Beneath Welbeck Abbey, an expansive estate in North Nottinghamshire thus far untouched by any sort of National Trust daytripping, there is a vast network of underground tunnels, wide and stretching for miles around the roots of Sherwood Forest. Somewhere down there, according to my mother, there’s even a ballroom that she visited for a dance the best part of 60 years ago.

I first came across the English folk singer Sam Lee just over a year ago, when I wrote about a tribute album to Peter Bellamy. Alongside more familiar names like The Unthanks and Trembling Bells, it was Lee’s version of “Puck’s Song” that stood out, as he cut a fine path through an artful mix of old folk recordings and incantatory drones.

In 2005, I went to a talk Ridley Scott gave to ahead of the release of his Crusader epic, Kingdom Of Heaven.

A day or two before Julia Holter’s show at Café Oto, I tweeted something fairly dumb about not understanding why she hadn’t received anything like the same amount of hype as Grimes this year, based on my admittedly rather idiosyncratic idea that, amidst the reveries and abstractions, Holter has a knack for subtly accessible pop music.

What is Lawrence for? Given the acclaim for the recent “Lawrence Of Belgravia” documentary, you could be forgiven for thinking that his role as a British eccentric and pop star manqué is now much more important than the actual music he makes. That his character is more entertaining than his records.

In tribute to the late Band legend, who died in April 2012, this week’s archive feature is a fascinating piece from October 2009’s Uncut (Take 149) – Barney Hoskyns travels to Levon Helm’s Woodstock barn for one of his Midnight Rambles, a musical hogroast-cum-celebration of the drummer’s life and legacy. “To me,” says Helm, “it’s just rock’n’roll…” ________________________________

Things may be different now but, when I was an NME staffer in the 1990s, we were forever being accused of building bands up, only to take delight in knocking them down soon after.

To Café Oto, where a guy who goes by the name of Hitodama is making the sort of brutal avant-noise that a colleague is inspired to describe as “entropic deathwank”.

A while back, I read somewhere that Ben Chasny’s next Six Organs Of Admittance record would feature the heavy involvement of his old bandmates from Comets On Fire: it would be a kind of Comets reunion, was the speculation, albeit with Chasny in the driving seat rather than Ethan Miller.

Things aren’t due to kick off for a couple of hours at the Pavilion Theatre where throughout this year’s Great Escape Festival Uncut is hosting a splendid line-up. So early Thursday evening I’m at the Dome, where Australian psyche rockers POND are making enough noise to wake the long-time dead.