Innholdsfortegnelse for Aug-2018 i UNCUT

Get ready for love! In the shops now is the deluxe version of Uncut’s Ultimate Music Guide to the magnificent Nick Cave – with new and updated pieces on Skeleton Tree and his latest films and books, plus an exclusive afterword from Bad Seed extraordinaire Warren Ellis... Following on June 22, there’ll be a new edition of NME GOLD on the shelves dedicated to the years 1965-9. It’s stuffed with classic encounters with the likes of Cream, The Beatles and Blind Faith, while an all-new, Hyde Park-flavoured introduction comes from Steve Winwood…  Boutique reissue label Optic Nerve are launching a new 7-inch singles club focusing on jangle-pop business from the ’80s. Among the hard-to-find singles getting a repress on limited coloured vinyl…

WHITE DENIM Performance CITY SLANG Dextrous Texan rockers induct two new members, ensuring their glorious math-boogie mission continues unabated. UNDERWORLD & IGGY POP Bells & Circles CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL Inspired one-off collab on which Sir Ig trolls Uncut by revealing that his dreams for a better world involve “ smoking on the airplane” and “ no more rock critics” … BINKER & MOSES Alive In The East? GEARBOX Two leading lights of the new Brit jazz explosion go toe to toe at the scene’s de facto HQ, Stoke Newington’s Total Refreshment Centre. Fiery! OH SEES Smote Reverser CASTLE FACE John Dwyer’s cyclonic psych troupe just keep getting better. Early favourites on this organ-heavy ripper include the marvellously titled “Abysmal Urn”. HELENA HAUFF…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH 8/10 WHEN Luluc really want your attention they don’t shout, they whisper. On their second album, 2014’s Passerby, Zoë Randell mourned what she called “this passerby life” in typically muted tones. The song found Randell reminiscing about people she knew or the animals she took care of as a child – now all long since departed. Their mortality, she concluded, was a foretaste of her own – but also a reminder of the vivid and complex lives experienced by others. As it transpires, “Passerby” is critical to the nostalgia-prone songs, full of such quiet observations that Luluc (pronounced Loo-LUKE) excel at. For much of their third album Sculptor, Randell and her chief collaborator Steve Hassett can be found navigating adolescent reveries, faded relationships and the passing…

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO UFO Electric Dream Ecstasy ESSENCE MUSIC 7/10 Japanese rock royalty – is it album number 87? Wild-haired Kawabata Makoto has piloted Acid Mothers Temple since 1995 – in that time they’ve pretty much stuck solidly to their guns, each album a levitating psychedelic rock blowout, with hints of raga, troubadour song, krautrock and kosmische. With Electric Dream Ecstasy, the lineup has changed – there’s a new rhythm section and vocalist – but the modus operandi is so entrenched, newbies instantly get absorbed into the group mind. That’s no bad thing: Kawabata’s stratospheric guitar hits its sweet spot whether levitating over lambent folk (“Pink Lady Lemonade” or psych-disco (also “Pink Lady Lemonade” – both versions constitute the album’s highlights). JON DALE THE ADVISORY CIRCLE…

1 Rolling On (intro) 2 Rolling On 3 Looking Glass 4 Lucky Ones 5 Sweet Springs (intro) 6 Sweet Springs 7 Spirit Falls 8 Northwest Stars (Out Of Tacoma) 9 Hillsides 10 The Widow 11 Strong Was The Night 12 Golden Fleeces Produced by: Israel Nash and Ted Young Recorded at: Plum Creek Sound, Dripping Springs, Texas Personnel: Israel Nash (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keys, synthesiser, autoharp, organ, banjo, piano), Joey McClellan (lead guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, backing vocals, piano, organ, hand bells, sounds, bowed guitar, rocks), Eric Swanson (pedal steel, synth, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keys, banjo, backing vocals), Aaron McClellan (bass, upright bass, acoustic guitar, piano, keys, organ, hand bells), Josh Fleischmann (drums, percs, beats, sounds), Grupo Fantasma (horns), Kelsey Wilson and Sadie Wolf (strings)…

David Eugene Edwards (16 Horsepower/ Wovenhand) and Alexander Hacke, best known as a member of Einstürzende Neubauten, have pooled their talents for Risha . Out on GLITTERHOUSE in August, expect everything from industrial to ambient to Arabic, with plenty of American roots on the side. Around the same time, Jim Lauderdale has two simultaneous releases on YEP ROC: Time Flies and Jim Lauderdale And Roland White . The former is a consummate exercise in country, folk and soul from the North Carolina stalwart, while the latter is a bluegrass collaboration, recorded in Earl Scruggs’ Nashville basement in 1979. The tapes, long presumed lost, were found only recently by White’s wife. Also due is To The…

Lamp Lit Prose DOMINO 8/10 Dave Longstreth relaxes. A little. By Stephen TroussŽ “IS it me or is the condition of indie rock in the 24½th century both bad and boujee?” enquired Dirty Projectors mainman Dave Longstreth in – where else? – an Instagram post last year. “Bad in the basic sense of musically underwhelming […] and also bad like sartrian bad faith, outwardly obedient to an expired paradigm that we know in our hearts basically makes no sense [...] And boujee in the word’s negative sense: refined and effete, well removed from the raindrops and drop tops of lived, earned experience?” Cue much mockery across the streams and feeds of the modern indiesphere. It’s a mistake to think Longstreth wasn’t in on the joke, and acutely aware…

1 A Few Good Years 2 Guilty As Charged 3 Cognac (featuring Jeff Beck and Keith Richards) 4 The Blues Is Alive And Well 5 Bad Day 6 Blue No More (featuring James Bay) 7 Whiskey For Sale 8 You Did The Crime (featuring Mick Jagger) 9 Old Fashioned 10 When My Day Comes 11 Nine Below Zero 12 Ooh Daddy 13 Somebody Up There 14 End Of The Line 15 Milkin’ Muther For Ya Produced by: Tom Hambridge Recorded at: Blackbird Studios, Nashville; Power Station, New York City; No 1 Baltic Place, London; Germano Studios, New York City; River Hall Mill, London Personnel: Buddy Guy (guitar, vocals), Tom Hambridge (drums), Rob McNelley (rhythm guitar), Kevin McKendree (keyboards), Willie Weeks (bass), Emil Justian (harmonica),…

REISSUE OF THE MONTH 7/10 IN early 1966, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay were stuck. At Stills’ urging, Furay had travelled west to join his band in Los Angeles. When Furay arrived, it soon became clear that Stills didn’t actually have a band, and the young folkie pair struggled to break into the burgeoning LA rock scene, then dominated by the likes of The Byrds and Love. One afternoon, they found themselves literally stuck – in traffic, crawling interminably along the Sunset Strip. Suddenly, they noticed a long black hearse with Ontario plates headed in the opposite direction. “I bet that’s Neil Young,” exclaimed Stills. He was right, for what it’s worth. Out of this chance encounter, Buffalo Springfield was born. Within a few weeks, the new band had kicked…

The Atlantic Years RHINO/ATLANTIC 10/10 Game-changing jazz joints. By Richard Williams THE arrival of the Ornette Coleman Quartet in New York in the late autumn of 1959 represented one of the pivotal events of 20th-century culture, comparable to the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring in Paris in 1913 or Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show more than 40 years later. And, of course, with a similarly upsetting effect on the old folks. Jazz, barely half a century old, had grown used to an evolutionary process that took the music from Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis at a rapid but reasonably smooth clip. With very little warning, Coleman lit a set of booster rockets that fired the music into outer space. Suddenly, musicians and…

BLACK SABBATH Supersonic Years: The Seventies Singles Box Set WARNER 8/10 The Ozzy years, in seven-inch form Though a classic albums band, Sabbath were cut a couple of major breaks by their singles releases. Their debut, the Deep Purple-style “Evil Woman” (a cover of a number by Minneapolis band Crow), flopped – but it was the gateway drug that hooked Vertigo into the release of their already recorded album. Then, of course, there was “Paranoid” – a No 4 hit, tucking in behind Purple’s “Black Night”, two heavy threats to the supremacy of Freda Payne’s “Band Of Gold” in the Top 10 of early October 1970. Chart-wise, the contents of this obligatorily quality box (repro sleeves; crisp remastering) never caused further alarm until near the end of the band’s Ozzy…

Cool Ruler AFRICAN MUSEUM/ FRONTLINE, 1978 Just, well, cool. Released the same year as singles set Extra Classic – also very much worth your attention as a primer - this typifies Isaac’s la-la-laid-back, smooth-roots reggae of the ’70s. Featuring Sly, Robbie and Ansell Collins, it’s the pick of a peak period, and the album that gave him that enduring nickname. Want it darker? Try the full dub version, Slum In Dub . Night Nurse AFRICAN MUSEUM/ISLAND, 1982 The title track was a global hit, and its slinky brilliance has survived even a tepid Simply Red cover. Night Nurse adds a poppy sheen to the lovers rock sound; with session band the Roots Radics complemented by the funky synths of…

Wayne Coyne “We longed for stability!” How was it, revisiting all the Restless material? Well, we have revisited all of our music, I think, at one point or another. If we’re listening to something we recorded in, say, 1983, we don’t quite recognise ourselves and at first we usually say, “Who the fuck is this? They sound like they are fucked up, but ‘they’ sound very enthusiastic.” Usually it’s a great experience listening to the old stuff. What links the Lips then and the Lips in 2018? Probably our sheer love of making records. Back then, like now, we didn’t really know what we were writing songs about. We never thought of ourselves as songwriters and singers. We still don’t, really – we always feel awkward just being ourselves. So…

As the imminent release of an astonishing, previously unreleased album reminds us, PRINCE was a superhumanly productive musician. During a sprawling career that spanned many decades and genres, he was an artist in constant motion – an impossibly gifted trailblazer who refused to conform, a resolute auteur who demanded full artistic control. Here, his closest collaborators and confidants tell Graeme Thomson about Prince’s greatest albums – from the storied run of ’80s classics, through the troubled ’90s testimonials up to his often-neglected later releases. “We were in the full throes of constant creativity,” one insider tells us. WHEN news broke of Prince’s death, in April 2016, Barack Obama offered a typically gracious eulogy to the fallen musician. “Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly,…

It’s a unique, intimate portrait of an artist in full flood ANNOUNCED on what would have been Prince’s 60th birthday and scheduled for release on September 14, Piano & Microphone 1983 is a unique, intimate portrait of an artist in full flood. Taped in January 1983 at his Kiowa Trail home studio, it’s a remarkable 35-minute window into Prince’s creative process, featuring nine songs performed alone at his Yamaha acoustic piano: some classics, some covers, some in the throes of being written, some unheard until now. “Can you turn the lights down a little?” he asks engineer Don Batts at the start, before launching into an astonishing seven-song medley, recorded in a single take. On “17 Days”, he pumps out the beat on his piano pedal, before transitioning into a…

THE HOLLIES “KING MIDAS IN REVERSE” (SINGLE, 1967) In which Nash breaks away from The Hollies’ cute pop for a psychedelic classic with lush harmonies and orchestral oomph. CSN “MARRAKESH EXPRESS” (CROSBY, STILLS & NASH, 1969) Having followed the hippy trail to Morocco, Nash poured the experience into this swift-moving beauty, given wheels by Stephen Stills’ sitar-like overdubs. CSN “PRE-ROAD DOWNS” (CROSBY, STILLS & NASH, 1969) A delicious rock’n’roll chugger that details the lows and highs (“ Be sure to hide the roaches” ) of life on the road with Crosby and Stills. CSNY “TEACH YOUR CHILDREN” (DÉJà VU, 1970) Jerry Garcia’s pedal steel brings some country air to this melodic message about the need to spread a little love. Like “Marrakesh Express”, it was initially rejected by…

“He knew what he was capable of and was scared of not delivering it” SOME writers roam the great plains of popular music; others prefer to worry away at a singular obsession. Robert Gordon has spent almost 40 years specialising in the music of Memphis, a pursuit that has led him to dissect Elvis, Big Star and Stax in forensic detail. Memphis Rent Party stays firmly on topic, but takes a different approach. It’s the literary equivalent of a double-album of past hits, consolidating the highlights of Gordon’s print journalism, contextualised with new introductions and often rueful hindsight. The aim is to capture the essence of a place from the roots up, to comprehend the manner in which the simple lottery of geography informs life, which duly informs the music.…

OCEAN’S 8 OPENS JUNE 18 Sandra Bullock attempts to pull off a daring heist in this all-female spin-off from Steven Soderbergh’s caper series. ARCADIA OPENS JUNE 21 Splendid BFI compendium of Britain’s mystical relationship with the land. SICARIO 2: SOLDADO OPENS JUNE 29 Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro are back for more border skirmishes with the Mexican drug cartels. DARK CRIMES OPENS JULY 2 Jim Carrey – unrecognisable – and Charlotte Gainsbourg star in downbeat noir thriller. THE DEER HUNTER OPENS JULY 4 Michael Cimino’s first great film: friendships under strain in Vietnam. De Niro, Walken and Streep star. IDEAL HOME OPENS JULY 6 Paul Rudd and Steve Coogan as a couple whose lives are upended by the arrival of an estranged grandson. MARY SHELLEY OPENS JULY 6 Wadjda’s…

GLENN BRANCA Avant-garde guitarist and composer (1948-2018) “I LIKED rock music going back to the ’60s, but I never had any desire to be a rock musician,” Glenn Branca once explained. “When I started doing a band it was experimental music.” Beginning in earnest with Theoretical Girls in 1977, Branca was one of the founding fathers of New York’s no wave scene, creating avant-garde works that combined classical ideas with minimalist guitar, alternate tunings and thunderous noise. He proved enormously influential on the new breed of underground bands that emerged during the next decade, chiefly Sonic Youth and Swans. The latter’s Michael Gira has called him “profoundly inspirational”, while Lee Ranaldo, who was a member of Branca’s electric guitar ensemble when introduced to Thurston Moore in 1981, said…

THE EVERLY BROTHERS Cathy’s Clown(1960) This came out when I was a young teenager. I was walking past a café and it was on the jukebox and I froze in my tracks. I was thinking, ‘I don’t believe anything can sound this good!’ And it still is a cracker. It’s so melodramatic, it’s The Everly Brothers in essence. I didn’t buy many records as we weren’t well off. A single was about six bob, a lot of money. And if you bought an LP, you had to really save. I used to go to the Grammar school in Southend and if you came from Canvey Island they thought you were a hillbilly from the swamps. Of course, most of them were from middle-class families and you had kids who’d bought…

LULUC Dear Hamlyn SHOCK Randell and Hassett’s debut, from 2008, recorded in a Melbourne attic with help from a handful of like-minded souls. “Black Umbrella” and “Body Of Water” emphasise Randell’s singing voice, while Hassett’s minimalist production does much to establish the band’s spare, intimate sound. A tribute to Randell’s late father, the songs were a quietly poignant report on loss and resolve. VARIOUS ARTISTS Way To Blue: A Tribute To Nick Drake PROPER Joe Boyd was so taken with Dear Hamlyn that he invited Randell and Hassett to join the Melbourne leg of his Drake tribute and record tracks for the accompanying tribute album. Luluc’s three contributions were among the standouts, foregrounding an intuitive understanding of Drake’s gentle meditations that also inform their own work.…

Produced by: Ray Davies, Guy Massey and John Jackson Recorded at: Konk Studios and Fluff, London Personnel: Ray Davies (vocals, guitars, piano, backing vocals, percussion, spoken word), Bill Shanley (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, backing vocals), Gary Louris (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, backing vocals), Marc Perlman (bass, backing vocals), Tim O’Reagan (drums, backing vocals, percussion), Karen Grotberg (piano, keyboards, vocals, backing vocals), John Jackson (mandolin, violin, acoustic guitar, backing vocals), Mick Talbot (Hammond organ), Paul White (drums), Ian Jennings (double-bass), Ben Waters (piano), John Dagleish (spoken word), Ife Ogunjobi (trumpet), Tom Waters (alto saxophone), Adam Davy (tenor saxophone), Tom Lark (trombone), The Crouch End Festival Chorus…

Israel Nash on making Lifted : “It’s meant to move ya!” Can you elaborate on the description of the music on Lifted as “hippie spiritual”? Music is such a universal and ancient language that is coded inside of us. And while it beautifully connects us to one another, it is forever such a deeply personal experience. This is a record about love and peace and purpose, so I really wanted to create a space for those feelings and personal reflections to manifest. It’s rock’n’roll and it’s meant to move ya! You know, them hippies were on to something. Is the title of the album how you wanted the listener to feel after listening to it? Yes! Records give you enough time and space…

Dave Longstreth “It felt as if the songs needed to party a little bit” Lamp Lit Prose feels like a very LA record. Do you find the city conducive to writing and recording? I do, yeah. I built a little studio a few years ago, and it was like building your own little dream world. I get to go to the studio every day and just plug in and make stuff happen. Initially I was making this album a lot like the last one, just on my own, very solitary. But as I went on I felt as if the songs needed other characters, other voices – it needed to party a little bit. So I reached out to some old friends and newer voices. Rob […

DISC 1: Buffalo Springfield (mono mix) 1. Go And Say Goodbye 2. Sit Down I Think I Love You 3. Leave 4. Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing 5. Hot Dusty Roads 6. Everybody’s Wrong 7. Flying On The Ground Is Wrong 8. Burned 9. Do I Have To Come Right Out And Say It 10. Baby Don’t Scold Me 11.Out Of My Mind 12.Pay The Price 13. For What It’s Worth DISC 2: Buffalo Springfield (stereo mix) 1. For What It’s Worth 2. Go And Say Goodbye 3. Sit Down I Think I Love You 4. Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing 5. Hot Dusty Roads 6. Everybody’s Wrong 7. Flying On The Ground Is Wrong 8. Burned 9. Do I Have To Come Right Out And Say It 10. Leave…

CONTENTS 1. The Shape Of Jazz To Come (Atlantic, 1959) 2. Change Of The Century (Atlantic, 1959) 3. This Is Our Music (Atlantic, 1960) 4. Free Jazz (Atlantic, 1960) 5. Ornette! (Atlantic, 1961) 6. Ornette On Tenor (Atlantic, 1961) 7. The Art Of The Improvisers (Atlantic, 1959-61 [1970]) – issue of outtakes from the ’59–61 sessions 8. Twins (Atlantic, 1961 [1971]) - issue of outtakes from the ’59-61 sessions 9. To Whom Who Keeps A Record (Atlantic, 1959-60 [1975]) - issue of outtakes from the ’59-61 sessions 10. The Ornette Coleman Legacy…

Songs Of Rapture And Redemption RUN-OUT GROOVE 9/10 Vinyl resurrection for transcendental troubadour’s Dead Sea Scrolls. By Jim Wirth TAKING a five-second break to eat a strawberry while playing a support slot to Crosby & Nash at the Boston Music Hall in October 1971, Judee Sill tells her audience, “I used to be the church organist in a reform school.” There is a smattering of disbelieving laughter. “I did, I swear.” In her brief period as the golden girl of David Geffen’s newly founded Asylum label, Sill took a certain cool delight in sharing her past misfortunes. She certainly had plenty to go around. One tragedy or another had wiped out her immediate family, she was on the brink of a second divorce, and had also been an…

WHITES OFF EARTH NOW!! (LATENT, 1986) Captured on one mic in a Toronto garage, the band’s covers of songs by Lightning Hopkins, John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson are haunted and harrowing. But it’s the none-bleaker rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “State Trooper” that most strongly defines the Junkies’ emerging template. THE TRINITY SESSION (LATENT, 1988) The band’s career-establishing set included covers of Lou Reed, Hank Williams and Rodgers & Hart alongside Michael Timmins’ own compositions, such as “Misguided Angel”, which captured the same noir-ish atmosphere. Trinity Revisited , meanwhile, updated the set 20 years on. BLACK EYED MAN (RCA, 1992) The Junkies’ fourth album is the deepest of their explorations of the darkly hued country sound that their late friend Townes Van Zandt helped pioneer. Yet there’s…

PURPLE RAIN (1984) Prince plays ‘The Kid’ in a daring semi-autobiographical conceit riffing on his troubled family life, musical drive and sexual potency. Directed by Albert Magnoli and shot around Minneapolis at the end of 1983, the highlights are the incendiary concert scenes, filmed at First Avenue, while local musicians – notably Morris Day and The Time – appear under their own names. The film’s star-making narrative became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Spurred on by the success of the album, it grossed more than $80m. UNDER THE CHERRY MOON (1986) A ’30s-style caper involving a swindling gigolo – guess who? – …Cherry Moon was conceived as a soufflé but landed like a brick. Set and shot on the French Riviera, the hubristic touches – the black and…

WHO: Sonny Thompson (bass); Michael Bland (drums); Tommy Barbarella (keyboards); Levi Seacer Jr (bass, guitar); Morris Hayes (keyboards, band leader); Kirk Johnson (percussion); Tony M (rap), Rosie Gaines (vocals). WHEN: 1990-2015. APPEAR ON: Diamonds And Pearls , Love Symbol , Goldnigga , One Nite Alone – Live! , C-Note , Newpower Soul . IN THEIR OWN WORDS: “He knew he had a band that could actualise all of his ideas,” says Tommy Barbarella. “I don’t think he had ever had a band before that was so prolific musically and could cover so many different styles. It was a lot of recording us all at the same time. I think that was quite…

JOE WHITE: The Russos own this old ’50s Gretsch, that’s had a bunch of work done to it throughout its life. It kicks like a mule and it’s got this really unique sound. When you put that on a song, it all of a sudden sounds like us. It’s got this overly aggressive clean tone, it’s amazing, really unique. I think that helps to set it apart – it’s a ’50s Gretsch but it doesn’t sound rockabilly. TOM RUSSO: It’s too valuable to travel with, but that’s what you hear on the album a lot. I don’t know the model – it’s a 1959 hollowbody with a Bigsby whammy bar. It’s not a standard model, it’s got less tone knobs and only one pickup. My dad bought it from his…

IT has been an auspicious day for John Coltrane. His quartet are about to play the final date of a two-week stand at Birdland, the 400-seat basement jazz venue near the junction of Broadway and West 52nd Street in Manhattan. The residency has captured the band during a particularly fertile period. The centrepiece of their set is a 10-minute version of “My Favourite Things”, a song that had recently become a surprise hit single for the musicians. Ostensibly a simple waltz from The Sound Of Music, Coltrane’s version howls in new dimensions, invoking Indian scales, free improvisation and modal jazz, all the time doing so on the soprano sax – an instrument then associated in jazz circles with the old-school New Orleans swing of Sidney Bechet. “Coltrane’s wasn’t like any…

BOOM FOR REAL: THE LATE TEENAGE YEARS OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT Seventies’ New York – crippled with debt, falling apart – has already been the subject of many novels, films and memoirs. The latest work to truffle into the burned-out Lower East Side is Sara Driver’s doc Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years Of Jean-Michel Basquiat. As an NYU film-school student, she was there at the time. Accordingly, she has rounded up an impressive cast of eyewitnesses – including her partner Jim Jarmusch, the author Luc Sante, Fred Brathwaite (aka Fab 5 Freddy) and Al Diaz, Basquiat’s former graffiti partner. Driver also draws on footage from her contemporaries to show the derelict Lower East Side, while Basquiat himself appears in scenes from Edo Bertoglio’s post-punk snapshot, Downtown 81, which found…

“I wear the collar and I also wear the hat. It’s very fly” JOSEPH ‘REV RUN’ SIMMONS WITHOUT underplaying anticipation for Run-DMC’s welcome return to the UK this summer, the intensity levels are unlikely to match those of their initial visit, in May 1987. Back then, Joseph ‘Run’ Simmons, Darryl ‘DMC’ McDaniels and DJ Jason ‘Jam Master Jay’ Mizell were the biggest stars in hip-hop. Supported by the Beastie Boys in the first flush of brat-rap notoriety, their arrival was front-page news, while their gig at Brixton Academy was heralded as one of the shows of the decade. “I was on such a high that it was all a blur,” says Run. “There were a lot of promoters, a lot of newspapers, a lot on my plate to eat. Did…

NEXT year, Hawkwind will celebrate their 50th anniversary – an achievement that astonishes co-founder Dave Brock as much as anyone who saw the band play live in their combustible ’70s heyday. A steady hand on the tiller as chaos raged all around him, Brock has seen more than 40 bandmates come and go, including everyone from Lemmy to Ginger Baker, naked dancers to troubled mystical poets, reggae toasters to former Page 3 girls. While this anything-(and anyone)- goes attitude has often seen Hawkwind teeter on the edge of collapse, it’s also part of the reason for their impressive longevity. In the early ’70s, their sci-fi rituals and dual synth attack marked them out as fearless cosmic explorers, but their space-rock sound was sufficiently visceral to be adopted by the punks;…

Ray Davies “There’s an air of finality. But it’s not over yet” You reference “See My Friends” and Muswell Hillbillies on Our Country . Did you find yourself looking back at your whole life with these albums? I didn’t deliberately. “Muswell Kills”, the confrontation on the street corner with the robber who shot me, came late, and I thought, fuck it: revert to type. That started out as two or three pages of text, and I cut a lot of things I wanted to say. There’s a jazzy drawl to your voice on some songs. On “A Street Called Hope” you could be Mose Allison, or even Ray Charles. Nat King Cole was in my head when I was singing it. “A Street…

The Blues Is Alive And Well SILVERTONE/RCA 7/10 The Chicago blues legend keeps the form in rude health. By Stephen Deusner BUDDY GUY opens his latest studio album with a frank admission followed by a chilling plea. “I’ve been mighty lucky, I’ve travelled everywhere,” he sings. “Made a ton of money, spent it like I don’t care.” It may initially sound like a boast, but Guy transforms those lines into something very different, something much more rueful when he adds, “A few more years is all I need right now.” If the blues makes an art of pleading – for love or sex, for mercy or leniency, for wealth or glory, for salvation or simple understanding – then Guy’s request is all the more sobering for coming from…

Gwenifer Raymond “American primitive is familiar and strange at the same time” It sounds like you had a pretty great time at Thousand Incarnations Of The Rose. Henry Kaiser gave me one of his guitars, an 1890s model made by Joseph Bohmann – “The World’s Greatest Musical Instrument Manufacturer”. It was the most ludicrously generous act, and I am firmly convinced that this guitar is possessed by some fingerpicking demon or spirit. I hope to do it justice. What do you draw from the guitar soli tradition? American primitive doesn’t need a singer to tell you what the song’s about; in fact, the question, ‘What is the song about?’ is pretty nebulous. You draw from this huge wealth of folk music that’s deeply embedded in people’s subconscious, but then you…

Friends And Neighbours FLYING DUTCHMAN, 1970 A joyously freewheeling set recorded in front of an audience at Ornette’s downtown loft by the quartet with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell. The Skies Of America CBS, 1972 Ornette’s ardent symphonic portrait of his native land’s fractured beauty, his alto soaring above the full resources of a slightly bemused London Symphony Orchestra. Song X GEFFEN, 1986 An unexpectedly successful collaboration with the guitarist Pat Metheny, with Charlie Haden on bass and Jack DeJohnette and Denardo Coleman on drums. Virgin Beauty COLUMBIA, 1988 The sometimes awkward, splintery music of Prime Time, Ornette’s electric avant-funk band, softens its edges to welcome guest guitarist Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead on several tracks. Sound Grammar SOUND GRAMMAR, 2006 A German concert by Ornette’s last…

Side 1 1. Intro/The Vigilante (live) 2. Lady-O (live) 3. Enchanted Sky Machines (live) Side 2 4. The Archetypal Man (live) 5. Crayon Angels (live) 6. The Lamb Ran Away With The Crown (live) 7. Jesus Was A Cross Maker (live) Side 3 8. The Pearl (outtake) 9. The Phoenix (outtake) 10. Jesus Was A Cross Maker (home demo) 11. The Desperado (outtake) 12. The Kiss (demo) 13. Down Where The Valleys Are Low (demo) Side 4 14. The Donor (demo) 15. Soldier Of The Heart (demo) 16. The Phoenix (demo) 17. The Vigilante (demo) 18.…

Seeing The Unseeable: The Complete Studio Recordings Of The Flaming Lips 1986-1990 RHINO 7/10 A hefty history lesson, with humour and hectic energy. By Sharon O’Connell IF one thing has characterised The Flaming Lips’ music across its 35-year development, it’s a kind of playful extremism. Detractors would claim that the Oklahoman vets are now infra dig, citing their shift away from psychedelia/punk to singalong pop, their love of kids’ party theatrics (glitter cannons and the like) and in particular, their association with Miley Cyrus. Releasing an album on four CDs to be played simultaneously (1997’s Zaireeka) might have been self-indulgent, but it was experimentally credible. Recording with Cyrus was inexcusable even as a postmodern jape, because irony has never been in the Lips’ arsenal. They’d crossed a line.…

Toronto’s The Cowboy Junkies return with All That Reckoning , their first album in six years, next month, while White Denim unveil Performance , their follow-up to 2016’s Ethan Johns-produced Stiff . On a different tip, master guitarist Daniel Bachman releases The Morning Star , a surprisingly experimental set, while Mitski follows up the impressive Puberty 2 with Be The Cowboy . Stashed in the archival cupboard, there are remastered LP reissues of Teenage Fanclub’s peerless Creation albums, The Gaslight Anthem’s expansive The ’59 Sound Sessions and a re-release for Eric Clapton’s ’80s work on vinyl. TOM.PINNOCK@TIMEINC.COM…

THE Cowboy Junkies’ most diehard fans may be a mostly mild-mannered lot, but the “llamas” are remarkably steadfast all the same. Margo Timmins believes her post-show habits helped foster the emergence of this special tribe, which the Canadian band acknowledged with the title of their 2003 live album In The Time Before Llamas . “I’d always come out after shows and speak to people,” she says. “I was never comfortable with that separation between audience and the performer. In the early days the management and the record companies wanted to treat me as this mysterious figure, and I really hated that. In order to break down my own discomfort on stage, I’d go meet people afterward and talk to people. At the end of the night, that…

WHO: Ida Nielsen (bass); Donna Grantis (guitar); Hannah Weston (drums). WHEN: 2012–2016. APPEAR ON: PlectrumElectrum . IN THEIR OWN WORDS: “Prince gave us tremendous freedom,” says Donna Grantis. “Within a given arrangement, we were free to interpret the music in our own way: colouring chord changes with voicings of our choosing, improvising our solos and determining tones by combining various effects pedals. Through example and guidance, he taught us so much.” HOW DID IT END? With the death of Prince on April 21, 2016. HIGH POINTS: Plectrum Electrum ; the Hit-N-Run shows at intimate UK venues in early 2014. A tenner to see Prince at Shepherd’s Bush Empire? A reminder that he could still excite and energise like no other. POST-PRINCE: There are a…

ALONGSIDE co-producer Joel Bernstein, Nash is chief archivist of all things CSN-related. Their most recent task was CSNY 1974 , compiled from recordings made during the quartet’s groundbreaking stadium tour of that summer, including a huge Wembley show with Joni Mitchell and The Band. “Somebody sent me a bootleg of Wembley, and it was quite awful, actually,” says Nash. “We didn’t have a good night. We’d snorted too much coke and been up all night beforehand. So we weren’t great and we knew it, but I wanted to show the world that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was a really fine rock’n’roll band. So I took the 10 shows that we’d recorded onto multitrack and turned it into one set. The main difficulty for me and Joel…

1972: Jennifer Warnes debuts as a backing singer on Leonard Cohen’s Bird On A Wire tour. 1979: Roscoe Beck and fellow members of the jazz-rock band Passenger join Warnes on Cohen’s Recent Songs LP and subsequent tour. Warnes and Beck discuss recording their own album of Cohen songs. 1984: Various Positions , on which Warnes is Cohen’s co-singer throughout, is rejected for release in the US. 1986: Warnes records Famous Blue Raincoat . Cohen duets with Warnes on “Joan Of Arc”. 1987: A single from … Raincoat , “First We Take Manhattan”, precedes Cohen’s own version, and gets his work back on the radio. 1988: Cohen’s comeback begins with I’m Your Man .…

“WHAT I love about The Stone Roses and The Smiths is that a lot of the songs are quite fey pop songs, but then they’re executed with extreme prejudice, and that’s tough. That’s tough pop, and I like that idea – here’s some flowery pop, I’m gonna shove it down your throat and you’re gonna like it. That’s something that we try to do. It’s subversive. You can go out there and play some heavy riffs, or you can execute these flowery melodies, do it with a big rhythm, play it tight and it’s hard to argue with. I like that idea.”…

DURING Coltrane’s Birdland residency of February/March 1963, Trane’s old boss Miles Davis turned up. “He even sat in with us one night,” recalls McCoy Tyner. “But, soundwise, there wasn’t really any room for him in the band. It didn’t quite work. As a quartet we were very special, and it was difficult for anybody to walk up and come into the band – even Miles.” Coltrane’s five years in the Miles Davis band had a profound effect on his music, encouraging his use of “modal playing” – improvising in spacey-sounding modes rather than major or minor scales. Coltrane provides a memorable 110-second tenor sax solo on Miles’s most famous tune, “So What”, from the Kind Of Blue album, and within weeks of leaving Miles, Trane was…

BOOM FOR REAL Directed by Sara Driver Starring Jim Jarmusch, Luc Sante Opens June 22 Cert TBC 8/10 FIRST REFORMED Directed by Paul Schrader Starring Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried Opens July 13 Cert 15 8/10 RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: CODA Directed by Stephen Nomura Schible Starring Ryuichi Sakamoto Opens June 29 Cert TBC 8/10 YELLOW SUBMARINE Directed by George Dunning Starring John Clive, Lance Percival Opens July 8 Cert U 7/10 WHITNEY Directed by Kevin Macdonald Starring Bobby Brown, Cissy Houston Opens July 6 Cert 15 7/10…

STEVE YOUNG: A TRUE ORIGINAL It was very nice to see a letter from my old friend Tom Russell singing the praises of an all but forgotten pioneer of what we now call Americana, the truly great Steve Young [Take 253]. Of all the singer-songwriters of the ’60s, this man had everything – an exceptional voice, fantastic original songs, a knack for completely reinventing other writers’ songs, and he was a great acoustic guitarist. Steve’s debut album, Rock Salt And Nails from 1969, is sensational stuff – one of only a handful of albums that merits been called ‘Cosmic American Music’. I have it straight from the man himself that when Waylon Jennings heard this LP he was so knocked out that he knew exactly what musical path he wanted…