Tabla de contenidos para December 2025 en MOJO

Bob Gruen Bob is one of the most respected rock’n’roll photographers of all time (his iconic images include Sid Vicious eating a hot dog and this month’s MOJO cover shot of John Lennon) and the author of 15 books including Rock Seen, John Lennon: The New York Years, and an autobiography, Right Place, Right Time. Andy Fyfe Andy has been a MOJO contributor for nearly 25 years, having previously staffed at NME, Select, Q and The Timaru Herald. His interview with Lucinda Williams (see p24) went so swimmingly he’s considering taking up her invite “to come and stay when you’re next in Nashville”, where he won’t be drinking Aperol spritz. Warren Zanes Warren is a professor, musician and writer. His songs co-written with poet Paul Muldoon and produced by Tony…

…Out in January, THE CRIBS’ Selling A Vibe is their first album in five years. Patrick Wimberly, whose credits include Beyoncé, Solange and MGMT, produces …DAVID GILMOUR (right) told Rolling Stone he is “slowly building up towards a new album, and I have quite a bit of material that is in some sort of formative stage” …Düsseldorf EBM veterans DIE KRUPPS will release a new album next year, as will industrial pipe-bangers TEST DEPT …Dave Mustaine announced that MEGADETH will release a new LP early next year: “This is also a perfect time for us to tell you that it’s our last studio album,” he added …the story of LANA DEL REY’s next record, now called Stove, rolls on. She told fashion periodical W magazine that most songs will have…

OF ALL THE great harmonising groups of reggae, there is something particularly transcendent about The Congos, whose 1977 spiritual opus Heart Of The Congos has been hailed as the Pet Sounds of roots. Surprisingly, their first, foundational session with producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at his legendary Black Ark studio was as much serendipity as design. Speaking from his Long Island, NY apartment, bass singer Derrick ‘Watty’ Burnett recalls the scene. “Cedric [Myton] and [Ashanti] Roy [Johnson] were singing and Scratch said, ‘Cedric, you sing high, Roy, you sing middle.’ Then he said, ‘You need an anchor.’ Then he looked at me and said, ‘Watty, you be the anchor.’ That’s how I joined The Congos.” “We did the track Fisherman first,” he goes on. “Scratch put on the tape and we…

THE 'TRUE' DEBUT Lucinda Williams (ROUGH TRADE, 1988) Williams had recorded two folk and blues albums for the Smithsonian’s Folkways label, but Lucinda Williams was effectively her unveiling. Living in LA, on the verge of quitting after CBS passed on a development deal, she was rescued by a call from Rough Trade in the UK. Comparisons with Emmylou Harris were warranted, but Williams showed a much darker and broken toughness, and Like A Rose remains one of her favourite songs. THE LIFE-CHANGER Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (MERCURY, 1998) The byways of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana backdrop songs about Williams’ troubled childhood and tumultuous relationships, as Southern gothic as a William Faulkner novel. Bringing in Steve Earle and Ray Kennedy to produce halfway through infuriated long-time producer and band…

IT IS A HOT SUMMER’S DAY IN THE COURTyard of Les Récollets, a former Franciscan convent turned artists’ residence nestled in Paris’s 10th arrondissement, between Gare de l’Est station and the Canal Saint Martin. Sitting under a grey garden parasol, cradling a voluminous silver handbag, her eyes hidden behind a pair of gold human-fly sunglasses, Brigitte Fontaine lights the first of many Craven A cigarettes and inhales deeply. “Je veux des orchidées,” growls the 86-year-old singer. “I want orchids.” It is both a riddle and a languid welcome to this writer, a non-French speaker, who is interviewing Fontaine with the help of her French biographer and interpreter, Benoît Mouchart. The reference, I quickly guess, is to the 1939 novel, No Orchids For Miss Blandish, written by an English author, James…

Vendrán Suaves Lluvias GLASSNOTE. CD/DL/LP Born from anger and sorrow, the Mexican singer’s dreamy second album. ESTRADA’S 2022 debut, Marchita, announced the arrival of a serious talent; its sequel demands you get on board. Raised in a Veracr uz home filled with traditional Mexican canción and ranchera – both her parents are luthiers – she fell as a child in love with classic female jazz singers; her own music sits in a gorgeous, smoky middle ground – cool vocals that swoop and float, lush arrangement, hints of passion burning close to her heart. There are nods to her roots – the playful harp on No Te Vayas Sin Saber, the subtle brass band (North Macedonian) on Dime, a country twang on El Alma Mía – but nothing detracts from her…

The Replacements Let It Be (Deluxe Edition) TWIN/TONE/RHINO. CD/DL/LP ONE DAY in the winter of 1983, Paul Westerberg – singer, guitarist and songwriting leader of Minneapolis trouble boys The Replacements – phoned manager Peter Jesperson with hot news: “I just wrote the best song I’ve ever written, and we need to record it right away.” Jesperson said there was no rush; the band’s second album, Hootenanny, had just gone to the pressing plant. Jesperson soon heard why Westerberg was so excited. During a gig at a local club, the singer, drummer Chris Mars, lead guitarist Bob Stinson and Bob’s teenage brother, bassist Tommy Stinson, lit into “a bouncy tune I didn’t recognise,” Jesperson writes in a reminiscence for this multi-disc return of the group’s next LP, the schizophrenic 1984 masterpiece…

The Art Of Falling Apart UNIVERSAL MUSIC. CD/DL Six-disc document of Leeds Poly sleazeballs’ death trip. BLISSED OUT on ecstasy when they made hit-laden debut Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, Soft Cell switched to acid for its 1983 follow-up: a synth-noir bid to burn off their Smash Hits audience. Proto-baggy lead single Where The Heart Is tosses a grenade into the heart of family life, while filth-funk follow-up Numbers is a sour count of the notches on Marc Almond’s bedposts. Neither troubled the UK Top 20. Teardrop Explodes horns embellish album opener Forever The Same, but Soft Cell liked things nastier; Baby Doll celebrates a heroin-addicted stripper while the title track delights in describing the sex dwarf in the mirror. “My cigarette diet means my throat hurts like hell,” sings Almond. “My…

You’re No Big Deal CHERRY RED. CD Co-curated by Mudhoney’s Mark Arm, a 4-CD box of Grunge, The US Underground And Beyond 1984-1994. WHATEVER ‘GRUNGE’ meant, it was never homogeneous. Mudhoney and Soundgarden, two bands that became synonymous with this loose tag, didn’t actually sound much alike, despite their shared roots in the ’80s Seattle underground. Yet the genre’s pliability has guaranteed endurance, and one reason You’re No Big Deal works is due to the sheer eclecticism of these 81 tracks. Co-compiler Mark Arm is justifiably well represented by two selections each from Green River and Mudhoney, and one from notorious side-lark The Thrown-Ups, while he can also doubtless take credit for the collection’s pronounced Australian accent (Scientists, Feedtime, Beasts Of Bourbon, Celibate Rifles, Cosmic Psychos) plus the presence of…

There are other releases to explore from this period, including 1972’s In Concert, a roiling stew of psychedelic power that was critically snubbed at the time, and Bill Laswell’s 1998 remix project, Panthalassa, which was integral to the late-’90s re-evaluation of Electric Miles. That era ended with Davis’s semi-retirement in 1975. However, if you dig this stuff you are urged to explore an even more underappreciated period: his comeback era, particularly 1984’s much-maligned Decoy. As for books, the most constructive writing on this era can be found in Philip Freeman’s Running The Voodoo Down (Backbeat). There is also Paul Tingen’s Miles Beyond (Billboard) which is out of print but can be found on archive.org. We must end, however, with the astonishing theheatwarps.com, home to multiple live Miles recordings from 1969…

Brandi Carlile COUNTRY ROCKER, CONNECTOR What music are you currently grooving to? I really like Medium Build, Remi Wolf and Gigi Perez. I love Lucy Dacus’s new album – and there’s this guy I listen to all the time called Ruston Kelly. Bon Iver’s new album is my favourite one he’s ever made. I’ve been making a lot of really lyrically focused playlists and listening to them out on my fishing trips in the Pacific Northwest. [Joni Mitchell’s] Hejira is the soundtrack of my life right now though, and it’s crazy how beautifully it dovetails with all that modern music. Absolutely ageless. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? I think [Joni Mitchell’s] Blue. That album created so many of us, whether we know it or…

THE BEATLES Anthology, 1995’s mammoth, in-their-own-words TV series, was long overdue an upgrade. And so, with audio remixed by Giles Martin, November’s 30th anniversary revamp now adds a new ninth episode featuring “unseen behind-the-scenes footage”. As seen on the Special Features disc that came with the 2003 DVD box set, much additional film was captured of Paul, George and Ringo at work and play in the 1994-5 period, when they reconvened to complete Lennon’s Free As A Bird and Real Love demos. Highlights included the trio hanging out at Harrison’s Friar Park and McCartney’s Hog Hill Mill studios (including one lesserremembered, laughter-filled scene where Harrison attempts to remember the acoustic guitar part of Norwegian Wood). Elsewhere, regrouping in Studio 2 at Abbey Road with producer George Martin, the three listened back…

"THE ANGLIA SQUARE was this iconic brutalist architectural structure in Norwich,” reflects Eric Goulden of the cover image of his embattled but defiant new album England Screaming. “And it’s about to be demolished.” Still sustaining, he’s managed to survive such a fate himself. With help from Ian Dury, Nick Lowe and the Stiff label, 1977’s blessed debut Whole Wide World remains his calling card. Dig deeper, though, and there’s much more, from Medway punking with The Len Bright Combo, LPs with his wife Amy Rigby and solo records plated with songwriting gold. “I once thought writing songs was a very useless thing,” says Eric. “But I realised that it does have a huge value, because when people are being diverted by this stuff, they’re actually using their minds.” England Screaming…

Heart Of The Congos (BLACK ART, 1977) Flawless three-part vocal harmonies and spiritual roots conjured by The Upsetters, and produced in headspinning style by the at-the-peak-of-his-powers Scratch at Black Ark. Denying Babylon never sounded so sweet. Natty Dread Rise Again (REAL AUTHENTIC SOUND, 1997) The A-team reunite, creating vocal alchemy over a stirring dub and roots soundtrack. Key tracks Judgement Day and Apartheid, both seething indictments, feature The Skatalites’ mighty sax player Roland Alphonso. Back In The Black Ark (MEDIACOM, 2010) Actually recorded with Perry in Myton’s studio, the trio deliver a mix of covers and originals. Burnett excels on Sam Cooke’s Chain Gang and Tony Joe White’s Rainy Night In Georgia, a song he memorably tackled as Rainy Night In Portland with Scratch in 1977 as a solo act.…

1 JUDAS PRIEST FT. OZZY OSBOURNE WAR PIGS (CHARITY VERSION) A faithful take on the Black Sabbath classic, bestrode by Ozzy and fellow Brum metal titan Rob Halford. Proceeds go to Parkinson’s disease charities. Find it: streaming services 2 PINK FLOYD THE MACHINE SONG (DEMO #2 REVISITED) A taster for December’s Wish You Were Here reissue, a preparatory sketch with the EMS VCS 3 synth at its haunting best. Find it: streaming services 3 IDLES WITH JACK WHITE NEVER FIGHT A MAN WITH A PERM At Chicago’s Riot Fest in September, Idles welcome Jack on-stage for severe guitar worrying on their pummelling pub-fight song. Find it: YouTube 4 DION I'M YOUR GANGSTER OF LOVE Ageless, The Wanderer blues rocks amorous persuasion via wild mob metaphors – imagine it on The Sopranos. From new album The Rock ’N’…

IT’s DECEMBER 1984, AND Prince Rogers Nelson should be on top of the world. His latest album, Purple Rain, is deep into an unbroken 24-week run atop the US charts. His semiautobiographical movie of the same name – which he seemingly willed into existence – is on its way to earning over $70 million worldwide, 10 times its budget. And the Purple Rain tour, a 98-date victory lap through arenas, stadiums and superdomes across the US, is underway, employing a crew of 105, including bodyguards for the star and his band, The Revolution, who are now experiencing levels of stardom akin to Beatlemania. But while Purple Rain has made him a superstar, just as he’d planned, Prince is restless. Backstage at the Rosemont Horizon Arena in Illinois, where their five-night…

IT’S ONE LEVEL OF PRESSURE TO be making a film about Bruce Springsteen, but it’s another entirely knowing that the subject himself is about to visit the set. Director Scott Cooper was only four days into shooting Deliver Me From Nowhere, his Jeremy Allen White-starring cinematic portrait of Springsteen, based on Warren Zanes’ 2023 Nebraska-era biography, when the Boss dropped by one of the movie’s various New Jersey locations. “Look, any time you’re making a film about a cultural icon and someone who’s as legendary as Bruce, there’s always trepidation, right?” Cooper laughs. “But Bruce was never directive. He was only there for counsel if I had questions about, What exactly was your emotional state? We were shooting in very specific, authentic places that Bruce spent a lot of time…

“I FIRST discovered Brigitte Fontaine through Comme À La Radio. I thought that record was great, what she was doing as an improviser with these free jazz improvisers. Then I met other enthusiasts like Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab. She hipped me to Brigitte Fontaine Est… Folle and her records with Areski. She’s a completely singular talent, singing these very surrealist, feminist, neo-magical lyrics with this avant-garde music. We met her through the French division of Virgin Records. There were some young people there who’d seen us namechecking Brigitte so we got this invitation to collaborate on her 2001 LP, Kékéland, at Studio Mega, in Suresnes. Areski was very welcoming and friendly and cheerful and Brigitte was very sweet. We thought we’d be improvising with them as the Art Ensemble did…

The Beach Boys Smiley Smile (Brother, September) The first instalment of Smile debris – including the Van Dyke Parks-driven jalopy that is Heroes And Villains, bad trip cabin fever of Fall Breaks And Back To Winter, ecstatic whimsy of Wind Chimes, plus, lest we forget, Good Vibrations. If history were not so hung up on Brian’s ‘lost masterpiece’, this would get way more kudos. The 13th Floor Elevators Easter Everywhere (International Artists, October) The scary flip of acid rock, with extra acid. Charging, intense garage freak-outs peak on epic Slip Inside This House and Satanic Monkees of (I’ve Got) Levitation, with Tommy Hall’s jug wubblings a premonition of acid house arpeggiators. “If your limbs begin dissolving, in the waters that you dread…” then what? Drop another tab? Eric Burdon & The Animals…

John & Yoko/ Plastic Ono Band With Elephant's Memory And Special Guests Power To The People Universal. CD/DL/LP THE MOST challenging of John Lennon’s post-Beatles albums, there was latterly an additional barrier to Some Time In New York City being afforded the lavish box set treatment: namely that opening track. With said song now removed, a newly remixed version of the album – retitled New York City and Disc 4 of nine boxed here – more than shines. New York City, promoted to open, epitomises the improvements. Where the original suffered from tinniness, boxiness and unnecessary slathers of reverb and echo, here, with Lennon’s voice cranked, it comes on like a punchy sister track to The Beatles’ Back In The USSR. More clarity benefits Angela, too, enhancing its dreaminess with…

1. Come Together (live) Previously unreleased, newly remixed version from the evening show of August 30, 1972’s One To One Concert. Lennon, Yoko Ono and Elephant’s Memory tear into the Abbey Road groover, with Lennon’s vocal grit in full effect, even if he doesn’t remember all the words (“he got hairy arsehole,” indeed!). Come Together (live at The One To One Concert, Evening Show) - John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with Elephant’s Memory (Lennon/McCartney) The One To One Concert, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 1972. Recorded 30 August 1972. Published by Sony/ATV MusicPublishing LLC. ℗ & © 2025 Yoko Ono Lennon under exclusive licence to Mercury Studios and Universal Music Recordings (a division of Universal Music Group). GBCBR2510114 2. Well Well Well (live) On another remixed gem from the…

Cheap Trick All Washed Up MBG. CD/DL/LP IN JUNE 2007, the Illinois Senate passed a resolution naming April 1 ‘Official Cheap Trick Day’. It was also April Fool’s Day, which made sense, as there’s always been something daft, yet quietly subversive, about Cheap Trick. Their image – two pop-star pin-ups and their geeky mates – embodied this. And they’ve kept the joke going, even though guitarist, songwriter and über-geek Rick Nielsen’s son Daxx has long since replaced original drummer, Bun E Carlos; he of the droopy ’tache and rumpled bank clerk demeanour. Since their late-’70s salad days, Cheap Trick’s world has been defined by fleeting highs, crashing commercial lows, and plenty of gibbering “We’re not worthy”-style praise from ’90s grunge and punk-pop acts raised on the likes of Heaven Tonight…

μ-Ziq 1979 BALMAT. DL/LP In contrast to releases on his own Planet Mu imprint, Mike Paradinas’s second evocative trip for Balmat veers into more plaintive territory. Inspired by visits to towns north-west of Madrid, from which his family hail, the veteran producer delivers a collection of drone, ambient and breakbeat that shimmers and glows like the Spanish sun. Clark Steep Stims THROTTLE. CD/DL/LP Clark’s thoughtful electronica has made him a consistent, reliable presence across film and TV soundtracks. Steep Sims – full of emotional rave energy and trademark Clark-ian melodies – is an unabashed U-turn towards club-adjacent beats, led by the Orbital-esque, electro brass workout of Infinite Roller and Globecore Flats, whose brutal drum’n’bass is offset by wonky, retuned piano. Dylan Henner Star Dream FM PHANTOM LIMB. DL/LP Dylan Henner…

Joanna Duda Trio Delighted BYRD OUT. DL/LP Six years since the avant experimentalism of debut Keen, this inventive Polish musician reinvents the piano trio alongside bassist Maksymilian Mucha and drummer Michał Bryndal. From We’re New To This Planet’s wildly distorted vamping to When The Truffles Get Dry’s arch stop-start, intensity is their identity. Duda’s unconventional songs unfailingly connect – even a spry turn from rapper Jakub Jan Bryndal fits like a glove. Peter Evans' Being & Becoming Ars Ludicra MORE IS MORE. DL/LP The New Yorker’s third album spills with elusive ideas from a well-drilled band. Be it Evans’ machine-gun trumpets blasts above musique concrète (Pulsar) or Joel Ross’s shimmering Brazilian-themed vibes (Images), their lively boundary-shifting over Michael Shekwoaga Ode’s drums is exhilarating. They reinvent Russian punk-poet Yanka Dyagileva’s My…

Tony Joe White The Real Thang SWAMP. DL/LP WHEN TONY Joe White died in 2018 his son Jody, for the best part of two decades his manager, took on the task of keeping his father’s musical legacy alive. In the home studio where his dad did much of his recording up to the end of his life, he found a stash of reel-to-reel tapes of songs and demos, many unfinished, all unreleased. Since then he’s been tirelessly digitising and releasing them. First was Smoke From The Chimney (2021), an interesting collaboration with The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. With a band of Nashville studio musicians, Auerbach fleshed out the songs Jody White gave him and produced a ‘new’ posthumous Tony Joe White album. This latest archives release is a different kettle…

Plato Leiden To the Netherlands, where vinyl delights old and new await. “PLATO IS ACE,” says reader Richard James Foster, decisively. There are other branches of Plato across the Netherlands, but Plato Leiden was the first. Opened in 1976, it’s been owned by Sicco Hoetink since 2012 and offers a broad range of new and used rock and pop, jazz, soul, reggae, metal, country and classical vinyl, CDs and DVDs. “Everybody knows it in town and it’s been here for ever,” says Sicco, a fan of Parliament, ’90s rap and Mac DeMarco. “We basically just have things that people want, which is quite diverse, from Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift to a lot of metal, second-hand classical CDs, Rumours, In Rainbows, The Queen Is Dead…” There are also several inviting…

MOJO welcomes correspondence for publication. Write to us at: MOJO, H Bauer Publishing, The Lantern, 75 Hampstead Road, London, NW1 2PL. E-mail to: mojoreaders@bauermedia.co.uk NOT EVERYONE IS COMFORTABLE WITH how music and politics have fed off each other over the decades, as our mailbag will testify most months. Nevertheless a spirit of protest, an imperative to speak up for the oppressed, has been a constant in much of the music we celebrate in MOJO. This month, for example, we find Lucinda Williams grappling with how “Being positive is always more difficult than just going ‘everything’s shit’, spewing out vitriol. If you’re going to do that, make it count, like Dylan did in Masters Of War.” We listen in on Mavis Staples at 86, continuing the work she began as a…

FACT SHEET Title: TBC Date: 2026 Production: TBC Songs: TBC The Buzz: “I’ve done quite a lot of songs already, but I’m not at the stage yet to go into a big studio. I don’t know which way it ’s going to go yet, but I think every thing in music sounds quite clear at the minute, there’s a lot of clarity. Maybe it needs to be like My Bloody Valentine again, where you’re struggling to hear the vocal.” Jane Weaver "IT’S ALWAYS good to have a view in your studio,” says North-west pop auteur Jane Weaver. Known unofficially as the Turret or the Tower, it’s located in an old mill in the rural end of Stockport. “When the weather’s really nice, I can see all the hills towards Glossop,” she adds. “As long as…

NERVOUS. THAT’S the word for Parisian photographer Claude Gassian as he waited to greet the rising star that was Patti Smith – unnerved by the defiant gaze beamed from the cover of her debut album, Horses. “That frontal black-and-white portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe,” as he describes it to MOJO today, “that look somewhere between Johnny Thunders and Keith Richards… That arrogance impressed and worried me at the same time.” But when Smith arrived in Paris in spring 1976, to play shows at Élysée Montmartre and Pavillon de Paris, Gassian found himself embraced by the singer, her band and entourage. Smith, of course, was already a noted Francophile, an admirer, as Gassian points out, of Charles Baudelaire, Guillaume Apollinaire, Antonin Artaud, Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Luc Godard. “At the Élysée Montmartre,” he recalls,…

IN THE HUSHED YET AIRY “COCKTAIL PARLOUR” of a Bloomsbury hotel, where well-heeled ladies discreetly Aperol Spritz away their afternoon, alt-country queen Lucinda Williams settles onto a window seat in the bar’s corner turret. In January she releases her sixteenth studio album, World’s Gone Wrong, yet five years ago a stroke at home in Nashville left her unable to walk or play guitar. Mercifully, her speech and singing voice were left intact, and she was back on-stage, albeit in a wheelchair, a mere six months later. She says walking still makes her feel self-conscious: “I imagine people are looking at me thinking, Wow, she’s really drunk.” Now 72, Williams’ life has been filled with adventure and jeopardy. Perhaps it’s in the blood. She was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to…

Mavis Staples Sad And Beautiful World ANTI-. CD/DL/LP IN A CAREER that began 75 years ago, pre-dating even Alan Freed’s adoption of the phrase ‘rock’n’roll’, Mavis Staples must have thought she’d seen just about everything; one of the most recognisable voices of the United States’ struggle for civil rights, she continued singing on the side of the righteous as the search for equality dragged on. Now 86, she should be taking it easy, assured her wars have been won. Yet, here we are in 2025, and the last member standing of The Staple Singers is dusting off her old friend Curtis Mayfield’s We Got To Have Peace, her work incomplete as long as the world continues to promote leaders too dumb to understand the message. Staples’ solo career took a…

A Bridge To Far BELLA UNION. CD/DL/LP Denton, Texas psych-folk romantics tap “hope as a human necessity”. THERE’S SOMETHING nourishing about Midlake’s best records, of which A Bridge To Far [sic] is certainly one. All yearning flute and restorative vocal harmony, opener Days Gone By is delicate but radiant, while Guardians, too, feels mystical; charmed, Madison Cunningham’s guest duet with Midlake frontman Eric Pulido conjuring early Pentangle. At root, Midlake’s sixth is governed by themes of stoicism and life-event forced humility, but on harder-hitting gem The Ghouls, they exorcise the demons challenging them via a relentless piano hook and a thundering rhythm section. These songs are like amulets or affirmations, then, a conclusion supported by the spacey, weesmall-hours jazz of Make Haste, with its troubled protagonist pledging courage and resolve.…

Off The Record XL RECORDINGS/INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM. DL AFTER THE sumptuous orchestrations of 2022’s In These Times – a suite years in the making – the Chicago drummer and sound collagist digs into his archives over four EPs: Techno Logic/The People’s Mixtape/Hidden Out!/PopUp Shop (also collected as Off The Record). Culled from collaborations with folklorist Ben LaMar Gay and tuba evangelist Theon Cross, the squiggling Techno Logic is the most challenging but also deeply satisfying, while a similar insistence infuses the recently captured The People’s Mixtape, alongside trumpeter Marquis Hill and vibraphonist Joel Ross. While Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker and saxophonist Josh Johnson’s exploratory r uminations dominate Hidden Out!’s reworked 2017 sessions, it’s 2015’s PopUp Shop that accentuates the hip-hop-indebted rhythmic propulsion forever bubbling below the surface. McCraven’s post-improv production ‘process’…

SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK drummer RAY MAYHEW (below, b.1965) was one of the two percussionists in Tony James’ controversial group, who enjoyed success and infamy in 1986. After a gig in Reading, the News Of The World claimed Mayhew had injured a fan with a bottle, under the cover headline ‘HORROR OF SPUTNIK MANIAC’ (James printed up T-shirts reading ‘Ray Mayhew Is Innocent’ as a “nod” to Sid Vicious). After the hype, the backlash was severe, and the group split in 1989. Mayhew later fronted his band Mayhem Deranged. SINGER MARGIE NEEDHAM (b.1929) was an air stewardess for United Airlines before joining all-female vocal group The Chordettes in July 1953. Their recording of Mr Sandman reached US Number 1 in 1955 and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in…