Today (January 28, 2015), social media reliably informs me that Robert Wyatt is 70, which seems a reasonable justification for reposting this long and, I hope, interesting transcript of an interview I did with him at home in Louth back in 2007, a little before the marvellous “Comicopera” was released. It begins with Wyatt discussing, of all things, Big Brother...

For many of us who came of age in the mid '80s, The Smiths probably provided the soundtrack to a political maturing as much as an emotional one. My epochal moment of teenage rebellion came on July 23, 1986, a day I had strategically reserved for the purchase of The Queen Is Dead, so as to coincide with the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.

Still at that stage of the year where I nearly type 2014 every time instead of 2015, but time moves on - swifter, perhaps, than Bjork for one would've liked this week, given how an unauthorised leak forced the release of "Vulnicura" a couple of months ahead of schedule.

1240: By the entrance to Somerset House on Waterloo Bridge, there is a shop called Knytta, where one can "create your own unique jumper and see it made in front of you."

March 2013, Richmond, Virginia. Matthew E White's Big Inner album has become a minor word-of-mouth sensation: a country-soul fantasia, saturated with lavish horn and string arrangements, mostly recorded in the attic of his Richmond house (You can read my 2013 interview with Matthew E White here).

Some fantastic new additions here, though it's been tough these past couple of days to navigate away from the playlist that Caribou posted on Youtube: 1,000 tracks that you're advised to play on shuffle. I keep getting Wire and J Dilla every time I dig in, but it's really a constant source of familiar pleasures and usefully contextualised new discoveries.

On December 3 last year, Nigel Godrich sent an early Christmas present to his 62,000 followers on Twitter. In a move doubtless sanctioned by his old friends, the producer posted a photograph of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood poring over a fiendish tangle of studio kit, styled very much as radiophonic engineers absorbed in the process.

First off, a quick announcement that our latest Uncut Ultimate Music Guide will be out next week, dedicated this time to Radiohead. I'll write more about that soon, but in the meantime, while I'm finishing the next issue of Uncut itself, please dig in to the assembled tunes below.

A belated happy new year, everyone; I trust the new issue of Uncut, with David Bowie on the cover, is easing you into 2015 in a relatively optimistic way. Not least, of course, because there's a hefty preview of some of the next 12 months' key albums, with plenty of quotes from the artists involved; Paul Weller, New Order, Laura Marling, My Morning Jacket, Matt White, Alabama Shakes, The Pop Group, Giorgio Moroder and so on.

Sorry I didn't manage to post a playlist last week; a combination of germs, deadlines and various other professional/seasonal distractions meant that I ran out of time.