It’s possible to view the career of Sam Raimi as one might a musician of a certain stripe. The successful early indie releases, followed by uneven attempts to navigate the mainstream landscape; a dedicated fanbase for whom those formative cult projects are sacrosanct.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a week or so now, but pesky deadlines for next month’s issue of Uncut kept getting in the way. Anyway, here’s some thoughts on the trailer for the new Coen brothers film, Inside Llewyn Davis.

It’s an odd week to release a film, I guess, as no one’s entirely paying attention. The usual brouhaha surrounding this coming Sunday’s Oscars ceremony has been chewing up a lot of film content in magazines and on websites, while elsewhere the internet seems preoccupied with Star Wars spin-offs, Star Trek and Sin City posters and whether or not Sam Mendes will direct the next Bond film.

Until very recently, any mention of Bell Laboratories in conjunction with electronic music would’ve made me think of Laurie Spiegel, who worked at Bell Labs research centre in New Jersey while she was creating much of her extraordinary cosmic music in the 1970s.

Since Judd Apatow inherited the mantle of Hollywood’s king of comedy, one of the criticisms most frequently levied at him involves his willingness to promote those closest to him.

Just before starting to write this morning, I spent a while digging around for the old office ghettoblaster, computer-connecting technology having failed us in our attempts to play a new EP that turned up yesterday in cassette form. The EP forms part of the capricious launch strategy of Library Of Sands, a new project from a mesa-dwelling outlier called Naynay Shineywater, who used to front Brightblack Morning Light.

Last night, it was all about anticipation. First, the rumours started circulating that Michael Gove was implicated in some job-threatening scandal, only for those rumours to reach a resounding anti-climax, as The Observer’s story was revealed to be a little spat between a couple of hacks and some unsavoury Tory operatives.

It’s been a decade since the words ‘A Walter Hill film’ have graced the screen.

Reading a little about the whole Beyoncé lipsynching controversy the other day, I was tangentially reminded of an interview I did with Jim O’Rourke in, I think, 1999 (bear with me…).

A quiet office these past few days, as members of the Uncut team have dispersed to the States, Morocco and Portugal on various missions and holidays. Yesterday, the rest of us finished the next issue, which goes on sale January 31, and which features, among many other things, a piece about David Bowie and Tony Visconti, relating to something happening in March which isn’t “The Next Day”…