Really taken with the Suzanne Ciani album this week. Lindstrøm only arrived today, so I need to listen properly.

Pretty interesting and diverse list, I think, pieced together under some moderately intense deadline heat. “Raid” by Pusha T with Pharrell and 50 Cent is the best rap track I’ve heard in a while, though truth be told I haven’t heard much in a while.

Among the multitude of underground micro-genres that have grown like bacilli these past few years, one of the most refined is ‘Modern Classical’. Ostensibly, much of the music that is sold under this pretext is a kind of evolved ambience, with compositional pretensions: a tidy hybrid of Gavin Bryars, Brian Eno and Erik Satie that is almost invariably pleasant, but which often seems to affect substance without actually delivering it.

To the Roundhouse last Saturday, for the Wilco and Jonathan Wilson show, which I suspect one or two of you may also have seen.

Even in the hinterlands of myth, the notion of sex with snowmen seems rather a neglected subject.

Very much feeling the first two on the list this week. And also Number 16, last week’s mystery record, now revealed…

Been a while, but I have a selection of excuses: finishing one issue of Uncut; pondering a longish Album Of The Month review that I’ll post here asap; getting deep into the business of another Uncut Ultimate Music Guide, to follow up our Bowie edition; crunching the votes for the mag’s albums/reissues of 2011 charts; and so on.

As a general rule, I tend to think that my complete lack of musical ability hasn’t been too much of a handicap to a career as a critic. Unburdened by doomed musical projects – or, indeed, talent – it means I can avoid judging the success of artists against any creative failures of my own.

Highlights this week: Thee Oh Sees; a 30-minute live version of “Spoon” on the repackage of “Tago Mago”; and prolonged, intimate exposure to “Wolfroy Goes To Town”.

A new Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album often prompts me to visit a remarkable resource called The Royal Stable, a website dedicated to thoroughly cataloguing and cross-referencing this most fiendishly complicated of musical careers.