be doing battle against biblical forces, a conflict played out in their ragged, turbulent but ultimately fated rock music. Drummer Barrett Martin, who financed and later oversaw the mix of these, their final recordings, rightly calls the band “mystical”.

The period following Dust could have been exclusively a dark one. This great record having failed to propel them to a new level, they were let go by Epic, but returned to Seattle in 1998 with mixed feelings: on one hand, liberated to have been released from their contract after having felt the pressure with Dust and its predecessor, 1992’s Sweet Oblivion, to make a breakthrough record; on the other, knowing that on some level, the writing was on the wall.

Songs, however, the band still had. They also had strength in numbers. Alongside the lineup of Lanegan, Van Conner (bass), Gary Lee Conner (guitar) and Barrett Martin (drums), their final sessions in late 1998 and early 1999– chiefly at Martin Feveyear’s Jupiter Studios in Seattle, and Stone Gossard’s Studio Litho – called on the services of good friends: Peter Buck on 12-string guitar (“Reflections” particularly), and, for a sojourn at Ocean Way in LA, touring guitarist Joshua Homme, then readying Queens Of The Stone Age.

The mood was relaxed. As the opening “Ash Grey Sunday” illustrates, that didn’t necessarily mean that the mood of the material was now miraculously upbeat – as rollicking as is the opening riff, the skies immediately darken with Lanegan’s vocal, as he recounts a tale of a doomed tryst, rich in religious imagery. It might be tempting to ascribe to Last Words an elegiac quality, but really it’s more like a rowdy wake.

For all the blues portent and emotional chaos that stalks the record, Last Words is, on “Revelator” and the superb “Black Rose Way”, a reminder of the band’s pop instincts, and a possible key to the band’s ultimate lack of a breakthrough. Their music was like a trapdoor: accessible at times, but ultimately leading to a dark and unsettling experience. Pain, the currency of the era, was not something you could count on Screaming Trees to simply share. Theirs was a more dignified code, with its own traditions and language.

If there’s a criticism to be levelled, it’s that while songs like “Crawlspace” and “Door Into The Summer” are testaments to the band’s elemental rock, the draft-like nature of some of the material reveals a lack of focus, suggesting the band responded well to more arduous production regimens. Still, where others had failed to do so, the Screaming Trees had lived to tell the tale, and if their number was up, the very last thing they were going to do was go out quietly.

John Robinson

GRANDADDY – THE SOPHTWARE SLUMP 2000

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GRANDADDY – THE SOPHTWARE SLUMP 2000

The idea of the year 2000 engendering a computer-generated societal meltdown seems rather quaint nowadays, but the countdown to the year 2000 didn’t just play on the minds of panicky PC programmers; it was catnip to a whole host of musicians. While we might have expected established existentialists like Bowie and Radiohead to engage with the zeitgeist, it’s fair to say that nobody was backing Grandaddy to take the temperature of a jittery new age. Formed in Modesto, CA by ex-pro-skate-boarder Jason Lytle, prior to the release of their second album Grandaddy’s ambitions appeared to stretch no further than channelling Weezer and Pavement. On The Sophtware Slump, however, released in May 2000, they twisted the times into something substantive. Kid A with tunes and a sense of humour, sung by an angsty Yank rather than a whiney Limey, The Sophtware Slump threw science against nature and pitted progress against the erosion of personal identity. Lytle found himself living out his themes while recording the LP. He pieced it together alone in a rented farm-house in rural California, where songs that were ostensibly about mankind’s collective sense of alienation became conduits for very personal intimations of loneliness, emotional dysfunction and hard drinking. The duality of the album’s themes resonate throughout. A heady mix of lo-fi studio wizardry and epic songwriting, The Sophtware Slump alternates between piano-based mini-symphonies like “Underneath The Weeping Willow”, where the twinkling high notes sound like distant satellites, and more robust, upbeat fare. “Chartsengrafs” indulges a Pixies fixation, but “Hewlett’s Daughter” and “The Crystal Lake” still thrill, owing as much to the powerpop of The Cars as to Grandaddy’s fellow exponents of hazy atmospheric rock, Sparklehorse, Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev. The nine-minute opener “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s The Pilot”, meanwhile, is Grandaddy’s “Paranoid Android”. Unfolding in three parts (originally four: the discarded intro is included on the second disc) it delivers the LP’s key line: “Drift again, 2000 man/You’ve lost the maps, you’ve lost the plans”. More of a note to self than a public address, it hangs upon Lytle’s plaintive voice, an instrument with melancholy seemingly hardwired in. Eleven years after the album’s release, and five since Grandaddy split, it’s the sense of oddly euphoric sadness that lingers most powerfully. Bowie-esque closer “So You’ll Aim Towards The Sky” is one delicious heartbreak, while the sighing melody on “Mixer At The Dial-A-View” embraces profound loneliness: like the super sad “Jed The Humanoid”, an elegy for a robot who drinks himself to death, it calls to mind The Man Who Fell To Earth. The extra disc to this deluxe reissue mops up non-album 45s, b-sides, all of 2001’s “Through A Frosty Glass” EP, manic instrumentals, songs about passing crushes, plane crashes and nasal spray. Welcome as these additions are, their hit-and-miss quality belongs to a different world to the wonderfully cohesive original, which if anything has improved with age. The Sophtware Slump may have its roots in Y2K, but it stretches into forever. Graeme Thomson

The idea of the year 2000 engendering a computer-generated societal meltdown seems rather quaint nowadays, but the countdown to the year 2000 didn’t just play on the minds of panicky PC programmers; it was catnip to a whole host of musicians. While we might have expected established existentialists like Bowie and Radiohead to engage with the zeitgeist, it’s fair to say that nobody was backing Grandaddy to take the temperature of a jittery new age.

Formed in Modesto, CA by ex-pro-skate-boarder Jason Lytle, prior to the release of their second album Grandaddy’s ambitions appeared to stretch no further than channelling Weezer and Pavement. On The Sophtware Slump, however, released in May 2000, they twisted the times into something substantive. Kid A with tunes and a sense of humour, sung by an angsty Yank rather than a whiney Limey, The Sophtware Slump threw science against nature and pitted progress against the erosion of personal identity. Lytle found himself living out his themes while recording the LP. He pieced it together alone in a rented farm-house in rural California, where songs that were ostensibly about mankind’s collective sense of alienation became conduits for very personal intimations of loneliness, emotional dysfunction and hard drinking.

The duality of the album’s themes resonate throughout. A heady mix of lo-fi studio wizardry and epic songwriting, The Sophtware Slump alternates between piano-based mini-symphonies like “Underneath The Weeping Willow”, where the twinkling high notes sound like distant satellites, and more robust, upbeat fare. “Chartsengrafs” indulges a Pixies fixation, but “Hewlett’s Daughter” and “The Crystal Lake” still thrill, owing as much to the powerpop of The Cars as to Grandaddy’s fellow exponents of hazy atmospheric rock, Sparklehorse, Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev. The nine-minute opener “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s The Pilot”, meanwhile, is Grandaddy’s “Paranoid Android”. Unfolding in three parts (originally four: the discarded intro is included on the second disc) it delivers the LP’s key line: “Drift again, 2000 man/You’ve lost the maps, you’ve lost the plans”. More of a note to self than a public address, it hangs upon Lytle’s plaintive voice, an instrument with melancholy seemingly hardwired in.

Eleven years after the album’s release, and five since Grandaddy split, it’s the sense of oddly euphoric sadness that lingers most powerfully. Bowie-esque closer “So You’ll Aim Towards The Sky” is one delicious heartbreak, while the sighing melody on “Mixer At The Dial-A-View” embraces profound loneliness: like the super sad “Jed The Humanoid”, an elegy for a robot who drinks himself to death, it calls to mind The Man Who Fell To Earth.

The extra disc to this deluxe reissue mops up non-album 45s, b-sides, all of 2001’s “Through A Frosty Glass” EP, manic instrumentals, songs about passing crushes, plane crashes and nasal spray. Welcome as these additions are, their hit-and-miss quality belongs to a different world to the wonderfully cohesive original, which if anything has improved with age. The Sophtware Slump may have its roots in Y2K, but it stretches into forever.

Graeme Thomson

SUPER 8

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SUPER 8
Directed By JJ Abrams Starring Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning When he was young, JJ Abrams used to write fan letters to Steven Spielberg. Now he’s a fully-fledged mogul of his own, with shows like Alias and Lost and movies including Mission: Impossible III and Star Trek under his bel...

Directed By JJ Abrams

Starring Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning

When he was young, JJ Abrams used to write fan letters to Steven Spielberg. Now he’s a fully-fledged mogul of his own, with shows like Alias and Lost and movies including Mission: Impossible III and Star Trek under his belt… well, on the strength of this, it seems he’s still writing them. Having been tipped as “the new Spielberg” for much of his career, it seems Abrams has decided he’d rather be the old Spielberg.

Spielberg also produced Super 8, and his imprint is obvious from the moment the “Elliot and ET on a BMX” Amblin Entertainment logo rolls across the credits. This is set in 1979, three years earlier than ET, and it’s a superficially similar tale of an alien trying to go home, nasty government officials trying to catch it, and BMX-riding smalltown kids trying to help it. Though you could also detect echoes of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and even The Goonies in Super 8.

One differentiating factor is that these kids are amateur filmmakers, which gives Abrams a chance to revel in the parts of his own childhood that didn’t involve watching Spielberg movies. Abrams’ stand-in behind the camera is Charles (Riley Griffiths), a burly young-Orson Welles type shooting a amateur zombie movie (on Super 8, of course) with his outcast school-mates. But the real hero – the Elliot of the piece, if you like – is Joe (Joel Courtney), the sensitive model maker and make-up guy, who recently lost his mother, and whose dad, conveniently, is a local cop. Completing the equation is Elle Fanning as Alice, the mature-beyond-her-years high school bombshell and the zombie film’s lead actress. Conveniently, she’s also a motherless child, and her dad is the local white trash alcoholic. When this juvenile film crew accidentally witnesses, and records, a freak train crash during a clandestine midnight shoot, they’re in on a secret the military spends the rest of the film trying to cover up and the grown-ups won’t listen to them about, though it takes them, and us (and the alien, for that matter), some time to put all the pieces together.

Abrams revels in the pop-culture paraphernalia of his youth: the posters of space shuttles, the board games under the bed, the action figures and cassette players, and the days when you had to take your Super 8 reels to the developers on main street, where the long-haired teen behind the counter would ask who your elder sister was dating. In this way, the movie taps into a deeper vein of big screen Americana that stretches back to 1950s sci-fi movies like Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers and It Came From Outer Space. There’s an agreeably vintage feel to the unfolding mystery, with its disappearing townsfolk and pet dogs and engine parts, but Abrams’ technical knowhow gives it a 21st century sheen. The train crash itself is bracingly effective – a mini industrial symphony of clanging metal and flying machinery – the alien itself is sparingly used but convincingly rendered, and Abrams’ characteristic lens flares run through the visuals like a watermark.

The pitfalls of Super 8 you could also blame on Spielberg. Abrams does a good job of emulating his master’s naturalistic observations of youth, and some of the best scenes simply involve the kids bantering among themselves. But as the film grinds to a predictable finale, the intimacy becomes swamped by special effects and panicked running about. Worse still, there’s a double-cheese dose of parent-child reconciliation that would give even Spielberg indigestion.

Super 8 deserves credit from the outset for being an original, entertaining, solidly built movie with no star faces and plenty of heart – especially when this year feels more stuffed than usual with remakes, reboots, superheroes and sequels. The commercial stakes are now so high, nobody in Hollywood seems ready to risk making a special effects movie based on old-fashioned storytelling rather than brand recognition. That’s left a Spielberg-shaped hole in the summer schedule, which Abrams fills a little too obligingly. Ironically, one of Super 8’s big themes is about “letting go” of the past – let’s hope Abrams has learned his own lesson.

Steve Rose

Amy Winehouse’s Camden home set to be HQ of new rehab centre

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Amy Winehouse’s Camden home set to be HQ of new rehab centre
Amy Winehouse's home in Camden, North London is set to be converted into the headquarters for the rehabilitation foundation that is being set up in her memory. According to The Sun today (August 5), the singer's home will act as headquarters for the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which is being set up ...

Amy Winehouse‘s home in Camden, North London is set to be converted into the headquarters for the rehabilitation foundation that is being set up in her memory.

According to The Sun today (August 5), the singer’s home will act as headquarters for the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which is being set up with the intention of helping young people addicted to drugs and in need of assistance with their lives.

A source told the paper about of Winehouse‘s family’s plans for her former home: [quote]They think it’s too precious to give up, hence the new HQ idea. They don’t want to rent it out and if they sold it they think it could attract the wrong kind of buyer as it was where Amy passed away. They may sell one day but that would be some way off.[/quote]

Formal plans for the foundation are set to be announced on September 14, which would have been Winehouse‘s 28th birthday.

Tony Bennett, who will release his duet with the late singer ‘Body And Soul’, has already pledged to donate all the royalties from the track to the foundation. He said of the track: “All the royalties will go to the foundation that Amy’s father is starting to teach all the young children not to take drugs.”

An investigation into the cause of the singer’s death is still ongoing.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Noel Gallagher tour sells out in six minutes

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Noel Gallagher tour sells out in six minutes

Tickets for the first ever run of dates from Noel Gallagher's solo project, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, have sold out in just six minutes. Going on sale at 9am today (August 5), tickets for the shows in Dublin, Edinburgh, and London, which are set to take place this October, went at lightning pace. Interestingly, the shows have sold out quicker than the debut tour of his brother Liam's Beady Eye. Tickets for the first six Beady Eye dates last November took half an hour to sell out, reports Contact Music. Noel Gallagher recently revealed how he was influenced by legendary bands when it came to naming his debut solo album, saying 'Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds' was inspired by Jefferson Airplane - pictured right - track 'High Flying Bird'. Meanwhile, the format of the title is a homage to the first version of Fleetwood Mac, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. Gallagher told [url=http://www.xfm.co.uk/news/2011/noels-wife-its-not-kasabian-is-it]XFM[/url]:"That name ['High Flying Bird'] jumped out. I had a bit of a eureka moment, so I wrote it down. I thought, that looks really cool. It doesn't mean anything, you know?" 'Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds' will be released on October 17 through Sour Mash Records. Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds play: Dublin Olympia Theatre (October 23) Edinburgh Usher Hall (27) London HMV Hammersmith Apollo (29) Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk. Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Tickets for the first ever run of dates from Noel Gallagher‘s solo project, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, have sold out in just six minutes.

Going on sale at 9am today (August 5), tickets for the shows in Dublin, Edinburgh, and London, which are set to take place this October, went at lightning pace.

Interestingly, the shows have sold out quicker than the debut tour of his brother Liam‘s Beady Eye. Tickets for the first six Beady Eye dates last November took half an hour to sell out, reports Contact Music.

Noel Gallagher recently revealed how he was influenced by legendary bands when it came to naming his debut solo album, saying ‘Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’ was inspired by Jefferson Airplane – pictured right – track ‘High Flying Bird’. Meanwhile, the format of the title is a homage to the first version of Fleetwood Mac, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.

Gallagher told [url=http://www.xfm.co.uk/news/2011/noels-wife-its-not-kasabian-is-it]XFM[/url]:”That name [‘High Flying Bird’] jumped out. I had a bit of a eureka moment, so I wrote it down. I thought, that looks really cool. It doesn’t mean anything, you know?”

‘Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’ will be released on October 17 through Sour Mash Records.

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds play:

Dublin Olympia Theatre (October 23)

Edinburgh Usher Hall (27)

London HMV Hammersmith Apollo (29)

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Paul McCartney to contact police over phone-hacking claims

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Paul McCartney to contact police over phone-hacking claims
Paul McCartney has confirmed that he will contact the police after learning that he may have been one of the victims of the phone-hacking scandal. The former member of The Beatles said he will be asking Scotland Yard to investigate the allegations when he returns from his current US tour, which he'...

Paul McCartney has confirmed that he will contact the police after learning that he may have been one of the victims of the phone-hacking scandal.

The former member of The Beatles said he will be asking Scotland Yard to investigate the allegations when he returns from his current US tour, which he’s due to wrap up in Cincinnati tonight (August 4).

According to [url=http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/04/idUS388013187720110804]Reuters[/url], McCartney told reporters in the American city:[quote]I don’t know much about it, but I do think it’s a horrendous violation of privacy, and I think it’s been going on for a long time and more people than we’ve heard about knew about it.[/quote]

Last month, political whistleblower [url=http://order-order.com/2011/07/27/morgan-mocked-maccas-misery-voicemails/]Guido Fawkes[/url] unearthed a column written by former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan which saw him allegedly admit to listening to a voicemail McCartney had left on then wife Heather Mills‘ phone.

In the article, which was published in the [url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-411323/Im-sorry-Macca-introducing-monster.html]Daily Mail[/url] in 2006, Morgan wrote:[quote]At one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone. It was heartbreaking. The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang ‘We Can Work It Out’ into the answerphone.[/quote]

Morgan has issued a statement denying all involvement and has labeled his accusers as “liars, druggie ex-bankrupts and conmen”.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Alice Cooper launches his own theme park ride

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Alice Cooper launches his own theme park ride
Alice Cooper is set to launch his very own theme park ride at the Universal Studios theme park in Los Angeles. Welcome To My Nightmare is a 'spooky' maze and will only be a temporary attraction, forming part of the theme park’s Halloween celebrations, running from September 23 to October 31. U...

Alice Cooper is set to launch his very own theme park ride at the Universal Studios theme park in Los Angeles.

Welcome To My Nightmare is a ‘spooky’ maze and will only be a temporary attraction, forming part of the theme park’s Halloween celebrations, running from September 23 to October 31.

Universal Studios‘ creative director John Murdy has said of the ride: “As a life-long Alice Cooper fan who’s been motivated and inspired by his craft, I am absolutely thrilled by this incredible opportunity. It’s a nightmare come true.”

The attraction has been co-designed by Cooper and it incorporates guillotines, spiders, electric chairs and snakes, reports The Guardian, as well as playing host to songs from Cooper‘s forthcoming album, ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’, the sequel to 1975’s ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’.

Alice Cooper has said that the ride “is a nightmare that will haunt visitors’ dreams for a long time to come… [It’s a] living horror movie, so there’s no place more appropriate to offer a preview of the new [record].”

Alice Cooper will release ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’ on October 17. Produced by Bob Ezrin, the album features a guest appearance from Ke$ha – on ‘What Baby Wants’ – as well as original Alice Cooper bandmembers Denis Dunaway, Michael Bruce and Neal Smith, who are reunited for three album tracks.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Coldplay pay tribute to Amy Winehouse with ‘Rehab’ cover – audio

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Coldplay pay tribute to Amy Winehouse with ‘Rehab’ cover – audio
Coldplay have paid tribute to Amy Winehouse with a brief cover of one of her most famous songs. During the Splendour In The Grass festival in Australia, Chris Martin added the chorus of Amy's hit single 'Rehab' into the opening bars of 'Fix You'. As you can hear in the video below, the Australian ...

Coldplay have paid tribute to Amy Winehouse with a brief cover of one of her most famous songs.

During the Splendour In The Grass festival in Australia, Chris Martin added the chorus of Amy‘s hit single ‘Rehab’ into the opening bars of ‘Fix You’.

As you can hear in the video below, the Australian crowd lent their voices to the sing-a-long with gusto.

Posting on their website, the band said:

[quote]There’s little that can be said about Amy Winehouse’s passing that hasn’t already been said. It’s just such a sad waste. We’ll leave aside the awful irony and just let the Aussie choir sing.[/quote]

Last week, Amy’s friend and producer [url=http://www.nme.com/news/amy-winehouse/58307]Mark Ronson was joined onstage by ‘Valerie’ writer and Zutons singer Dave McCabe[/url] for a tribute to the late singer.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Jack White, Bob Dylan record ‘lost’ Hank Williams songs

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Jack White, Bob Dylan record ‘lost’ Hank Williams songs
Jack White and Bob Dylan are among the stars to contribute to a brand new collection of recordings of songs by country music legend Hank Williams. ’The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams’, which will be released on October 3, brings together a host of never-before-heard songs from the songwriter, ...

Jack White and Bob Dylan are among the stars to contribute to a brand new collection of recordings of songs by country music legend Hank Williams.

’The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams’, which will be released on October 3, brings together a host of never-before-heard songs from the songwriter, who died in 1953 at the age of 29. The 12 songs on the album are based upon notes made by Williams which were found after his death in a leather briefcase which belonged to him.

Those unfinished lyrics and ideas have now been turned into full songs by 13 contemporary artists, including Norah Jones, Sheryl Crow and Bob Dylan‘s son Jakob.

The album was original conceived as a Dylan solo project, reports Rolling Stone, but Dylan Senior only sings one song on the collection, ‘The Love That Faded’.

‘The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams’ tracklisting is:

Alan Jackson – ‘You’ve Been Lonesome, Too’

Bob Dylan – ‘The Love That Faded’

Norah Jones – ‘How Many Times Have You Broken My Heart?’

Jack White – ‘You Know That I Know’

Lucinda Williams – ‘I’m So Happy I Found You’

Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell – ‘I Hope You Shed A Million Tears’

Patty Loveless – ‘You’re Through Fooling Me’

Levon Helm – ‘You’ll Never Again Be Mine’

Holly Williams – ‘Blue Is My Heart’

Jakob Dylan – ‘Oh, Mama, Come Home’

Sheryl Crow – ‘Angel Mine’

Merle Haggard – ‘The Sermon On The Mount’

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PG Six: “Starry Mind”

John Mulvey
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0

About five years ago, one of those serendipitous quirks of the music business made it seem, fleetingly, as if a bunch of underground folk musicians might find their way into the mainstream. The genre, you may remember, was referred to as free folk, or acid folk, or something involving the New Weird America, and a couple of its main players did make the jump, after a fashion: Devendra Banhart, the scene’s most visible activist, now a Warner Bros recording artist and Beck collaborator, if not quite the superstar some of us believed he could be; and Joanna Newsom who has, I think, made two of the best albums of the past decade. For most of their fellow travellers, though, the media buzz barely registered as distant static. Over on the eastern side of the States, a variety of musicians, who had once worked together as Tower Recordings, seemed particularly oblivious to the fuss. Tower Recordings more or less patented the scene’s blend of rustic vibes and freewheeling experimentation in the ‘90s, and most of their former members – notably Matt ‘MV’ Valentine and Erika ‘EE’ Elder – continue to work prolifically and with a beatific disdain for most every commercial expediency. One Tower alumnus, though, has remained largely unknown, but worked steadily at finding harmony between this loose and fractious music and a plusher, more traditionally-finished brand of classic rock. Pat Gubler has been recording as PG Six out of New York for a decade now, beginning with a couple of beautiful and mildly unnerving albums ("Parlor Tricks And Porch Favorites" and "The Well Of Memory") steeped in the British folk tradition. 2007’s "Slightly Sorry", however, found Gubler letting go of the autoharp and moving into electrified Canyon terrain, the material created by following the exercises in a Jimmy Webb book on songwriting. "Slightly Sorry"’s belated follow-up, "Starry Mind", is out any day now on Drag City, and is another fine album. Once again, the songs seem rooted in British tradition; I keep thinking of the brawny virtuosity of Fairport Convention circa "Full House" whenever I play it. This time, though, Gubler seems to be moving into heavier territory. If "Slightly Sorry" referenced Neil Young, crafted songs like “January”, “Palace” and “Talk Me Down” devolve further into some seething, mathematically-calibrated jams. A couple of 2011’s best albums work as neat companion pieces: Arbouretum’s churning take on folk-rock, "The Gathering"; and the modal Southern Rock workouts that punctuate White Denim’s "D". That said, Gubler is a gentle, undemonstrative singer, and there’s still a calmness and restraint to his music. On "Starry Mind", he revisits an eldritch folk song from 2004’s "Well Of Memory", and gives it a driving makeover, but manages to add heft without losing much in the way of fragility. It’s a difficult trick to pull off, perhaps, but one that Gubler seems to have mastered. For further reference, check out "Golden Trees", the album he put out as part of Metal Mountains on the Amish label earlier this year. Metal Mountains constitutes a partial Tower Recordings reunion, with Gubler and Samara Lubelski backing up the vocals of Helen Rush. The prevailing mood is ethereal and psychedelic, a purposefully disorienting extrapolation of folk that’s reminiscent of Espers. PG Six’s career might seem to describe a slow passage towards the light, but evidently, sometimes he can’t resist heading back into the undergrowth.

About five years ago, one of those serendipitous quirks of the music business made it seem, fleetingly, as if a bunch of underground folk musicians might find their way into the mainstream.

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Latin jazz musicians set to sue the Grammys

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Latin jazz musicians set to sue the Grammys

A group of Latin jazz musicians are planning to sue the producers of the Grammys over their decision to cut the number of award categories. The award ceremony's producers announced earlier this year that they were planning to cut the number of awards on offer from 109 to 78, with awards from Zydeco and Native American music among those shelved. They have also cut the number of Latin music awards from eight to four, which has angered a collective of latin jazz musicians, who are now suing US National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Among the musicians named in the suit are pianist Mark Levine and percussionist Bobby Sanabria, who are both calling for the reinstatement of the Latin Jazz award category. Their attorney Roger Maladonado told the Associated Press: "The academy shouldn't have done this. Our concern is by lumping several categories together, it makes it much easier for larger record labels and those artists who have already gained recognition to dominate. Even being nominated for the award has enormous value for these musicians." A number of high profile musicians have crticised the producers' decision to reduce the number of awards, Carlos Santana has described it as "irresponsible", while Paul Simon said it was "a disservice to many talented musicians." The US National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has dismissed the lawsuit, calling it "frivolous" and have said they "fully expect to prevail." Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk. Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

A group of Latin jazz musicians are planning to sue the producers of the Grammys over their decision to cut the number of award categories.

The award ceremony’s producers announced earlier this year that they were planning to cut the number of awards on offer from 109 to 78, with awards from Zydeco and Native American music among those shelved.

They have also cut the number of Latin music awards from eight to four, which has angered a collective of latin jazz musicians, who are now suing US National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Among the musicians named in the suit are pianist Mark Levine and percussionist Bobby Sanabria, who are both calling for the reinstatement of the Latin Jazz award category. Their attorney Roger Maladonado told the Associated Press: “The academy shouldn’t have done this. Our concern is by lumping several categories together, it makes it much easier for larger record labels and those artists who have already gained recognition to dominate. Even being nominated for the award has enormous value for these musicians.”

A number of high profile musicians have crticised the producers’ decision to reduce the number of awards, Carlos Santana has described it as “irresponsible”, while Paul Simon said it was “a disservice to many talented musicians.”

The US National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has dismissed the lawsuit, calling it “frivolous” and have said they “fully expect to prevail.”

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Musical based on 1994 ‘Backbeat’ film about The Beatles to open in London

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Musical based on 1994 ‘Backbeat’ film about The Beatles to open in London

A musical version of the 1994 film Backbeat is set to open at London's Duke Of York Theatre this October. The Iain Softley-directed film tracked the birth of The Beatles from their early days in Liverpool to their formative gigs in Hamburg as well as detailing the romance between the band's original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe and German photographer Astrid Kirchherr. The stage version received its world premiere at Glasgow Citizen's Theatre last year and is co-written by Iain Softley and Stephen Jeffreys and produced by Karl Sydow. David Leveaux will direct the West End production, which opens on October 10. Producer Sydow said: "Backbeat at the Duke Of York Theatre will allow people the experience of being at the birth of the Beatles. It tells a story that many music fans may not know, set to a musical backdrop that absolutely defined the early '60s. Next year will mark 50 years since The Beatles released their first single, and I am proud to be bringing their early days to life in the West End." Songs such as 'Twist & Shout', 'Rock & Roll Music', 'Long Tall Sally', 'Please Mr Postman' and 'Money' will all appear in the musical. Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk. Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

A musical version of the 1994 film Backbeat is set to open at London‘s Duke Of York Theatre this October.

The Iain Softley-directed film tracked the birth of The Beatles from their early days in Liverpool to their formative gigs in Hamburg as well as detailing the romance between the band’s original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe and German photographer Astrid Kirchherr.

The stage version received its world premiere at Glasgow Citizen’s Theatre last year and is co-written by Iain Softley and Stephen Jeffreys and produced by Karl Sydow. David Leveaux will direct the West End production, which opens on October 10.

Producer Sydow said: “Backbeat at the Duke Of York Theatre will allow people the experience of being at the birth of the Beatles. It tells a story that many music fans may not know, set to a musical backdrop that absolutely defined the early ’60s. Next year will mark 50 years since The Beatles released their first single, and I am proud to be bringing their early days to life in the West End.”

Songs such as ‘Twist & Shout’, ‘Rock & Roll Music’, ‘Long Tall Sally’, ‘Please Mr Postman’ and ‘Money’ will all appear in the musical.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Noel Gallagher’s solo album title inspired by Fleetwood Mac, Jefferson Airplane

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Noel Gallagher’s solo album title inspired by Fleetwood Mac, Jefferson Airplane
Noel Gallagher has revealed how he was influenced by a pair of legendary bands when it came to naming his debut solo album. The ex-Oasis leader said 'Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds' was inspired by Jefferson Airplane track 'High Flying Bird'. Meanwhile, the format of the title is a homage to th...

Noel Gallagher has revealed how he was influenced by a pair of legendary bands when it came to naming his debut solo album.

The ex-Oasis leader said ‘Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’ was inspired by Jefferson Airplane track ‘High Flying Bird’. Meanwhile, the format of the title is a homage to the original name for Fleetwood Mac, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.

Gallagher told [url=http://www.xfm.co.uk/news/2011/noels-wife-its-not-kasabian-is-it]XFM[/url]: “That name [‘High Flying Bird’] jumped out. I had a bit of a eureka moment, so I wrote it down. I thought, that looks really cool. I doesn’t mean anything, you know?”

He added that although the reception to the album has been largely positive, there’s one person in his circle who isn’t impressed – his new wife Sara MacDonald.

MacDonald apparently prefers listening to Kasabian, as Gallagher explained: “There’s one on the new album she really doesn’t like. The last track [‘Stop The Clocks’]. When she saw the tracklisting, she said, ‘Oh, you’ve not included that bloody song have you?'”

Ironically, Gallagher has been working on ‘Stop The Clocks’ for more than 10 years – it was set to appear on Oasis‘ sixth studio album ‘Don’t Believe The Truth’ in 2005.

‘Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’ will be released on October 17 through Sour Mash Records.

Meanwhile, earlier today (August 2), Gallagher announced details of his new band’s very first live dates.

He will play three shows – in Dublin, Edinburgh and London – in October. Tickets for the shows go on sale at 9am on Friday August 5.

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Uncut Playlist 30, 2011

John Mulvey
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Still much taken with the Mikal Cronin, Hiss Golden Messenger and Meg Baird records, but some nice new additions this week, from Real Estate, Plaid and Wild Flag (I have the full album now), among others. 1 Meg Baird – Seasons On Earth (Wichita) 2 Real Estate – Days (Domino) 3 Azita – Disturbing The Air (Drag City) 4 John Cale – Extra Playful (Double Six) 5 Mariachi El Bronx – Mariachi El Bronx (II) (Wichita) 6 Mikal Cronin – Mikal Cronin (Trouble In Mind) 7 Apparat – The Devil’s Walk (Mute) 8 Plaid - Scintilli (Warp) 9 Paul Weller – Starlite (Island) 10 Wild Flag – Wild Flag (Wichita) 11 AKA – Hard Beat (Strawberry Rain/Light In The Attic) 12 Ty Segall/Mikal Cronin – Fame/Suffragette City (Castle Face) 13 Roll The Dice – In Dust (Leaf) 14 Hiss Golden Messenger – Poor Moon (Paradise Of Bachelors) 15 Various Artists – Fabric Live 59: Four Tet (Fabric)

Still much taken with the Mikal Cronin, Hiss Golden Messenger and Meg Baird records, but some nice new additions this week, from Real Estate, Plaid and Wild Flag (I have the full album now), among others.

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Marc Bolan School Of Music And Film opens in Sierra Leone

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Marc Bolan School Of Music And Film opens in Sierra Leone

The family of the late T. Rex frontman, Marc Bolan, have opened a school for orphaned children in Makeni, Sierra Leone. His former partner, soul singer Gloria Jones – who survived the 1977 car crash which left Bolan dead – has founded the Marc Bolan School of Music and Film. The school hopes to educate 100 students who have been orphaned by the civil war in West Africa, or who have been rescued from blood diamond mines. With her husband Chris Mitchell she set up a HIV charity in the mid-1990s and now, with assistance from Jed Dmochowski – the frontman of a Marc Bolan tribute band – is raising money for the new school, which plans to "heal through music", reports The Independent. Dmochowski has been playing fundraising shows for the school, in order for them to buy musical instruments, as well as flying out to Makeni to perform for the students. He said: "The children are getting to know more of Marc's music and will be playing his songs. But Gloria really wants them to be inspired by Marc's energy and vision and to develop their natural talent." Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk. Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

The family of the late T. Rex frontman, Marc Bolan, have opened a school for orphaned children in Makeni, Sierra Leone.

His former partner, soul singer Gloria Jones – who survived the 1977 car crash which left Bolan dead – has founded the Marc Bolan School of Music and Film. The school hopes to educate 100 students who have been orphaned by the civil war in West Africa, or who have been rescued from blood diamond mines.

With her husband Chris Mitchell she set up a HIV charity in the mid-1990s and now, with assistance from Jed Dmochowski – the frontman of a Marc Bolan tribute band – is raising money for the new school, which plans to “heal through music”, reports The Independent.

Dmochowski has been playing fundraising shows for the school, in order for them to buy musical instruments, as well as flying out to Makeni to perform for the students. He said: “The children are getting to know more of Marc’s music and will be playing his songs. But Gloria really wants them to be inspired by Marc’s energy and vision and to develop their natural talent.”

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

Damon Albarn’s Africa Express post first recording from new sessions

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Damon Albarn’s Africa Express post first recording from new sessions
Blur and Gorillaz mainman Damon Albarn has posted the first music from the Africa Express project he is currently spearheading online. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to hear it. The track, which is titled 'Hallo', is only a 51 second-long excerpt and features musician Tout Puissant...

Blur and Gorillaz mainman Damon Albarn has posted the first music from the Africa Express project he is currently spearheading online. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to hear it.

The track, which is titled ‘Hallo’, is only a 51 second-long excerpt and features musician Tout Puissant Mukalo.

Albarn is currently in DR Congo with the aim of recording an album in a week. Kwes, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Franz Ferdinand producer Dan The Automator, hip-hop producer Jneiro Jarel, XL Recordings boss Richard Russell, Actress, Marc Antoine and Jo Gunton have all accompanied him on the trip and have been posting updates on blog DRC-music.tumblr.com.

The project has been put together in collaboration with Oxfam, who will receive all the proceeds from the project.

Albarn has just finished performing in Manchester with his opera Doctor Dee.

Hallo (clip – featuring Tout Puissant Mukalo) by DRC Music

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

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Noel Gallagher announces first solo live shows

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Noel Gallagher announces first solo live shows
Noel Gallagher has announced his new band's very first live dates, set to take place this October. Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds will play just three shows, the first at Dublin Olympia Theatre on October 23 before a stop at Edinburgh Usher Hall on October 27 and finishing up at London HMV Hamm...

Noel Gallagher has announced his new band’s very first live dates, set to take place this October.

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds will play just three shows, the first at Dublin Olympia Theatre on October 23 before a stop at Edinburgh Usher Hall on October 27 and finishing up at London HMV Hammersmith Apollo on October 29.

The shows will see the elder Gallagher brother playing his first shows with the High Flying Birds. As well as playing solo material, he also plans to air some classic Oasis tracks.

Tickets for the shows go on sale at 9am on Friday August 5.

‘Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’ – his debut solo album – will be released on October 17 through Sour Mash Records.

Watch the official video for the first single, ‘The Death Of You And Me’, below:



Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – The Death Of You And Me on MUZU.TV

Latest music and film news on Uncut.co.uk.

Uncut have teamed up with Sonic Editions to curate a number of limited-edition framed iconic rock photographs, featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and The Clash. View the full collection here.

THE KINGDOM

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THE KINGDOM

When Lars von Trier created his TV mini-series The Kingdom in 1994, he wasn’t yet the Antichrist of international art cinema. Breaking The Waves hadn’t established him as cinema’s foremost tormenter of women; the aesthetic puritanism of the Dogme 95 manifesto was still to be unveiled; and his status as world cinema’s foremost prankster was still barely a rumour outside his native Denmark. Today, the world knows von Trier as an arch-stirrer who’s as likely to shock audiences with on-screen clitoridectomies as he is to get himself slung out of the Cannes Film Festival for a facetious monologue about being a Nazi. But back in 1994, von Trier – then best known for his hallucinatory feature Europa – was still enough of an outsider to be able to work under the radar, as he did with The Kingdom. This extraordinary TV experiment did for hospital soap what Twin Peaks did for the murder mystery. The show – available here in the full-length broadcast versions of both its four-episode seasons – is set in a Copenhagen hospital built on the site of an ancient ‘bleaching pond’, apparently Denmark’s answer to the Indian burial ground of American horror movies. In its wards and along its darkened subterranean corridors, unthinkably weird scenes take place. A ghostly girl is heard crying in the lift shaft; a phantom ambulance appears every night; a pathologist undertakes a bizarre project of liver cancer research; a doctor runs secret medical supplies; and a Satanic presence (who else but von Trier’s wild-eyed favourite Udo Kier) is about to come into the world. Directed by von Trier and Morten Arnfred, The Kingdom is one of the most curious shows ever transmitted on mainstream TV – and all the stranger because it contains a tenuous element of documentary. The series was shot in a real Copenhagen hospital, Denmark’s largest and actually known as ‘the Kingdom’. Somehow von Trier persuaded hospital authorities to co-operate with him on this project. Just imagine a British filmmaker getting permission to shoot a series in which a major London teaching hospital, appearing under its real name, was depicted as a hotbed of Masonic conspiracies, supernatural phenomena and indentured incompetence: it’d bring the NHS to the point of collapse faster than David Cameron’s wildest dreams. Yet, astonishingly, this is what von Trier attempted in The Kingdom, apparently to Denmark’s delight and approval. Unlike Twin Peaks, which ran out of steam early into Series 2, brevity is The Kingdom’s trump card. Shot in austere near-sepia, the series now looks like a visual dry run for the soon-to-be-unveiled Dogme aesthetic, but in terms of von Trier’s output, the feature this most closely resembles is the anomalous office farce The Boss Of It All (2006). The humour is often outrageous, as is the acting – most notably from Baard Owe, as the demented Professor Bondo, and from Ernst-Hugo Järegård as a testy Swedish neurosurgeon, who spends much of his time on the hospital roof showering invective on Denmark. Indeed, The Kingdom is more fun than just about anything else that von Trier has put his name to. This 4-disc set comes with an intriguing package of material to bolster the von Trier myth, notably the 52-minute 1997 docu Tranceformer, in which the auteur-as-provocateur is already a key theme and in which an alarmingly youthful von Trier boasts of having a “troll’s shard” in his eye which makes him see things strangely. Quite how true this is can be seen from the TV ads included here that he directed for a Danish newspaper which take anti-advertising to inspired lengths. EXTRAS: Documentaries: Tranceformer: A Portrait Of Lars von Trier; In Lars von Trier’s Kingdom; behind-the-scenes; von Trier TV commercials; scene commentaries. Jonathan Romney

When Lars von Trier created his TV mini-series The Kingdom in 1994, he wasn’t yet the Antichrist of international art cinema. Breaking The Waves hadn’t established him as cinema’s foremost tormenter of women; the aesthetic puritanism of the Dogme 95 manifesto was still to be unveiled; and his status as world cinema’s foremost prankster was still barely a rumour outside his native Denmark. Today, the world knows von Trier as an arch-stirrer who’s as likely to shock audiences with on-screen clitoridectomies as he is to get himself slung out of the Cannes Film Festival for a facetious monologue about being a Nazi.

But back in 1994, von Trier – then best known for his hallucinatory feature Europa – was still enough of an outsider to be able to work under the radar, as he did with The Kingdom. This extraordinary TV experiment did for hospital soap what Twin Peaks did for the murder mystery. The show – available here in the full-length broadcast versions of both its four-episode seasons – is set in a Copenhagen hospital built on the site of an ancient ‘bleaching pond’, apparently Denmark’s answer to the Indian burial ground of American horror movies. In its wards and along its darkened subterranean corridors, unthinkably weird scenes take place. A ghostly girl is heard crying in the lift shaft; a phantom ambulance appears every night; a pathologist undertakes a bizarre project of liver cancer research; a doctor runs secret medical supplies; and a Satanic presence (who else but von Trier’s wild-eyed favourite Udo Kier) is about to come into the world.

Directed by von Trier and Morten Arnfred, The Kingdom is one of the most curious shows ever transmitted on mainstream TV – and all the stranger because it contains a tenuous element of documentary. The series was shot in a real Copenhagen hospital, Denmark’s largest and actually known as ‘the Kingdom’. Somehow von Trier persuaded hospital authorities to co-operate with him on this project. Just imagine a British filmmaker getting permission to shoot a series in which a major London teaching hospital, appearing under its real name, was depicted as a hotbed of Masonic conspiracies, supernatural phenomena and indentured incompetence: it’d bring the NHS to the point of collapse faster than David Cameron’s wildest dreams. Yet, astonishingly, this is what von Trier attempted in The Kingdom, apparently to Denmark’s delight and approval.

Unlike Twin Peaks, which ran out of steam early into Series 2, brevity is The Kingdom’s trump card. Shot in austere near-sepia, the series now looks like a visual dry run for the soon-to-be-unveiled Dogme aesthetic, but in terms of von Trier’s output, the feature this most closely resembles is the anomalous office farce The Boss Of It All (2006). The humour is often outrageous, as is the acting – most notably from Baard Owe, as the demented Professor Bondo, and from Ernst-Hugo Järegård as a testy Swedish neurosurgeon, who spends much of his time on the hospital roof showering invective on Denmark.

Indeed, The Kingdom is more fun than just about anything else that von Trier has put his name to. This 4-disc set comes with an intriguing package of material to bolster the von Trier myth, notably the 52-minute 1997 docu Tranceformer, in which the auteur-as-provocateur is already a key theme and in which an alarmingly youthful von Trier boasts of having a “troll’s shard” in his eye which makes him see things strangely. Quite how true this is can be seen from the TV ads included here that he directed for a Danish newspaper which take anti-advertising to inspired lengths.

EXTRAS: Documentaries: Tranceformer: A Portrait Of

Lars von Trier; In Lars von Trier’s Kingdom; behind-the-scenes; von Trier TV commercials; scene commentaries.

Jonathan Romney

MADELEINE PEYROUX – STANDING ON THE ROOFTOP

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MADELEINE PEYROUX – STANDING ON THE ROOFTOP

Freedom is important to Madeleine Peyroux. Relocated from New York to Paris as a teenager after her parents’ divorce, she soon dropped out of school for a life travelling Europe singing Fats Waller and Bessie Smith songs. An acclaimed 1996 debut, Dreamland, didn’t stop her turning her back on record company wrangles in favour of busking, and even after two best-selling albums of cover versions – 2004’s Careless Love and 2006’s Half The Perfect World – she became notorious for her unnannounced ‘vanishing acts’. “I love my freedom,” she croons on “Leaving Home Again”, one of 11 original songs on Standing On The Rooftop, an album that, like 2009’s Bare Bones, affirms Peyroux’s talents as a songwriter as well as a gifted interpreter. Once again she’s worked with a variety of co-writers – New York colleagues, mostly, but Bill Wyman helped out on a couple of numbers – though at the album’s heart are Peyroux’s frank, poetic lyrics, beautifully animated by her smoky, sensual voice. Rooftop also shows Peyroux is is prepared to take risks. The retro-jazz stylings of earlier LPs – brushed drums, polite piano – are still in evidence, but most of Rooftop’s material has more challenging arrangements. Cleverly produced by Craig Street, best known for his work with Norah Jones, it’s an album rich in atmosphere, its often spartan feel shaped by such talents as freelance guitar magician Mark Ribot and piano legend Allen Toussaint. On the safe side of the tracks comes the opener, a droll, banjo-plucked take of Paul McCartney’s “Martha My Dear” that’s pleasant but undemanding. The same goes for “The Kind You Can’t Afford”, written with Wyman, which playfully taunts a rich wannabe lover – “You got art collections, I got comic books” – without supplying a killer hook. From there the album builds into something more intense. “Leaving Home Again” is a breezy celebration of liberty, while “The Things I’ve Seen Today” strikes a more poignant, nocturnal note, for, as on Bare Bones, the best numbers are small-hours torch songs, introspective and regretful. Here Peyroux rues that “good times seem so poor”. “Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love” sets WH Auden’s celebrated poem about the transience of intimacy to an intricate acoustic backing that’s touched by brass, and Peyroux delivers its fragile sentiments with precision. The oft-made comparisons between her high vocal style and Billie Holiday’s aren’t inaccurate, but her delivery here shows how far Peyroux has moved on from her influences. The title track deepens the story brilliantly, its brooding, sawing strings spangled by Ribot’s echoing guitar while Peyroux looks across the city at dawn, wired, alive, reflecting on her triumphs and losses. “Never seen a morning clear as this,” she soars. Her take on Robert Johnson’s “Love In Vain” transforms the much-versioned blues into a spooky statement of remorse, a real highlight, against which Dylan’s “I Threw It All Away” proves disappointingly routine. The remaining songs – there are 15 in all – mostly provide relief from the heartache. A tongue-in-cheek “The Party Oughta Be Coming Soon” laments that “Louis Armstrong’s getting too sad to blow” to Toussaint’s agile piano, and “Don’t Pick A Fight With A Poet” is as larky as its title suggests. “Ophelia” complicates the mood with its mystic immersion into the Mississippi waters – it’s about womanhood’s changing role, says the singer – but “Meet Me In Rio” and “The Way Of All Things” take us out on a chugging, upbeat note. It’s a well-judged mix; safe enough to satisfy the easy-listening end of Peyroux’s following, but bold enough to show that among the jazzy, post-Norah crowd, the wayward Maddy stands apart. Neil Spencer Q+A Madeleine Peyroux You’ve been working with a new producer. I wanted to make an album on different terms – this one is even self-financed – and in New York, where I live, with local musicians. Craig reached out at the right time. It was serendipity, like getting Allen Toussaint, who happened to be in town. And you’re writing with different people. Four of the songs are all mine, two are with Bill Wyman, and the rest include Marc Ribot, who wrote the music for the Auden poem. The record is very much an ensemble piece. Auden’s a bold choice. So is Robert Johnson’s “Love In Vain”. Craig pointed out it was Johnson’s anniversary. I grew up with his music, and cover versions don’t always do him justice. Blues can be complex, that’s why we gave it an orchestral arrangement, without guitar. Who are you listening to? I just saw Shutter Island, which introduced me to music by John Cage and György Ligeti. Modern classical music will be very important for the 21st century. INTERVIEW: NEIL SPENCER

Freedom is important to Madeleine Peyroux. Relocated from New York to Paris as a teenager after her parents’ divorce, she soon dropped out of school for a life travelling Europe singing Fats Waller and Bessie Smith songs. An acclaimed 1996 debut, Dreamland, didn’t stop her turning her back on record company wrangles in favour of busking, and even after two best-selling albums of cover versions – 2004’s Careless Love and 2006’s Half The Perfect World – she became notorious for her unnannounced ‘vanishing acts’.

“I love my freedom,” she croons on “Leaving Home Again”, one of 11 original songs on Standing On The Rooftop, an album that, like 2009’s Bare Bones, affirms Peyroux’s talents as a songwriter as well as a gifted interpreter. Once again she’s worked with a variety of co-writers – New York colleagues, mostly, but Bill Wyman helped out on a couple of numbers – though at the album’s heart are Peyroux’s frank, poetic lyrics, beautifully animated by her smoky, sensual voice.

Rooftop also shows Peyroux is is prepared to take risks. The retro-jazz stylings of earlier LPs – brushed drums, polite piano – are still in evidence, but most of Rooftop’s material has more challenging arrangements. Cleverly produced by Craig Street, best known for his work with Norah Jones, it’s an album rich in atmosphere, its often spartan feel shaped by such talents as freelance guitar magician Mark Ribot and piano legend Allen Toussaint.

On the safe side of the tracks comes the opener, a droll, banjo-plucked take of Paul McCartney’s “Martha My Dear” that’s pleasant but undemanding. The same goes for “The Kind You Can’t Afford”, written with Wyman, which playfully taunts a rich wannabe lover – “You got art collections, I got comic books” – without supplying a killer hook. From there the album builds into something more intense. “Leaving Home Again” is a breezy celebration of liberty, while “The Things I’ve Seen Today” strikes a more poignant, nocturnal note, for, as on Bare Bones, the best numbers are small-hours torch songs, introspective and regretful. Here Peyroux rues that “good times seem so poor”.

“Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love” sets WH Auden’s celebrated poem about the transience of intimacy to an intricate acoustic backing that’s touched by brass, and Peyroux delivers its fragile sentiments with precision. The oft-made comparisons between her high vocal style and Billie Holiday’s aren’t inaccurate, but her delivery here shows how far Peyroux has moved on from her influences.

The title track deepens the story brilliantly, its brooding, sawing strings spangled by Ribot’s echoing guitar while Peyroux looks across the city at dawn, wired, alive, reflecting on her triumphs and losses. “Never seen a morning clear as this,” she soars. Her take on Robert Johnson’s “Love In Vain” transforms the much-versioned blues into a spooky statement of remorse, a real highlight, against which Dylan’s “I Threw It All Away” proves disappointingly routine.

The remaining songs – there are 15 in all – mostly provide relief from the heartache. A tongue-in-cheek “The Party Oughta Be Coming Soon” laments that “Louis Armstrong’s getting too sad to blow” to Toussaint’s agile piano, and “Don’t Pick A Fight With A Poet” is as larky as its title suggests. “Ophelia” complicates the mood with its mystic immersion into the Mississippi waters – it’s about womanhood’s changing role, says the singer – but “Meet Me In Rio” and “The Way Of All Things” take us out on a chugging, upbeat note. It’s a well-judged mix; safe enough to satisfy the easy-listening end of Peyroux’s following, but bold enough to show that among the jazzy, post-Norah crowd, the wayward Maddy stands apart.

Neil Spencer

Q+A Madeleine Peyroux

You’ve been working with a new producer.

I wanted to make an album on different terms – this one is even self-financed – and in New York, where I live, with local musicians. Craig reached out at the right time. It was serendipity, like getting Allen Toussaint, who happened to be in town.

And you’re writing with different people.

Four of the songs are all mine, two are with Bill Wyman, and the rest include Marc Ribot, who wrote the music for the Auden poem. The record is very much an ensemble piece.

Auden’s a bold choice. So is Robert Johnson’s “Love In Vain”.

Craig pointed out it was Johnson’s anniversary. I grew up with his music, and cover versions don’t always do him justice. Blues can be complex, that’s why we gave it an orchestral arrangement, without guitar.

Who are you listening to?

I just saw Shutter Island, which introduced me to music by John Cage and György Ligeti. Modern classical music will be very important for the 21st century.

INTERVIEW: NEIL SPENCER

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