Between this Edge Festival show going on sale and the date of the performance, Conor J O'Brien and his band have found their debut album, Becoming a Jackal , nominated for a Mercury Prize. So the audience were treated to the rare sight and sound of a group on the crest of a popular wave playing in one of Edinburgh's smallest and most atmospheric venues ...
50-11: The countdown ... 50 DANGER MOUSE The Grey Album ... deleted, 2004 ... The idea of mashing up Jay-Z's Black Album with the Beatles' White Album was irresistible; those surprised by the brilliant results included the former's lawyers ... 49 ... DESTINY'S CHILD Survivor ... Columbia, 2001 ... Destiny's Child's multi-platinum bootylicious third album spawned four huge singles and sent the trio into the stratosphere, making Beyoncé a superstar ... 48 RACHEL UNTHANK AND THE WINTERSET
The aspiring grime spitter featured in the first issue of OMM back in 2003 and made the cover in 2007. Now he's the biggest British pop star of 2009 ... On the evening of 19 October 2003, the crowds gathering on Tower Bridge to await David Blaine's emergence from his Perspex box heard a booming bassline bubbling up from the fast-flowing surface of the Thames beneath them. A small boat packed with revellers – notable among them the already familiar, wiry figure of Dizzee Rascal – had sailed
When she rhymes, disarmingly, "Got more lies in my CV than pros got STDs," she's not wrong. The initial backstory behind south London rapper Speech Debelle, surprise winner of the Mercury prize, was all to do with homelessness ...
(National Elf) ... Sufjan Stevens's symphonic tribute to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway will be sold as a lushly appointed CD/DVD package with "stereoscopic 3D Viewmaster reel". Euros Childs's fifth solo album is already available in its entirety (via blog.myspace.com/euroschilds) as a free download, and is to be sold in CD form only at live shows and (at some unspecified point in the future) by mail order. The strange thing is, if you had to say which one of these records makes the best use of
Fresh from their skronking Mercury Prize performance, the downtown-ish London-based quintet deliver a white hot blast of pugnacious funk meets free jazz ...
With their first album out on 5 October, Mumford & Sons' London performance was a key test for the young English folk group who've already been tipped for next year's Mercury Prize. With a sold-out venue and anticipation about the show high on the back of much recent hype, there is nonetheless something dark and confessional in songs like "White Blank Page", which resonates with an audience who observe the tribute to lost loves unfold with a reverence rarely witnessed at live performances. Even