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.

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.