So Mark E Smith is a DJ, right? He's booked the club for the night, therefore it stands to reason he can play the records. But then this German guy turns up and says he's the DJ, says he's Sven Vath. Whatever should Mark do? Simple: "I flooded the club," he says proudly. That'll show them.

I was recently moved to reminisce about the night Lou Reed invited me to dinner after a show at the Hammersmith Odeon, an occasion that famously ended up in chaos when he was annoyed by something David Bowie said to him that sparked off quite a lively assault, Lou smacking Bowie somewhat savagely around the head.

In between all the meetings and extraneous stuff today (oh, and kicking myself for missing the Leonard Cohen lig that Allan blogs about here), I've belatedly got round to hearing Gallows.

The Cuckoo Club is a swish, luxuriously upholstered private members bar and restaurant, just off Regent Street, where everything that isn’t leather, velvet, silk or glass is gleaming stainless steel, or something that looks like it.

It's odd, but the two albums I've played most in the past week both remind me a bit of LCD Soundsystem. This might be because I've played the LCD album more than anything else this year. But 1990s and Von Sudenfed both have strange affinities with James Murphy, I'm convinced.

Just a short post today, basically to bring to your attention a video on YouTube that I’ve been alerted to.

The big film this week is 300, director Zack Snyder’s gory and rabid retelling of the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 brave Spartan soldiers faced down the massed ranks of the mighty Persian Empire in 480BC.

Hey, one last report from last week's South By Southwest festival. This one is by Ben Perreau, who edits Uncut and NME's websites. Ben seems to have spent most of the week failing to get into parties and fantasising about Smashing Pumpkins, but he did manage to see the mighty Gallows, The Gossip and plenty more cool stuff. . .

I received an interesting message yesterday from SAm, responding to my preview of the forthcoming Elliott Smith album. "It bothers me a little bit to read, here and elsewhere, Elliott's 'strummed melodies' described as 'simple'," he writes.

Porcupine Tree return with their ninth studio album and reveal all.