UNCUT magazine : Classic or dud

Also, I think people should boycott IPC rags until they sort their little intellectual property/restraint of trade scam out. It seems Oxbridge skinedd Steve Sutherland has drawn up a new 'agreement' for NME.com freelancers. They have to turn over all their tapes and stuff to the paper/site in perpetuity; can't recycle unused stuff elsewhere. Anyone who does not comply will not get commissions from the paper.

So far, there are 20 who have not signed. A little solidarity on their behalf would be good...

There are some good writers though, so it's a crying shame it can be so boring. And that column Sacred Cows could be a lot of funny, but it's usually aimed at such easy targets.

I still want to read Paul Morley's rave-up of the Depeche Mode album, but it's not like I'm going to but it just to read that.

A lot of fun.

D'oh! It's so difficult to write with caffeine deprivation.

Dud: a lot of the rest, I'm afraid.

It does seem to have become a refuge for ex MM staffers, though Neil Kulkarni is wasted reviewing a handful of films every month I think. And it's good to see Paul Morley back in regular-ish gainful employment, even if he did give '10,000Hz Legend' a slating.

Other ideas for improvement are:

Cut back on the contributions from the Americana orientated writers like Gavin Martin, Hasted and Jones. The kids don't care about non- relevent New Country bands in 2001. It's not 1971.

Replace Alan Jones as editor with Reynolds or Stubbs.

Give Neil Kilkarni a wider brief.

Bring back Simon Price also.

Replace the dull and widely used 1-5 stars awarding system. Maybe use the two dice method used by Hot Press in Ireland ie. 1 -12.

Snazz up the layout and fonts by maybe using a slightly "artier", less formal approach. Not so much Raygun or ID but veering that way!

Get more in tune with the zeitgeist. More articles needed on current happenings within dance culture. New country isn't exactly the current culture's cutting edge.

Less obsession with American novelists. The book reviews seem to solely focus on US releases.

Get rid of prog rock pensioner Nigel Williamson. Hold onto MacDonald however.

There you go - the perfect mag!!

Paul Morley's destruction of the recent Smiths cash-in this month is brilliantly-executed, though. Reynolds on N*E*R*D and the Human League up to standard: that is, not extraordinary but increased my interest in both (though from an already very high starting point in N*E*R*D's case).

This is positive, not negative. Uncut acknlowledges the fact that The Beatles is still the most important band ever.

A lot of kids need to discover The Beatles, or hip-hop wouldn't have been as popular as it is.

there he goes dropping another bombshell

Isn't this the lamest arguement ever or something?

Jerry the Nipper is a good writer though yeah.

I make no judgement on whether these reviews are deserved, only that it's strange to see such a change in tack. The review by Jones of the new Paul Westerberg albums even starts with a dig at Adams.

Also Uncut is a mainstream publication. It is never going to be Freaky Trigger in print. This means that if a writer wants to get anything different into it he has to sneak it in, Trojan Horse-style, which means writing cleverly and concisely and being able to argue your case strongly enough to the Reviews Editor.

Therefore, instead of whingeing about how bad/retro/catheterised Uncut is, if you think you can do better than us then have a go. Send a sample 100-word review to David Peschek and see what he says. Prove to us that you can cut it.

The assertion that no one is entitled to criticise any cultural product unless their actually involved in producing it is quite frankly laughable.

My Idea of a better Uncut: best of Melody Maker [ala spirit of 87/88: setting the agenda, opinionated, individual writer freedom], best of Muzik magazine, and more of what Uncut was doing in 2000. Increase word count of reviews. More focus on soundscape music: ambient/ avant jazz/ experimental wire/mixing it stuff/ avant prog/ Terrorizer Metal /IDM/ Industrial etc

less: Retro long articles of the same few big artists from 60s/70s.

scrap: Americana/ Alt.Country bias/focus and scrap films.

(And it still stands head and shoulders over any American "would you like some titties with your Coldplay?" magazine.)

I cant understand this Love for Muzik - a slight step up in quality for the last few issues didn't disguise the fact that it was always complete crap.

As for Marcello's argument - im always stunned by how his cranky ilm posts bear no resemblence to the tenderness (are we allowed to use that word?) and intelligence of his blog.

Perhaps also because on my blog I don't have to deal with idiots who moan about something instead of GETTING UP OFF THEIR ARSES AND DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

tom = otm. Martian has just specified my dream music publication, but who the fkc else wd read it?

oh can i just echo what martian said to the max ?
fck me, why the people who *make* the music papers dont listen more to the people who *read* the music papers i'll never know. a mix of MM circa late 80's/early 90's and muzik circa last year and this year is the music press idea i would jump in front of a bullet for.

doomie why do my messages to your email address keep bouncing back?

also NME is hardly a champion of:
electro, drumnbass, punk funk, tech-house/ house/ techno, breakbeats, leftfield hip hop, jazztronica and experimental electronics.

I would have incorporated some of the review elements of Muzik into Uncut.

also NME completely shuns/ ignores or at best offer infrequent token coverage of these music areas with their pathetic weekly teenager rock rag, therefore it is natural to suggest Uncut take up more coverage of dance/ electronic music.

try the hotmail account.

aol does not like hotmail.

from my experience - i agree with marcello - trojan horse style into the magazine - you'd be very surprised if anybody actually met people who work on these magazines.

DJ M I'm not totally unsympathetic to what you're saying - I like having a magazine to read on the tube and it would be nice if there was a music one I liked - BUT unless you can suggest something that would get them selling more copies it's just so much hot air.

And, as I said, they pick more interesting retro acts than Mojo. Their 10cc article was really great, for instance, a well-deserved rehabilitation of an undeservedly underrated act.

There are bands I do not like or enjoy, but their stories are still interesting.

JOHN LENNON'S IMAGINE - AN ANTHEM ABOUT NOTHING.

'I was just sitting in that big white room high on junk when I thought "Imagine there was no people." - and it just came out of me. Literally. I wrote the lyrics in my own vomit"; says bisexual smack addict and peace superstar - John Lennon.

Mojo finally catches up with 1979, hah. If Mojo had been going in 1979 they would have had 30 pages on Supertramp and the Average White Band. Still at least it's better than 900 more pages on Keef bloody Richards in the current Uncut.

"Don't look at the big piano
It's easy if you try
if you look out of the window
and not towards the

umm...

Dahlen is OTM — it's still the best out there, but it's slipped significantly since, say, that brilliant Bruce Springsteen's first UK tour piece a few years ago. Besides the bimonthly Beatles/Stones features, the capsule reviews are now barely long enough at this point to complete listing the album title. In practical terms, of all the thing w/ the magazine over the last few years, that's probably the most problematic.

I suppose we can be thankful that the bizarre Ryan Adams fetish might finally be coming to an end.

That's this month's Mojo!

So tell us Marcello, sent your letter of application to mr. Jones already?,

c'mon carlin, share.

In the hope he would turn it into a massive glosssy Papercuts.

is this still in place? i quit IPC before signing this motherfucking piece of trash.

are you sure about that?

But I do think that with the broadcast last night I've reached a kind of "closure" as far as memorialising/immortalising Laura is concerned. Also I enjoyed doing the show a lot more than I've enjoyed doing any recent blogging, so maybe broadcasting's the road I need to explore next. Resonance are certainly keen to have me back to do more stuff soon.

so you seriously have no problem with IPC paying you for the words they print but taking ownership of your whole transcript, and your interview tapes? not only is it morally reprehensible, but often I'll interview someone for several different publications, and that would've been technically unworkable under their contract.

my plan was to send them only the transcripted parts i used for them, and either render the tapes unlistenable or demand they pay me 10p for every word uttered by interviewer or subject on the tape. luckily I quit before it could've been a problem.

the problem for me is that they are only paying for the piece of work, the feature itself. if they aren't paying seperately for the interview tapes (and the time paid conducting the interview) and the time spent transcribing said tapes, then they *aren't* theirs to own, whatever their piece-of-shit (and, seemingly to me, unworkable) contract. i'm sure i've read you citing some IPC staff's crossing of picket lines during the strike a decade or so back in threads here; how is not contesting this contract any less a betrayal of writers' intellectual rights?

I'm forever going back to old transcripts as sources, either as context for a later interview with that subject, or as source texts for later pieces. just last week my White Stripes feature in Kerrang! reused elements of interviews I'd conducted with the Von Bondies and The White Stripes back in 2001; under the IPC contract, some of those interviews would've been IPC property, and not mine to use.

Do Resonance pay their DJs?

its a seriously-fucked contract.

I just don't feel the same way about things like Uncut, but then I don't really do interviews (hate interviews in fact) except Q&A-type things to go with reviews which I usually do over the 'phone or via email. It's hard to get passionate over 80-word downpagers, and I'm not going to lie awake at night worrying about them (too many other things to worry about). So any stake I might have is far less than yours, thus I suppose the absence of worry on my part.

FREELANCERS! How much recycling do you do?

Stevie in Rock Bastard -- "DEVENDRA WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."

(Meant with love.)

Btw, is Peschek really back to Mojo?

Or is he a Secret Sutherland Soldier?

there's no way that's legally enforceable; at least it wouldn't be here in the US. they can claim ownership over the words you write in their magazine, and they can claim ownership over the physical tapes of your interview, assuming they pay for the tapes, but they can't possibly claim ownership of the conversation that's on those tapes.

http://www.themagnificent7.co.uk/melody.html

reason enough for me.

Beaumont then shifted over to NME.

Beaumont doesn't have an informed knowledge of contemporary music and is a rubbish feature writer - responsible for some of the most cliched and simpleton music writing ever.

At the end of 2001 in the NME his year round wrap up and look forward to the following year was a prime example of him lacking competencies in informed music knowledge, critical thinking and writing ability.

The NME have a stated policy of hiring young writers - to keep in touch with the [low] rock aspirations of their teenage target market.

Beaumont has probably reached an age whereby Steve Sutherland has had to shift him away from the NME to Uncut.

Tell me more about this Rob Young chap then.

Where is he going and, more importantly, where has he been?

But i really want to know more about Uncut freelancers, old & new.

Seriously, I seek it every time I enter a newsagent's shop.

"Tell me more about this Rob Young chap then".

Allright then, Rob Young is, in his spare time, editor-at-large at WIRE, isn't he?

This month's UNCUT features:

Stephen Dalton apologizing for not liking U2.

Only one "contribution" by Mark Beaumont: a review of a/the "lost" Mansun album.

Marcello Carlin is nowhere to be found.

Personally I find it rather more interesting than the "minutia" of sundry American college dorks which dominate ILx, but hey, everyone to their own, eh?

U2, stepping into a different garage, once

Steve Lillywhite, working with multi-millionaires, now!

Robbie Williams, making a christmas song without much of a chorus, it seems

Britney Spears, looking for a second act, in American life

Martin Fry, building a car, slowly, perhaps like that advert in which the people who design the car change over 30 years?

And a good photo of a reviewer, smoking a fag.

Also there are Uncut's Albums Of The Year, voted for before the August Bank Holiday. SMiLE came top.

gosh even we wait till november-ish.

I do refer to it as UCUNT for a reason.

Shame you can't do that trick with Q tho...

I just don't understand the editor Allan Jones - who continues month after month with the same 60s/ 70s classic rock types. I don't want to listen or read anything about Bob Dylan, John Lennon or Bruce Sprinsteen - EVER AGAIN !

Uncut every issue gets more classic rock boring.
NME every issue gets more teenager tripe.

He'd better get a makeover before the brits, otherwise there will be a lot of fortysummat ex-mods going "Whoa! Do I look that old?"

He looks like Iggy Pop or David Lee Roth.

OK, Paul Weller didn't, but then that's his job.

So wait...if you were born in 1963, and you decided to be a mod aged 14, you would be a mod round about the same time Weller was a mod....which makes it not mysterious, but different to what you meant...

no, wait!

http://www.triggerfish.de/magazin/img/kaiser_390.jpg
http://images.radcity.net/5893/583593.jpg
http://www.badmintonstamps.com/images/arcticmonkeys.jpg

Uncut Magazine gets a New look

http://www.uncut.co.uk/magazine/

Editor’s Letter
Uncut has a brilliant new look and content! Everywhere you turn in our May issue, there’s something new to read or look at. Because you love music reviews, there’s more of them in a fantastic new A-Z Welcome to your new look Uncut. After nigh on 10 years, it seems like an appropriate moment to fling open the windows, let in some fresh new air, the wind, as it were, of change.

Everywhere you turn in this issue, there should be something new to read or look at. I know from talking to Uncut readers how important music reviews are. So we now have more of them than ever – arranged alphabetically around 10 highlighted albums, including the definitive response to Flaming Lips At War With The Mystics and new records from the Charlatans, Calixico and Tom Verlaine and classic reissues from Lambchop, Faust and Japan, tracks from which appear on our free CD, alongside cuts from other artists featured in this issue, including Bob Marley, Graham Coxon, Ronnie Spector, Fairport Convention, Denim and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Q: Mozza

http://www.uncut.co.uk/media/images/100_cover.jpg

vs

Mojo: Elvis

http://images.q4music.com/design/mojo/images/issues/big-issue.jpg

...

alongside cuts from other artists featured in this issue, including Bob Marley, Graham Coxon, Ronnie Spector, Fairport Convention, Denim and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

xpost

the new 10 year anniversary issue was so disgustingly retro rock that I left it in the newsagent.

http://www.uncut.co.uk/magazine/

i remember when mixmag made their ten-year special a 'dance music' number i cancelled my subscription.

The emphasis on printed literature in the latest London Review of Books made me put my television through a foot

Nothing wrong about being retro, but Uncut should write more about current retro rock whose roots are not in the American South!

I don't think there's much current retro rock (what an oxymoron!) whose roots are in Nazi Germany unless you count Norwegian death metal, if they haven't all bludgeoned each other to death yet.

current retro rock.

I think we should just leave that there, hanging.

That's no way to talk about Geir.

ahahahahaha

JACK WHITE MAN OF THE DECADE.

what a disaster for decades.

its a wretched mag these days. i just had a flick through the new issue of Ucunt at the newsagents and the top 10 albums of the decade list is fucking snoozeville. ryan adams, white stripes, wilco - 'a ghost is born'....

Uncut sounds like a porno mag.

1) White Stripes, White Blood Cells
2) Bob Dylan, Love and Theft
3) Wilco, A Ghost is Born (with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot at 35 and Sky Blue Sky at 138)
4) Brian Wilson, Smile
5) The Strokes, This Is It
6) Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand
7) Arcade Fire, Funeral
8) Bob Dylan, Modern Times
9) Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker (with Gold at 38)
10) Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes

Is that a bad list? Are we laughing at it?

Jack White - man of the decade? He is an empty vessel and a shit songwriter.

All white men, all the time.

are they seriously calling 'white blood cells' the best album of the decade?

there isn't an emoticon to express how far beyond o_O that is.

It's actually a particularly curious choice, cause it's not as if they have sufficient pedal steels to fit in properly with Uncut's general aesthetic ballpark.

The delicate art of trying to attract "younger" readers as your core market keeps dying.

Well why not Lady Gaga at No. 1 then?

Do you seriously want that answered? because it's Sunday afternoon and this thread says UNCUT magazine at the top of it.

is there anyone out there anywhere who still bumps ryan adams? i mean really.

xpost

Just being frivolous, like. Whiskey-stained phoney Peckinpah hermaphroditism just wouldn't cut the mustard.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8349904.stm

A band of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara region have been crowned the winners of this year's Uncut Music Award for best album.

Tinariwen won for their fourth album Imidiwan: Companions, beating the likes of Kings Of Leon and Bob Dylan.

The prize is handed to the album judged to be the "most inspiring and rewarding" of the past 12 months.

Tinariwen, who formed in 1979 in northern Mali, were the only non-US act on the shortlist of eight.

The group rose to prominence in the 1980s, raising awareness of political issues faced in the region.

'Common language'

They later brought their plight in the southern Sahara to the wider world through their mix of electric blues with Middle Eastern and African sounds.

Tinariwen were a unanimous choice by the 11 judges which included Billy Bragg, Radio 2 DJ Mark Radcliffe and Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold, who won the award last year.

Uncut magazine editor Allan Jones said: "It speaks a common language. You don't have to have the lyrics translated to know what they're talking about. You don't need to listen to the words of rock 'n' roll to be excited by it."

Tinariwen's Ibrahim Ag Alhabib said: "It gives us the strength to carry on working and spreading the message about the peace of our desert home and I'm glad that our music can cross the frontiers and talk to people around the world."

Other acts in the running for the award included Wilco, Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear and The Low Anthem.

Tinariwen, who formed in 1979 in northern Mali, were the only non-US act on the shortlist of eight.

Oh, they luv their bit of Americana...

End of year list out now: http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/uncut.htm
(For the third year in a row, my number one album is the same as the magazine's...)

Why not paste it here:
1. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
2. Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/Light Years
3. The Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
4. Bob Dylan – Together Through Life
5. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
6. The XX – The XX
7. Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
8. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
9. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!
10. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
11. Bill Callaham – Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
12. Fever Ray – Fever Ray
13. White Denim – Fits
14. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
15. Bassekou Kouyate And Ngoni Ba – I Speak Fula
16. Florance And The Machine – Lungs
17. Doves – Kingdom Of Rust
18. Graham Coxon – The Spinning Top
19. Sonic Youth – The Eternal
20. The Horrors – Primary Colours
21. The Low Anthem – Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (Uncut Deliberate Error Charlie Brown Hahhaha)
22. Alela Diane – To Be Still
23. Manic Street Preachers – Journal For Plague Lovers
24. Micachu And The Shapes – Jewellery
25. Sunn 0))) – Monoliths And Dimensions
26. The Unthanks – Here’s The Tender Coming
27. Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs
28. Madness – The Liberty Of Norton Folgate
29. Pj Harvey & John Parish – A Woman A Man Walked By
30. Jim O’ Rourke – The Visitor
31. The Dead Weather – Horehound
32. Iggy Pop – Preliminaries
33. The Duke And The King – Nothing Gold Can Stay
34. Trembling Bells – Carberth
35. Tinariwen – Imidiwan: Companions
36. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport
37. Dinosaur Jr – Farm
38. Arctic Monkeys – Humbug
39. Cornershop – Judy Sucks On A Lemon For Breakfast
40. The Felice Brothers – Yonder Is The Clock
41. Van Morrison – Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl
42. Richard Hawley – Truelove’s Gutter
43. Bruce Springsteen – Working On A Dream
44. Reigning Sound – Love And Curses
45. Richmond Fontaine – We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River
46. Broadcast & The Focus Group - …Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age
47. Alasdair Roberts – Spoils
48. Raphael Saadiq – The Way I See It
49. Jay-Z – The Blueprint 3
50. Kurt Vile – Childish Prodigy

22. Alela Diane – To Be Still

^ I have no idea what this is.

39. Cornershop – Judy Sucks On A Lemon For Breakfast

hahahaha what the actual fuck

nice to see SFA getting some love

Good to see White Denim in there but good lord that is a boring top 10.

There's a lot of records I like in that top 10.

good lord that is a boring top 10.

― Space Battle Rothko (Matt DC), Wednesday, November 25, 2009 1:00 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

There's a lot of records I like in that top 10.

― exploding angel vagina (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, November 25, 2009 1:04 PM (56 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^these two statements are like hand in glove

i'm gonna have to start cranking up the vitriol about animal collective again, aren't i? had forgotten they existed for 7 months.

lol @ blueprint 3 being the token rap album, how obvious do they wanna make it that uncut writers have never heard of any rappers

am a great fan of SFA and The Wild Beasts in that top 10, the rest is pretty boring

i dont know the wild beasts, will i like them Louis?

Alela Diane = worthy singer-songwriterly folk on Rough Trade, got popular on the downlow I guess

hate the singer on Wild Beasts (and i like MPP)

i have exactly one of those 50, and i bought that so recently that it's still somewhere between amazon depot and myself. 8(

but there are two singers on wild beasts

erm not sure kerr, they are maybe a bit indie-pop for yr tastes, give 'em a go

Wild Beasts remind me of the mid to late 80s Scottish pop-rock band The Big Dish

If the Wild Beasts were around circa 1985-1988 you would lump them in bands like, The Big Dish, Railway Children, The Bible, Aztec Camera, The Go-Betweens, China Crisis and even pinefox faves Lloyd Cole and the Commotions

The BIG DISH - 'Prospect Street' - 7" 1985

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzMABzvQ_7U

compare

Wild Beast - Hooting and Howling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aamYQRX41j4

Alela Diane = Guy Garvey's (musical) crush of 2009

Oh my, I hadn't thought about the Big Dish for years. They were a lot less urgent than the Wild Beasts though weren't they? A lot less funny too. I love the Wild Beasts when they're good, I love the way the instruments are always playing patterns around each other, and the combination of the two vocalists can often be breathtaking. Not mad on the second half of the recent album though, they seem to be going for atmosphere over content, and I don't think they do that particularly well.

Ha I'm not saying that Wild Beasts are especially ~~out there~~ but I strongly doubt they will ever be Mondeo Pop as is being claimed here it would seem

oh dear god i had managed to erase the memory of the big dish out of my head.

I kind of get where martian is coming from though. Echoey 80s Edge-ish guitar sounds relocated to a less bombastic, more intimate context. Not going to listen to the Big Dish Youtube to verify though.

Too many thoughs, whoops.

lol @ blueprint 3 being the token rap album, how obvious do they wanna make it that uncut writers have never heard of any rappers

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 25 November 2009 13:07 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

just came to post this exact comment.

Why do people get worked up about there not being much hip-hop in white rock publications' lists (and let's not pretend that Uncut is anything other than a publication for white rock fans). I don't see Animal Collective fans getting worked up about their exclusion from The Source or Hip-Hop Connection.

I dunno, I think this could be their high placing year in HHC

it isn't that there is not much hip-hop - i'd much prefer no hiphop to ridiculously shitty token choices. blueprint sucks so much dick and doesn't deserve to make BEST HIPHOP ALBUMS OF 2009 lists, let alone be white peoples 1 choice of what to hear by black folk this year. no wonder everything is still so segregrated if that is what the lone recommendation is going to be like.

Anyone calling this list boring needs to remember IT'S UNCUT! The fact that Dylan isn't automatically top is a fucking miracle. The presence so high up of the XX, YYYs, Fever Ray, Phoenix and Dirty Projectors is pretty surprising too by Uncut's usual plodding, retrograde standards. I don't understand the why-isn't-this-apple-an-orange? school of complaint about publication lists. Same with Q - wouldn't have chosen Kasabian as the album of the year but there's lots of great stuff in their Top 50.

Maybe what Matt DC meant by "boring" is the convergence of Q, Mojo, Uncut, the broadsheets with the world of Pitchfork, hence Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear, for example, figuring everywhere. Thing is, every year we all complain about everyone else's end-of-year lists and then when ILX does a poll it ends up looking pretty much the same as everyone else's, with maybe a couple of key additions. Same happens on the Guardian site. The readers get incredibly sneery about the critics' choices, then there's a readers' poll and you can't put a cigarette paper between them.

The only solution to boredom with consensus lists is to have individual writers' choices running alongside them, which I think the Onion AV Club does.

And which Stylus always dis.

"The only winning move is not to play."

http://ilk.uvt.nl/wopr/WOPR.png

Sorry, I forgot about Stylus. Their tracks of the year used to be my favourite list of all. I'd sit there downloading all the stuff I hadn't heard - great way to learn about things (especially, for some reason, Swedish pop) that I wouldn't otherwise have come across, which obv is not something you can say about most EOY lists.

I think a refreshing alternative approach, whether a mag or site like ILM, is to just get 100 people to nominate an album which they blurb and then a vote is held to determine the order of those 100 albums (drawing names out a hat, starting with 100). might as well have a fun gamble on who gets to place where and what gets to be #1 that way.

I don't agree with the argument that Uncut/NME/Mojo et al are white rock mags, why should they cover hip-hop etc. Rock and indie may be these magazines' bread and butter, but unlike The Source, Classic Rock or Terrorizer, say, they're still generalist titles that dip into other genres for the benefit of their more open-minded readers, however tokenistic that coverage may be.

the current situation: re UK music mags

NME: going towards the mainstream of Q magazine under Krissi Murison (see recent front covers and NME weekly radio chart)

Kerrang / Rock Sound = main features are mostly mall-rock crap for teenagers

Mojo /Uncut / Word - all too retro, too establishment, too trad songs rock format

Q: rubbish mainstream pop-rock mag for absolute radio listeners

50 selected albums not on the Uncut Top 50 - to demonstrate other options are available, using current rateyourmusic.com placings

http://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/2009/1

3: Mastodon - Crack the Skye

4: Natural Snow Buildings - Shadow Kingdom

7: The Ruins of Beverast - Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite

9: The Chasm - Farseeing the Paranormal Abysm

10: Converge - Axe to Fall

13: Thy Catafalque - Róka Hasa Rádió

15: maudlin of the Well - Part the Second

16: Be'lakor - Stone's Reach

21: Ghost Brigade - Isolation Songs

22: Devin Townsend - Addicted

24: Riverside - Anno Domini High Definition

29: Rome - Flowers From Exile

30: Katatonia - Night Is the New Day

35: Clark - Totems Flare

37: Mew - No More Stories / Are Told Today / I'm Sorry / They Washed Away // No More Stories / The World Is Grey / I'm Tired / Let's Wash Away

42: Isis - Wavering Radiant

44: Between the Buried and Me - The Great Misdirect

55: Blut aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue With the Stars

57: Insomnium - Across the Dark

64: Paradise Lost - Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us

73: Cobalt - Gin

83: Obscura - Cosmogenesis

91: Ben Frost - By the Throat

93: Drudkh - Microcosmos

95: Sólstafir - Köld

110: Califone - All My Friends Are Funeral Singers

112: Astra - The Weirding

115: Bat for Lashes - Two Suns

121: Wobbler - Afterglow

125: Madder Mortem - Eight Ways

127: Port-Royal - Dying in Time

130: Porcupine Tree - The Incident

132: Tim Hecker - An Imaginary Country

136: Kalisia - Cybion

149: Wolves in the Throne Room - Black Cascade

150: The Field - Yesterday and Today

161: Anaal Nathrakh - In the Constellation of the Black Widow

163: Indukti - Idmen

171: Miriodor - Avanti!

173: Augury - Fragmentary Evidence

179: Absu - Absu

189: Kreng - L’autopsie phénoménale de Dieu

228: Sun of the Blind - Skullreader

264: Amesoeurs - Amesoeurs

270: Pet Shop Boys - Yes

273: Zu - Carboniferous

275: < code > - Resplendent Grotesque

286: Nosaj Thing - Drift

297: Altar of Plagues - White Tomb

maybe Bauer (ex EMAP) should bring Sounds magazine back and provide weekly opposition to IPC Ignite NME

I don't know about using RYM as a benchmark. They're a pretty small demographic too, 14-24 y.o. nerd boys into prog, post-rock and metal.

it isn't that there is not much hip-hop - i'd much prefer no hiphop to ridiculously shitty token choices. blueprint sucks so much dick and doesn't deserve to make BEST HIPHOP ALBUMS OF 2009 lists, let alone be white peoples 1 choice of what to hear by black folk this year. no wonder everything is still so segregrated if that is what the lone recommendation is going to be like.

otmfm

don't insult us all by including a token genre choice just so you can pretend you're all-inclusive (which basically = patting oneself on the back for being open-minded when you're nothing of the damn sort). especially not when it's such a shitty album!!! if you're going to cover a genre do it at least a modicum of justice - this approach is smugly self-congratulatory, critically deceiving and completely fraudulent.

I don't agree with the argument that Uncut/NME/Mojo et al are white rock mags, why should they cover hip-hop etc. Rock and indie may be these magazines' bread and butter, but unlike The Source, Classic Rock or Terrorizer, say, they're still generalist titles that dip into other genres for the benefit of their more open-minded readers, however tokenistic that coverage may be.

BULLSHIT are they generalist titles. the nme hasn't been a generalist title since i became aware of it. it is AN INDIE TITLE. why the fuck do indie people feel the need to prove they're open-minded so much?? deal with it, you're not, even if m.i.a. is your favourite rapper.

Maybe what Matt DC meant by "boring" is the convergence of Q, Mojo, Uncut, the broadsheets with the world of Pitchfork, hence Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear, for example, figuring everywhere.

^^totes true - i find this "critical consensus" rather depressing tbh.

Same happens on the Guardian site.

i've just submitted by guardian top 5 and am wondering if any of them will receive a second vote from any of my colleagues. i suspect they won't and find this rather sad.

*my

i really object to my favourite genres being treated by the mainstream press as minor pools that you can dip and out of as the mood takes you, without bothering to take on board those genres' values and priorities and rules and culture, basically. it is incredibly patronising.

130: Porcupine Tree - The Incident

This is the only album I bought or even heard out of all of those lists, and it sucked!

I should explain my post a little more clearly. Sure, Uncut, NME etc fail miserably at being generalist titles, but they're not specialist magazines in the way that Source, Terrorizer etc are, which is why I don't have a problem with them covering different kinds of music. That's not to say that the coverage isn't awful. Maybe they should just be honest and ditch any non-rock or indie altogether, but I can't help but feel that would be a backwards step. Maybe I have a certain sentimental attachment to the old NME and MM, where the likes of Kulkarni would write passionately about hip-hop. I know those days are gone, plenty of people start off listening to indie before exploring other kinds of music, and for me, it was articles in the mid-90s NME about Wu-Tang, say, that provided that portal. Ok, this was pre-internet (at least for me) and I moved onto specialist titles like HHC, but you've got to start somewhere. It had nothing to do with trying to prove how open-minded I was and everything to do with seeking out music that excited me. What worries me about today's NME is that readers won't get those glimpses of other worlds, although this is admittedly counter-acted by filesharing etc. Plan B, while working from an indie/underground centre, did a good job of covering black music in a way that wasn't tokenistic. They avoided the dipping into minor pools approach (which I agree is hugely frustrating) by respecting those genres, whether grime, improv or metal, and using writers who knew their stuff. I'd love to see the mainstream mags adopting a more inclusive, truly generalist approach, but conventional publishing wisdom tells us that can't happen. But in the absence of such titles, I don't think it should be a case of all or nothing.

Should be a "but" after "I know those days are gone."

@djmartian. So judging by those titles, are you saying magazines should cover more pretentious metal? With a handful of exceptions, that's ultra-obscure stuff there, and most of it of a certain ilk. I think I can live without hearing The Ruins of Beverast - Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite.

Dorian hates False Metal!

Foulest Semen isn't to everyone's taste.

Maybe what Matt DC meant by "boring" is the convergence of Q, Mojo, Uncut, the broadsheets with the world of Pitchfork, hence Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear, for example, figuring everywhere

Actually no I was referring to the records themselves, YYYs and maybe Dylan excepted. (It says something that I still consider the 354th Dylan album to be more vital and exciting than Grizzly Bear).

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/allan-jones-steps-down-after-17-years-editor-uncut-legend-within-our-industry-and-our-readers

Allan Jones steps down after 17 years

John Mulvey will replace him.
Jones out, Paul Lester back in?
Marcello Carlin?

Uncut was his idea, and he launched and guided it to great success at IPC, never losing sight of what affluent men with a passion for music wanted.

I'm thinking of launching Cut, the music magazine for affluent women. Who's with me? The first cover will feature Bob Dylan's severed penis.

I

I want to say thank christ, but it's not 2004 and I don't really care anymore.

Can't see it deviating away from the usual suspects, esp for covers/lead articles

The guy wrecked what was a decent read in the late 90s

Such an awful and ugly magazine from day one

Now where will we get regular updates on what Neil Young is doing, and read about the making of old Neil Young albums, every month? Oh yeah, ilx.

Hopefully, they'll bring back Allan Jones to write the five-star reviews of every Dylan album, complete with line about how laugh-out-loud funny it is.

xp loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

Actually that joke only works if you imagine there's the faintest chance of uncut becoming any different as a result of this

the ilx bit still works

never losing sight of what affluent men with a passion for music wanted
haha, this is great.
i haven't read uncut in forever (not affluent enough!) but Mulvey seems like a good guy with good taste.

hm. this magazine wasn't what i thought it was.

What a horrible name Uncut is. "Director's cuts", pure drugs, uncircumcised penises I guess

also Manx pronunciation of "uncouth", United Nations Commission on Urban Terrorism, the moment in a banal conversation just before one of the conversers makes a pointed observation, the runner up in the 1956 Epsom Derby

words, feelings, associations, connotations, a certain colour only observed in a back street of Buenos Aires on religious feast days

Oh maybe it's not so bad then

They really really really thought everyone should listen to Hammell on Trial a lot

Music magazines are best compared to other music magazines to put their character into stark relief, toget a handle on the market they are targeting and how they are doing this targeting.

Uncut, wants to be 90% Mojo and 10% Q and I guess that is a definite market segment unlike the 'never quite saw the point of it' Vox.

These days Mojo is quite often an interesting read, prepared to dig a wee bit deeper - if still relentlessly retro in terms of its musical interest. But Uncut has a narrower scope, has less interesting writing - both will stick Eric Clapton on the cover, but Mojo will have something on Can and Uncut will have something on Dave Edmunds Rockpile and the drunken japes they had in 1978.

Also, compare Mojo to that hideous "Prog Rock" magazine, which is desperate to claim to be not retro by mentioning newish bands (that sound like The Porcupine Tree or Dream Theater). Or the 'Cassic Rock' one.

The thing is whether the bulk of the people buying these magazines are those (men? 35-55??) who still like classic mainstream rock (as I do) but like wandering into odd nooks and crannies too (as I do) or whether they prefer the Uncut scope.

I'm amazed Vive Le Rock is still going.

I hated those gonzo Allan Jones gets drunk with pub rock/roots rock/new wave celeb articles from day one. Such tiresome nonsense.

who the hell buys Vive Le Rock, Classic Pop and Shindig?

What will become of John Mulvey's Uncut?

I hope it will get a bit more diverse. Whenever they let John Mulvey 'curate' a CD, which has happened a few times, I get turned on to a few new things (I think I first heard Oneohtrix Point Never on one of his CDs. And maybe Ty Segall? Wooden Shjips?)

I miss Plan B

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/allan-jones-steps-down-after-17-years-editor-uncut-legend-within-our-industry-and-our-readers

Allan Jones steps down after 17 years

John Mulvey will replace him.
Jones out, Paul Lester back in?
Marcello Carlin?

It's nearly ten years since I wrote anything for that magazine. Different times, different life.

I don't feel any pressing urge or need to write there again, and I'm sure the feeling's mutual.

Allan Jones leaving as editor:

http://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/uncut-editors-diary/clapton-mary-chain-macgowan-minutemen-hurray-for-the-riff-raff-inside-this-

Haven't read it in ages but still the end of an era (an era that probably really ended a decade ago but still).

Ed Hammell will be gutted

My god, that picture of David Gilmour on the front cover of the latest issue! What were they trying to airbrush him into? Fucking Dracula!?

But also, an actual Grateful Dead cd with actual GD tracks on it and no-one else.

Not played it though, but.

IT's an attempt to provide a potential alternative to the unreleased '72 studio lp which has otherwise been represented by live versions on Europe 72. All Live from various sources over 72 and 73.
Sounds quite good really.