Ocean

Previously: 100-81, 80-61

After a slight lull last week, another clutch of good new 2010 things here, overshadowed slightly by the news at the Durtro website that Bill Fay’s new album – and featuring his first released recordings from the past three decades, more or less – is just about ready to go.

First off this week, a quick reminder that we’ve just announced Tinariwen as the winner of our annual Uncut Music Award. I’ve started posting transcripts of the judges’ discussions on the Uncut Music Award blog, beginning with their opinions on Tinariwen and Animal Collective. Kings of Leon, Bob Dylan, Wilco, The Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear and The Low Anthem will be coming up over the next week or so.

California collective cover themselves

Another week, and I really can’t believe that we played the Robbie Williams all the way through. Not the only sub-par album in this list, to be honest; you might notice slightly desperate recourse to Chris Bell at one point.

Two things from the weekend. First, I finally dipped into the Beatles remasters, after several weeks of shrugging, mild curiosity and morbid suspicion of overhype. Oh, and a lot of me reiterating my default position of claiming The Beatles weren’t that great – a position which, yet again, was shown up to be more or less complete idiocy when I actually bothered to listen to them. Come on, “Blue Jay Way”!

Lots of British artists to play the United Arab Emirates state in November

Some interesting responses to the free psych CD blog that I posted yesterday; thanks for those, and keep your thoughts coming.

The events take place in Chelmsford and Staffordshire this weekend

As is pretty obvious, the arrival of the Kraftwerk remasters has been a significant distraction at Uncut this week - though as should be equally obvious, there are one or two other interesting new releases amidst this lot.