Innehållsförteckning för Nov-2018 från UNCUT

“Jimi was constantly importing and revising and learning. He was on a never-ending search…” As the ZZ Top frontman prepares to unleash his second solo album, he reflects on formative years with Roky and Jimi, his love of rap and the perils of bringing livestock on tour LAST night, ZZ Top rocked Lincoln, Nebraska. Tomorrow they will headline a balloon festival in Ohio. Today they are in geographical limbo “somewhere in the Midwest”. Yet despite his band’s potentially exhausting schedule – ZZ Top appear to have been touring non-stop since 1969 and now claim to be the longest-serving major rock band still comprised of original members – Billy Gibbons’ legendary lust for life is still very much in evidence. In fact, he’s risen early to wrestle gamely with your queries,…

It’s been five years since Wise Up Ghost – the longest you’ve gone between albums. How has your thinking on the format changed during that time? My relationship with recording changed in 2010, when I decided it wasn’t the best use of time. I put it all on the stage and thought of being a recording artiste in the past tense, until Steven Mandel and Questlove lured me back into a little cupboard at NBC, where we made Wise Up Ghost . It took until now for me to get that feeling again, but I always reserve the right to change my mind. What can you tell me about your relationship with Burt Bacharach? You’ve been working together for 20 years now. Burt…

1 Turn The Light On 2 Whether 3 Chaitius 4 Voce Simul 5 Everyday Is An Emergency 6 Another Dream 7 I Shall Love 2 8 Underneath The Moon 9 Colligere 10 In Gardens Muteness 11 I Would Rather See 12 Les Jeux To You 13 Words I Heard 14 I Shall Love 1 15 Why Sad Song Produced by: Coe MGN, Kenny Gilmore and Julia Holter Recorded at: Band House Studios, Hollywood Personnel: Julia Holter (vocals, keyboards, harmonium, percussion, guitar, cello, field recordings), Corey Fogel (drums), Devin Hoff (double bass), Dina Maccabee (violin, backing vocals), Sarah Belle Reid (trumpet), Andrew Tholl (viola), Tashi Wada (bagpipes)…

Recorded at: Spirit Sounds, Sputnik Studios, The Bomb Shelter, Nashville Produced by: Matthew Houck Personnel: Matthew Houck (voice, guitars, bass, synthesiser, drums, piano, melodica, Wurlitzer, mbira, percussion), Jo Schornikow (organ, Wurlitzer), Ricky Ray Jackson (pedal steel), Scott Stapleton (piano), Rustine Bragaw, Kevin Black (electric bass), Christopher Martine (drums), David Torch (congas), David Roe (upright bass), Luke Reynolds (guitar, four-track Mellotron), Nicole Boggs, Kyshona Armstrong, Maureen Murphy, Alexis Saski (background singers)…

Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements DUOPHONIC, 1993 It was tough to make, by many accounts, but TRNBWA is a wild outlier of an album – hearing the four-part “Jenny Ondioline”, the Morse code pop of “Pause”, and the unrelenting pulse of “Crest”, it’s hard to believe this came out on a major label in most of the world. Rough, exploratory, exciting and bursting with ideas. 8/10 Dots & Loops DUOPHONIC, 1997 A refinement of the space-age pop they’d been exploring on the “Flourescences” EP, this felt like a massive step forward – working with Sean O’Hagan of The High Llamas, John McEntire and the Tortoise crew, and Mouse On Mars, Dots & Loops inveigles avant-garde electronica and fairy-dusted easy listening into…

DISC 1: FOUR-CALENDAR CAFÉ  1 Know Who You Are At Every Age 2 Evangeline 3 Bluebeard 4 Theft, And Wandering Around Lost 5 Oil Of Angels 6 Squeeze-Wax 7 My Truth 8 Essence 9 Summerhead 10 Pur DISC 2: MILK & KISSES 1 Violaine 2 Serpentskirt 3 Tishbite 4 Half-Gifts 5 Calfskin Smack 6 Rilkean Heart 7 Ups 8 Eperdu 9 Treasure Hiding 10 Seekers Who Are Lovers DISC 3: SINGLES, EPS & RADIO SESSIONS 1 Mud And Dark 2 Summer-Blink 3 Winter Wonderland 4 Frosty The Snowman 5 Three Swept 6 Ice Pulse 7 Bluebeard 8 Rilkean Heart 9 Golden-Vein 10 Pink Orange Red 11 Half-Gifts 12 Feet Like Fins 13 Seekers Who Are Lovers 14 Violaine 15 Cherry Coloured Funk 16 Tishbite 17 Primitive Heart 18 Flock Of…

As Christmas looms into view, the – archival ’ treats hot up there s a huge Village Green reissue from The Kinks, and an ace early-years box from Mott The Hoople, along with some treasures we can’t discuss right now… In the world of new releases, there’s Jon Spencer’s first ever solo album, Spencer Sings The Hits! , Thom Yorke’s Suspiria soundtrack and strong new LPs from Meg Baird & Mary Lattimore, Bill Ryder-Jones, The Wave Pictures and more. TOM.PINNOCK@TI-MEDIA.COM…

Narada Michael Walden met Aretha in the early 1980s and helmed her 1985 smash, Who’s Zoomin’ Who? . The two worked together for more than 30 years, with Walden producing and writing for her and even playing in her touring band. It was one of the longest professional relationships she had. “First,” he recalls, “I’d record here in California and put my demo singers on it, just to show her how I heard the song. Then she’d take it, memorise it, change up what she wanted to change up. She’s going to bring to it what she wants to bring to it. I recall one time wanting to make a little lyric change, and I walked up to the music stand but there was no paper…

“CRYSTAL JAPAN” (B-SIDE OF “UP THE HILL BACKWARDS”, 1981) Initially earmarked for Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) but replaced by closer “It’s No Game (No 2)” , this track was actually released as a single in Japan in 1980. A comely instrumental , it was a throwback to the ambient moods of Low and “Heroes” . “CAT PEOPLE (PUTTING OUT FIRE)” (SINGLE, 1982) Co-written with legendary producer Giorgio Moroder, the original version of the song (with its sinister synthesisers and rushing chorus) is far superior to its Let’s Dance counterpart. “THE DROWNED GIRL” (“BAAL” EP, 1982) The most affecting Brecht/Weill track that Bowie covered for the BBC’s dramatic adaptation of…

“HE’S a cool little dude, huh?” says Chan Marshall, gleefully showing Uncut pictures of her young son. “He plays guitar and piano and drums. It’s just a normal thing in his life.” Marshall seems to have a lot to be thankful for at the moment: as well as motherhood, she has a new label, Domino, and a new album, Wanderer, to celebrate. We meet in a Marylebone bar to discuss all of Marshall’s recorded work to date, including 1995’s Dear Sir, 2006’s sophisticated The Greatest and the new Wanderer. Her first LP in six years, it finds Marshall confident and fully in control in the studio – although the act of recording hasn’t always been so pleasurable for the Georgia-born singer… “It was very tense at first,” she explains. “These…

THE CZARS THE UGLY PEOPLE VS THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE (2001) Formed in Denver in 1994, The Czars released six studio albums before gradually disbanding in 2004, but they hit their high-water mark with 2001’s The Ugly People…. Grant now feels that “Killjoy” was one of the first times he projected as a singer before his solo career, while the matchlessly beautiful “Lullaby 6000” increasingly feels like a modern standard. JOHN GRANT QUEEN OF DENMARK (2010) Few could have expected that the solo debut by the ex-lead singer with The Czars, backed by Midlake, would turn out to be a bona fide modern classic. But Queen Of Denmark was recognised as such immediately, 12 tracks charting the demise of a relationship in agonising,…

Late 1966: Family form from the remnants of Midlands band The Farinas July 19, 1968: Release debut album, Music In A Doll’s House , on Reprise. Summer 1968: Write “The Weaver’s Answer” while on the road. It quickly becomes a live favourite. They record the song for a Radio 1 session in September March 1969: Second LP Family Entertainment is released. It reaches No 6 on the UK chart. The opening track is “The Weaver’s Answer” Summer 1970: A remixed version of the song appears on the “Strange Band” EP, which reaches No 11 on the UK singles chart. Family perform the song on Top Of The Pops March 1971: The new version appears on budget compilation Old Songs,…

1!“He was the best interpreter of Chuck Berry that I ever encountered. As a pure player and singer of that music, he was unbelievable. I’m talking about just him – leave the band out of it!” 2!“He was a very, very funny guy. He didn’t let that out much, every now and then you’d see some whimsy in a video or a lyric, but he could be an absolute riot. He and Stan Lynch were quite the comic team; and Tom and Randall Marsh, the Mudcrutch drummer, were the best redneck comedy team you ever heard in your life.” 3!“He got real quiet when he was mad. That was some force, too!” 4!“I still remember the first song of his that I heard, called ‘Uncertain Kind Of Hero’. It has…

Hunter sneaks into Graceland, buzzed to be “within 50 feet” of the King FIRST published in 1974, Ian Hunter’s account of Mott The Hoople’s US tour at the tail end of 1972 is a gripping, anti-glamour tract – road life reduced to its component parts. It’s hard not to warm to any memoir that sets a scene of departure thus: “I cleaned the flat up a bit – mopped the cat shit up from the kitchen floor, had a bath and washed my hair. I didn’t look too bad.” Diary Of A Rock ’N’ Roll Star is being republished to include a short Japanese tour diary from 2015 and a fantastically awful foreword from Johnny Depp – “It will sear your brain with a most staggering residue” – which serves…

KING OF THIEVES OPENS SEPTEMBER 14 Caine, Winston, Broadbent and other geezers re-create the Hatton Garden Heist in tasty Brit crime flick. MILE 22 OPENS SEPTEMBER 19 Mark Wahlberg leads a covert mission in Southeast Asia. Race against time, etc. THE GODFATHER OPENS SEPTEMBER 21 Coppola’s classic back on the big screen. You can watch the shooting of Sollozzo and McCluskey in a 4K restoration. SKATE KITCHEN OPENS SEPTEMBER 28 Spiky youth-culture drama about skateboarders in New York, from director Crystal Moselle. VENOM OPENS OCTOBER 3 Latest Marvel business with Tom Hardy as a reporter gifted with super powers. A STAR IS BORN OPENS OCTOBER 5 Remake of the remake of the remake… Bradley Cooper’s washed-up country singer mentors Lady Gaga’s emerging talent. JOHNNY ENGLISH STRIKES AGAIN OPENS OCTOBER 5…

Rock? Deep Purple have spent 50 years in it! To celebrate, Uncut’s latest Ultimate Music Guide – on sale now – investigates every aspect of the band’s career, via some expert new writing and entertaining archive features... Following on September 28 is our Ultimate Genre Guide to Soul, featuring numerous iconic stars of the genre, including Aretha Franklin, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Nina Simone, Dusty Springfield and more besides… The first tranche of acts have been revealed for Belle & Sebastian’s Boaty Weekender – an indie cruise across the Med celebrating the 20th anniversary of the band’s legendary Camber Sands shindig. Joining Stuart Murdoch and co aboard the Norwegian Pearl in August 2019 will be Camera Obscura, Django…

THOM YORKE “Suspirium” XL Following the (unjustly) rejected “Spectre”, Thom finally gets to nail a film theme with this spine-chilling solo piano number from the Suspiria remake. J MASCIS Elastic Days SUB POP The grizzled guitar god’s new solo set is essentially Dinosaur Jr, junior: less ornery fuzz, same great soloing. Luluc’s Zoë Randell helps keep things mellow. HELENA DELAND From The Series Of Songs ‘Altogether Unaccompanied’ Vol III And Vol IV LUMINELLE Impressively diverse EP from the Montreal singer-songwriter, touching on Laura Nyro, Beach House and most points in between. APHEX TWIN Collapse EP WARP Unpronounceable titles and mind-scrambling beats, offset by an underlying air of almost bucolic bliss. Vintage Aphex, in other words. JACCO GARDNER Somnium FULL TIME HOBBY Baroque psych voyager ditches the…

Jassbusters MEXICAN SUMMER THE lyrics are hard to discern at first. But there they are, hidden in thickets of woozy, chorused guitar and delivered in eerie falsetto. “Once again/It’s Bostyn and his friend Dobsyn,” Connan Mockasin sang, as if a powerful equine tranquilliser was about to kick in, on “It’s Choade My Dear”, the second track on 2011’s Forever Dolphin Love. The song remains one of the highlights of his strange, otherworldly debut proper, but few had any way of predicting the importance that Bostyn and Dobsyn would come to play in Mockasin’s music almost a decade later. These two characters, created by the singer and guitarist, his two brothers and his neighbour Blake Pryor as kids in ’90s New Zealand, have now been resurrected as the stars of a…

Look Now CONCORD 8/10 THERE are a lot of old friends haunting the verses and choruses of “Under Lime”, the opening track from Elvis Costello’s first LP in five years and his first with the Imposters in a decade. That’s Steve Nieve adding buoyant piano pomp and Pete Thomas laying down a springy hi-hat rhythm that keeps the song moving along at a businesslike clip. Joining those two Attractions/Imposters is Davey Faragher, interspersing melodic bass notes throughout the song like raised eyebrows. And finally there’s the song’s protagonist, Jimmie, a song-and-dance man trying to make a comeback on a televised variety show. Costello introduced him to us nearly a decade ago on “Jimmie Standing In The Rain”, off 2010’s National Ransom , where he was a figure of romantic and…

ADVANCE BASE Animal Companionship RUN FOR COVER 7/10 Tragicomic indie balladeer muses on four-legged friends Since hearing problems forced him to wind up his former band Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, Owen Ashworth has concentrated on running his own Chicago-based indie label while sporadically recording lo-fi analogue keyboard ballads under his new musical alias Advance Base. Inspired by the close bonds that humans develop with their pets, Animal Companionship is a more sombre affair than it initially sounds as Ashworth uses animal love as a lens through which to dissect heartbreak and loss, broken lives and creeping mortality. Standout tracks include the synth-saturated Spector-ish weepie “True Love Death Dream” and the careworn late-night confessional “Christmas In Nightmare City”, which has some of the ragged tenderness of classic Tom Waits. STEPHEN…

What is Aviary about? I was inspired by medieval ideas of birds as a symbol of memory. Aviary is like birds flying around in your head. I was trying to evoke how everything is cacophonous in the world, and the internal cacophony of one’s mind. The outside world is overwhelming so it’s a cathartic response. It is a more overtly challenging record than Have You In My Wilderness ; is that deliberate? With Wilderness , I was really trying to work in a tradition; when I wrote this record I was not thinking about any kind of genre, anything. I thought it was important to free myself. For the most part, this record started with me…

It’s been four years since we heard from Toronto singer-songwriter Doug Paisley, who took time off from touring and recording to begin a family. He’s back this November with Starter Home NO QUARTER, a warm, understated set in which he’s accompanied mostly by picked guitar and strings. It stands comparison with past treasures like Strong Feelingsand Constant Companion . Meanwhile, labelmate Joan Shelley has been busy in the studio with a swift follow-up to her self-titled LP of last year. Michael Martin Murphey is one of the less heralded pioneers of Austin’s outlaw scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Issued on SOUNDLY MUSIC, Austinology: Alleys Of Austin features era-specific songs from the likes of Guy Clark…

Had you started the new album before you got ill? I had started on it before and it became a different album after. But I wouldn’t say the illness had an outsized effect on the LP. Are there pre- and post- illness songs? Not conspicuously, no. But then again everything has an effect. Everything gets in there. Some of the lyrics are unusually candid. Were you tempted to rewrite them? Yeah, I agree. My comfort level with this sort of stuff veers wildly from day to day. I’m always tempted to rewrite. You usually prefer working alone in the studio. Was C’est La Vie similarly recorded? This was done mostly the same way. The main difference was that at the beginning of the process I had…

1 Loading Zones 2 Hysteria 3 Yeah Bones 4 Bassackwards 5 One Trick Ponies 6 Rollin’ With The Flow 7 Check Baby 8 Bottle It In 9 Mutinies 10 Come Again 11 Cold Was The Wind 12 Skinny Mini 13 (bottle back) Produced by: Kurt Vile, Shawn Everett, Peter Katis, Robert Laakso, Rob Schnapf Recorded at: Beer Hole, Los Angeles; Epic Trax, NYC; Ice Cream Party, Portland; Mant Sounds, Los Angeles; O-KV Central, Mount Airy, North Carolina; Tarquin Studios, Bridgeport, Connecticut Personnel includes: Kurt Vile (guitars, synthesiser, keyboards, piano, tambourine), Jesse Trbovich (guitars), Robert Laakso (bass, guitar, drums, perc, keys), Kyle Spence (drums, perc, glockenspiel), Stella Mozgawa (drums, perc), Mary Lattimore (harp), Farmer Dave Scher (lapsteel guitar, keys), Kim Gordon (acoustic guitar)…

What do you have in common, and how does it all fit together when you play as a duo? TOBY: We both started out on this journey together, yet we approach making music in different ways. I think that’s a strength, and has really helped this record become what it is. JIM: In respect to the music, I suppose we’re quite accustomed to the process as being quite solitary. This time it was a lot of fun having a shared experience. Given your music is so inspired by place, what does that sort of itinerant lifestyle do to the compositional process? TOBY: Travelling was the main inspiration for the music. When you are moving through new places every day for two months, it is going to have an effect on…

CD1: SWITCHED ON 1 Super Electric 2 Doubt 3 Au Grand Jour’ 4 The Way Will Be Opening 5 Brittle 6 Contact 7 Au Grand Jour 8 High Expectation 9 The Light That Will Cease To Fail 10 Changer CD2: REFRIED ECTOPLASM 1 Harmonium 2 Lo Boob Oscillator 3 Mountain 4 Revox 5 French Disko 6 Exploding Head Movie 7 Eloge D’Eros 8 Tone Burst [Country] 9 “Animal Or Vegetable [A Wonderful Wooden Reason...]” [Crumb Duck] 10 John Cage Bubblegum 11 Sadistic 12 Farfisa 13 Tempter CD3: ALUMINUM TUNES [PART 1] 1 Pop Quiz 2 The Extension Trip 3 How To Play Your Internal Organs Overnight 4 The Brush Descends The Length 5 Melochord Seventy-Five 6 Space Moment 7 Iron Man 8 The Long Hair Of Death 9 You Used…

BARRY ADAMSON Memento Mori (Anthology 1978–2018) MUTE 7/10 Celebrating 40 years of murderous, cinematic cool That this 17-track overview of Adamson’s career makes for a more rewarding listen ordered stylistically, rather than chronologically, says a lot about his protean talent. He’s maybe best known as the bass constant in Magazine, whose lurching “Parade” earns a place here as an Adamson/Dave Formula co-write, and through his three years with the Bad Seeds, represented by “From Her To Eternity”. But with his 1988 debut, Moss Side Story, Adamson secured his niche as a solo composer (and player) of imagistic music with a widescreen sweep, drawing on ’50s film noir, ’60s spy movie and ’70s Blaxploitation scores, adding humour and droll lasciviousness. If the hammy “Civilization” is an odd pick from 2008’s Back…

“I was like, ‘Wow! There’s a song here” REEVES GABRELS PERHAPS the most intriguing feature of Loving The Alien (1983-1988) , the latest in Parlophone’s ongoing series of Bowie boxsets, is the inclusion of an entirely new recording of Never Let Me Down . Initially released in April 1987, Bowie later dismissed the album as “awful”, regretting his lack of application when it came to the record’s production. “About a year later, David and I were sitting on deckchairs by Mountain Studio in Switzerland, looking across Lake Geneva,” recalls songwriter/guitarist Reeves Gabrels, with whom Bowie had just begun recording as Tin Machine. “He started telling me, ‘Y’know, I’m proud of the songs on Never Let Me Down , but I wasn’t…

VINCE CLARKE “The first synth record I really loved was Depeche Mode, Speak And Spell . That record was huge for me. I was listening to it the other day on my pretty decent system at home, and it still sounds amazing. Vince Clarke (pictured below) – what a genius he is. In several incarnations. Yazoo – Upstairs At Eric’s was huge for me too. He’s a genius in songwriting and making things huge that crossed over, but not in a cheesy, bad way… That’s quite a feat.” MISSING PERSONS “The song ‘Tempest’ on the new album is about being a kid and playing Atari games like Millipede and Centipede and Tempest, all the time. Me and my friend would listen to…

JONI MITCHELL Blue 1971 This is one of the best records I ever heard. I think I did hear it before people heard it, but it’s just one of the best records anybody ever made. The songs… it’s Joni at the absolute peak of her powers. She was my old lady and I did produce her first record, so I was very close with her, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s probably the best singer-songwriter of our time, I don’t think there’s any question. This is probably the best collection of songs anybody ever put on a record. THE BEATLES Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 1967 This was big for me because I was there in London when they were recording it, and I went several times…

“MY friend, it’s been a busy 30 years,” laughs Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman, “but the last year in particular has been really crazy.” To celebrate three decades at the forefront of alternative music – from their grungey early days to their diverse present – Poneman and his Seattle-based team have put on a series of gigs, SPF30, including a free festival on the shores of the city’s Puget Sound in August. He estimates 30–50,000 fans turned up. “The music was a gift, all done for this community – geographically, musically – who have been so kind and patient with us.” Poneman, who managed to see bits of every act who played, classes the day as the third best of his life, “besides the day of my birth and my…

FOREVER DOLPHIN LOVE 2011 From the massed percussion of “Megumi The Milky Way” to the jammy psych of the title track, Mockasin’s debut is a wonky delight. Moody highlight “Faking Jazz Together” seems to take the spirit of bossanova and lock it in a basement. 8/10 CARAMEL 2013 Sonically inspired by the title, Mockasin’s second establishes a mood – Barry White on Mogadon, perhaps – and goes with it. Delightfully free form, these 11 tracks even contain a bona fide classic, “I’m The Man That Will Find You”. 7/10 SOFT HAIR 2016 Years in the making, the debut from Mockasin’s project with Late Of The Pier’s Sam Dust is as sickly and strange as its cover. Saccharine ’80s sounds are chopped into arcade weirdness, but the statelier melody of “A…

1 Under Lime 2 Don’t Look Now 3 Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter 4 Stripping Paper 5 Unwanted Number 6 I Let The Sun Go Down 7 Mr & Mrs Hush 8 Photographs Can Lie 9 Dishonor The Stars 10 Suspect My Tears 11 Why Won’t Heaven Help Me? 12 He’s Given Me Things DELUXE SPECIAL EDITION TRACKS: 13 Isabelle In Tears 14 Adieu Paris (L’Envie Des Étoiles) 15 The Final Mrs Curtain 16 You Shouldn’t Look At Me That Way Produced by: Elvis Costello, Sebastian Krys Studios include: East-West Studios, Village Recorders, United Recording Studios, LA; Armoury Studios, Vancouver Personnel includes: Elvis Costello (vocals, guitars), Steve Nieve (keys), Pete Thomas (drums), Davey Faragher (bass), Burt Bacharach (piano), Steve Bernstein, Doug Wieselman, Clark Gayton (horns), Michael Rabinowitz (bassoon)…

How did your native and chosen homes influence the record? Kansas City is the nest I grew in, and LA is the big city I flew off to. I don’t know that I pulled consciously from either place; they make their way into what I do because they are my past and my current surroundings. What do you find foreign about LA? You drive a lot in both the Midwest and LA, except in LA there can be insane traffic. I’ve always loved driving, though. A lot of ideas come to me while doing it. So that was a natural transition. The landscape, the plant life, the dryness, and the lack of seasons feel most foreign to me. Also the sense of time is different here. It goes by so…

There’s a real-time dynamism on this LP. How so? You’ve got to live out the record just like you live in the world: you just wake up in the morning and that’s kind of how you should play music and perform it. Writing is another thing, but these days it’s pretty open. Before, I might have thought too much ahead of time about a song having a beginning, middle and end, and even then I still couldn’t fully predict how it would come out. I’ve accepted that and I use it – ideally, to my advantage. Some things take a wrong turn, but then you just don’t put it on the record. Did you plan on such an epic running time? Three of the longest songs – “Check Baby”, “Bottle…

Switched On Volumes 1–3 DUOPHONIC EVER since announcing their hiatus in 2009, English-French avant-pop group Stereolab have gone through a slow but significant re-evaluation. If, during their existence, people could be sniffy about the group – record-collection pop! Krautrock by numbers! Process over outcome! – a broader audience has since caught up with Stereolab: see how they’re fêted, now, by figures as distinct as Pharrell Williams, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Tyler The Creator. Their albums, though, have been hard to come by for some time, making these reissues of their Switched On series – which pulled together hard-to-find 7in, 10in and split singles, compilation appearances and other experiments – most welcome. Stereolab’s roots appeared to be in indie-pop and C86 – guitarist and songwriter Tim Gane was in agit-pop…

Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington COLUMBIA, 1964 The best of Aretha’s nine studio albums for Columbia Records, Unforgettable finds the future Queen Of Soul paying tribute to the dearly departed Queen Of The Blues, who died of an overdose in 1963. By celebrating the songs of her hero, Aretha offers an early glimpse of the R&B force she would become. 8/10 I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You ATLANTIC, 1967 After signing with Atlantic Records, Aretha trekked down to Muscle Shoals to work with the Swampers at FAME Studios. Her debut for the label remains one of the finest R&B records of the era – hell, one of the finest records period – and the tensions that defined those infamous sessions have…

ONE of the unexpected treats of 1983’s Serious Moonlight Tour was a guest appearance by Bowie’s former guitarist Mick Ronson. The one-time Spider From Mars was working as a session player and producer, overseeing a new project by Canadian singer Lisa Dalbello, when the tour played Toronto’s CNE Grandstand on September 3. Ronson decided to pay Bowie a visit at his hotel, where Bowie – who hadn’t seen the guitarist in eight years – asked him to join him on stage the following night. “I think he was a little nervous,” bassist Carmine Rojas recalls. “He was three sheets to the wind!” After an ecstatic reception from the 60,000-deep crowd, Ronson borrowed Earl Slick’s blue Stratocaster and proceeded to attack “The Jean Genie” with gusto. “I really thrashed the guitar,”…

A FULL decade had passed by the time Bowie returned to the studio with Let’s Dance producer Nile Rodgers. The pair worked together on the soundtrack of Ralph Bakshi’s 1992 animated fantasy Cool World , before starting on sessions for Bowie’s first solo release of the ’90s, Black Tie, White Noise . “He wanted to go back to being much more avant-garde, but I was fighting with him every step of the way to do Let’s Dance II,” reveals Rodgers. “I said, ‘Hey, why don’t we bury Let’s Dance ? Let’s just slaughter it! Let’s make a record that’s more commercial than you could ever imagine.’ And David was like, ‘No way!’ He was recoiling, in a…

JOHN Grant believes in magic. He’d be crazy not to. We’re sitting in an old modernist schoolhouse, nestled in the wild, occult heart of Cornwall. The house-studio, belonging to his producer and collaborator Benge (aka Ben Edwards), is festooned with vintage analogue synthesisers, Japanese sci-fi figurines and Wang Chung picture discs. We’re looking out over an almost parodically beautiful English garden, patrolled by a huge, bounding, loveably daft briard called Rothko. Late summer clouds scud over Bodmin Moor. After years struggling with childhood trauma, alcohol dependency and depression, after six critically acclaimed but commercially neglected albums with The Czars, after being on the verge of quitting music for good, Grant has just turned 50 and is about to release Love Is Magic, the richest, boldest record yet in an implausibly…

“KEEP A LITTLE SOUL” ( LONG AFTER DARK OUTTAKE, 1982) “This was the most moving one for me. I’d had it on cassette back when we first made Long After Dark . I listened to the rough mix over and over again, and I didn’t understand why they left it off the record. I found it again last year. There’s something about the way Tom sings the line ‘ Don’t be afraid to live what you believe’ that really gets to me.” “SURRENDER” ( TOM PETTY AND THE HEART-BREAKERS OUTTAKE, 1976) “We put out a few versions of ‘Surrender’, but it’s not on any of the official albums. It’s a song we tried to record several times. I…

FIRST MAN Directed by Damien Chazelle Starring Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy Opens October 12 Cert TBC 8/10 DOGMAN Directed by Matteo Garrone Starring Marcello Fonte, Edoardo Pesce Opens October 19 Cert 15 8/10 MANDY Directed by Panos Cosmatos Starring Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough Opens Oct 12 Cert 18 8/10 THE LITTLE STRANGER Directed by Lenny Abrahamson Starring Domhnall Gleeson Opens Sept 21 Cert 12A 6/10 CLIMAX Directed by Gaspar Noé Starring Sofia Boutella, lots of dancers Opens September 21 Cert 18 9/10…

LINDSAY KEMP Artistic mentor to Bush and Bowie (1938–2018) “TO call him a mime artist is like calling Mozart a pianist,” said Kate Bush of Lindsay Kemp. “He was very brave, very funny and above all, astonishingly inspirational.” The choreographer taught Bush the art of interpretive dance after she’d enrolled on one of his courses with the advance from her original EMI contract. She duly paid tribute to Kemp on “Moving”, the opening track from her 1978 debut, The Kick Inside, and later enlisted him for her short film The Line, The Cross And The Curve. Years earlier, Kemp had been a mentor to one of Bush’s other touchstones, David Bowie. The pair first met in 1967, when the 20-year-old Bowie signed up at the Covent Garden Dance…