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In the first of a series of five films featuring headliners playing at BLOC, Gary Numan sits down to chat Ultravox

Former Arab Strap man Malcolm Middleton plays under his Human Don't Be Angry alias tonight in London. Over the course of three interviews with Nicola Meighan, he delves deep into pop music, teenage metal phases and checking your head

A vinyl love-in to compare with Record Store Day, the Independent Label Market brings together the good and the great of the indies to sell their finest. Laurie Tuffrey went along to talk, shop and talk shop

Listen to Heaven in full below

Continuing the saga of the Loudun possessions made famous by The Devils, Jerzy Kawalerowicz's picture actually predates Ken Russell's masterpiece by a decade. Anthony Nield watches a landmark of Polish cinema, newly restored for DVD release later this month

Rodaidh McDonald again mixing the album, starting today

Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb passed away on May 20th, aged 62, after a long battle with cancer. Mic Wright remembers the career of a man whose achievements stretched far beyond his band's associations with disco

Watch video for the lead track from Pink Keys, the first album for release through excellent label Olde English Spelling Bee in around 18 months

Drummer Jon Teague and vocalist Daron Beck have been conjuring darkness together for years. After playing separately in a series of heavy Texas bands, they formed the fantastic shape-shifting doom-jazz group the Great Tyrant. The trio finished its sole album, There's a Man in the House, in 2008, but didn't unveil it until late last year via a largely overlooked limited vinyl release. That was too late for bassist Tommy Atkins, who killed himself in February 2010, leaving Teague and Beck to rearrange and relaunch their vicious blend of heavy metal and chamber rock as a duo. Pinkish Black is the debut from their new sans-bass duo of the same name, itself a tender if morbid tribute to the color of the blood-spattered bathroom walls where Atkins' body was found. Still, despite the long-running and tangled partnership of its makers, this seven-track LP feels like a fresh start-- for better and worse. 

Pinkish Black revolves around a convincing core identity of dense themes and dark imagery. At their best, these songs are thick, powerful thuds, with rubber band-like distorted bass from a keyboard growling between dynamic drums, teasing synthesizer lines, and vocals that push between operatic majesty and guttural infamy. "Fall Down" is the most systemic and convincing embrace of all of those features, with a sinister swing that recalls vintage Swans. The duo thrusts in the verses beneath lines about inevitable failure, appropriately delivered with the fervor of an apocalypse prophet. In the chorus, there's a sense of relief that borders on Walker Brothers grandiosity; Teague eases back against the drums, and Beck lifts his voice, like a young Bruce Dickinson calling for help from a basement. "Tell Her I'm Dead" evokes a similar whiplash, snapping time and again between a hypnotic, stoner-metal groove; spasmodic Naked City bursts; and a shrieking, knotty drone. Especially here, Teague and Beck sound impressively developed, especially for a relatively new duo. Their tones and timing are excellent, the work of two people who've collaborated long enough to know how they sound together in a room and, subsequently, on record.

But Teague and Beck seem uncommitted to that aforementioned anchor, a symptom that's perhaps a holdover from the Great Tyrant's stylistic sprawls. They pepper these tracks with distractions, as if to provide either a little levity or disruption on a set of songs that gain the most ground when they grind a tempo and tune into it. "Tastes Like Blood", for instance, opens with a piano-and-voice dirge about giving up, creating an unnecessary impasse between the perfectly belligerent "Tell Her I'm Dead" and the song's massive, nearly symphonic coda. It professes Pinkish Black's Scott Walker adoration explicitly, even though the band remains more compelling when that's a surprising accent of prettiness within the mire, not a substitute for it. "Everything Went Dark" begins with a short tape collage-- perhaps a Frank Zappa nod, but nevertheless a pointless hindrance to the genuinely hooky two-minute hit that follows. If the interlude has a purpose, it must be to convince Pinkish Black newcomers that they're more than an Om cover band; the mantric march that opens the album, "Bodies in Tow", might have suggested otherwise.

What's best about Pinkish Black, then, is also what's least successful about the record: It plays like a music-nerd game of Name That Influence, where the proper answers range from Suicide and Rapeman to Gary Numan and Throbbing Gristle. It's a good LP with a lot of great moments, then, an album by a band that exudes promise and, in just one attempt, almost fulfills it. Think of these 34 minutes as a first trip to a cool new friend's house. They try to impress you with their cared-for record collection. The thrill of hearing new sounds, however, will almost inevitably be beset when the new pal overreaches or undershoots, mixing some stuff that doesn't actually belong with songs you've already heard plenty. In the end, maybe it will finally be be the start of something great.

The sound of bass music is constantly mutating, and the UK label Hotflush has certainly played a part in that over the last nine months. While many of its recent singles still toy with big grooves, crisp hi-hats, and deep rumble, its releases have taken on a sonic guise that's straightforwardly melodic and, at times, pink-hued and romantic. Last year saw the release of Braille and Machinedrum's self-titled debut LP as Sepalcure, an adventurous record that explored sensual depths while appropriating sonic signifiers from assorted dance sub-genres; this year has brought the open-hearted second album from label head Paul Rose's Scuba project, Personality, as well as Scottish producer Beaumont's Never Love Me EP, which threw lush Italo synths into the mix and came adorned with the kind of artwork that Drive fetishists could get airbrushed onto the back of a leather jacket.

It makes sense, then, that Detroit producer and fashion photographer Jimmy Edgar is releasing his latest record, Majenta, on Rose's label, even if the team-up itself wasn't premeditated. (Edgar says this move came about after a dinner conversation with Rose and Sepalcure's Travis Stewart and Praveen Sharma.) As an under-30 with a career spanning more than a decade, Edgar's music strays just about as far from bass music proper as you can get. He works with a variety of sounds, from the type of techno that's closely associated with his hometown, to seedy, dank electro, to window-fogging, pitched-vocal R&B. Dance music by definition is made to move bodies, and so is Edgar's-- only, in his case, in the type of way that could get someone slapped with lewdness charges.

That is to say, Jimmy Edgar is insatiable. He loves talking about sex, singing about sex, referencing sex. This is a man whose most notable track in his eight years with Warp was titled "I Wanna Be Your STD", and who called his last album XXX (only after he decided to change it from its working title, Deeper). Majenta is similarly soaked in low-art sleaze; just scanning the tracklist ("Sex Drive", "Touch Yr Bodytime", "Hrt Real Good", "In Deep") is enough to make you question whether you really want to hear what the Majenta cut "This One's for the Children" is all about. (Not to worry: it's just your run-of-the-mill "Up with people, down with the system" slice of Detroit techno.)

Suffice to say, Edgar really overdoes it on the sex stuff, moreso than on the other albums he's put out in the last decade. It's not that dance music can't be carnal, but that everyone's idea of what's "sexy" isn't the same, so presenting a specific expression of sexuality as a universal representation is a dangerous tightrope walk. At his core, Jimmy Edgar is a hippie, if a bit of a ridiculous-sounding one (he claims in the album's press release that he's recently "made galactic contact with the community"), but the only way Majenta could bring people together is if they were convening to nervously giggle at Edgar's various trying-too-hard vocal turns, which come across as erotic as reading Fifty Shades of Gray on the subway.

Musically, Majenta initially seems better than XXX, only because the lack of uniformity that plagued the latter LP means that the former's standouts-- the warm, skipping vocal house of "Let Yrself Be", electro-bass near-twins "Indigo Mechanix (3D)", and "In Deep"-- stand out that much more. Unfortunately, more than mediocre tracks or throaty sexual goofs, what does in Majenta is its scattershot nature. There's no flow to the way the album's sequenced, to the point where it seems purely arbitrary. Furthermore, Edgar seems so concerned about skipping between genres that he neglects to refine any one specific sound; even the strongest cuts rarely rise above "nice try." Edgar is clearly aiming for some sort of climax-- spiritually, musically, sexually-- but by the time Majenta sputters to a close, all he's left with is a mess on his hands.

For all the big hooks and pop appeal, Vampire Weekend have always shown more than a few interesting sides to their music, including West African keyboard tones, hyper-lyrical twists, and percussion that is more likely to interlock than simply keep time. Chris Baio's bass playing is a key part of the band's signature rhythmic palette and always has a jaunty bounce to it. His first solo outing in the form of a short EP titled Sunburn not only feels connected to his playing in Vampire Weekend but also extends far from anything on his 9-to-5 band's records.

"Sunburn Modern" relocates Vampire Weekend's staple West-African influence to somewhere around the Balearic islands. The skeleton of the song is made from a trio of lightly tapped bongos, balmy vocal stabs, and an electronic bassline that leaves heavy footprints. That bedrock is rhythmic with Baio teasing out all sorts of neat interplay around a 4/4 beat. The rest follows a deceptively simple format; keys track the slow but purposeful movements of the bass while whispering synth-strings provide a touch of melancholy for shading. The song isn't too far away from the ideas Air France were mining on No Way Down, and Baio achieves a similar vibe of sun-bleached bliss.

Despite the brevity of Sunburn (just three tracks) it's impressive how easily Baio puts down a marker. That he spends most of his time playing bass makes total sense in this context, too: each element on this record is consumed with rhythm and pacing. Even the big melody lines come from percussive instruments or sounds. Consider highlight "Tanto", for example: Steel drums drive its early momentum before Chilean vocalist and experimenter Matias Aguayo opens things up with a characteristically choppy, rhythmic take full of depth and motion. Aguayo might not be singing anything in particular, but the gentle, precise movement of his chant-like vocal is both fun and strangely euphoric. The song truly approaches the point of bliss when Baio sweeps away the clutter halfway through, allowing those vocals, a dewy keyboard, and finger snaps to hang in the air for just a minute.

Baio's rhythmic approach comes undone on the EP's one weak spot, "Anonymity", showing there's still a little way to go for his solo efforts: The beats fall too straight, and the whole thing ends up feeling undercooked. That said, it's difficult to draw many conclusions from such a slim set of songs, and most of the time the humid fun of Sunburn's best moments make for enjoyable, nicely transportive stuff.

On their debut album, Nupping, Dope Body hit loft-show paydirt by splicing noise-rock with melodies salvaged from the junkyard of 1990s FM radio. That may sound like an unpalatable combo, but the Baltimore four-piece used each genre to subvert the other's worst tendencies. A swatch of Red Hot Chili Peppers homage could complicate the menace from a song stacked with splintering feedback. A few atonal squelches helped tweak a pummeling riff's macho momentum. The result was heavy music that possessed moments of levity but avoided parody. Now, perhaps weary of having Anthony Kiedis comparisons lobbed at them, Dope Body have backed away from the butt-rock influences. 

On their follow up, Natural History, they've chilled out a bit. Maybe some of the mystical neo-Americana vibes championed by their new label, Drag City, have rubbed off on them. The first sound on the album isn't a blast of feedback but the tingling of wind chimes. That song, "Shook", lilts back and forth on a languid two-chord vamp with frontman Andrew Laumann grunting quasi-mystical pronouncements, striking closer to Lungfish's Daniel Higgs than Zack de la Rocha. "Crystallize the eyes/ Let them know you can feel it/ I feel it all around," he grunts.

Even in its most jittery, Nintendo-nostalgic moments, Natural History is a roomier effort than its predecessor. On Nupping, guitarist Zach Utz loaded songs with sonic belches and abstract gurgles. This time he's more selective with the audio-graffiti. His playing has taken a more melodic turn, incorporating elements from Holy Ghost Party, his tropical-psych guitar side project with Dope Body drummer David Jacober. On "Weird Mirror" he plots out a pattern of robot-rock riffs that make the band sound like the Cars channeling San Francisco sci-fi proto-punk duo, Chrome. 

Brutishness is still Dope Body's forte, though, and they haven't abandoned it. During the chorus to "Road Dog", Laumann gets inspirational, chanting the lines, "Do what you want to do... Be who you want to be." But he barks the words like a gym teacher on the edge of blowing his anger-management course, commanding listeners to either self-actualize or drop and give him 20. "Out of My Mind" churns like an off-center cement mixer, with a bassline that probably owes a few royalties to Soundgarden's "Slaves and Bulldozers".

It's one of the only flickers of 90s worship on Natural History, but there are still plenty of moments when the line between goofball antics and freakish punk-rock blowouts gets blurred. They may have changed up their game, but Dope Body still nail the sweet spot between savagery and self-awareness.

Even the best relationships acquire baggage. Circa 1999, Def Jux forged a fiefdom from the ashes of vinyl champs Fondle 'Em and the soon-to-be-ruined promise of Rawkus. "Independent as fuck" was the mantra, and for those wondering why MF Doom and the Roots couldn't get airplay, it may well have been a war cry.

Until Russell Simmons took a temporary sabbatical from model mongering to threaten a trademark-infringement lawsuit, even Def Jux's name riffed on (Darth) Def Jam, the rap overlord at its greased-up and growling Ruff Ryders, Jigga, and Ja Rule apex. But back when the "Underground" was tagged in capital letters, the promise of an alternate subterranean grid seemed infinite. Fat Beats did booming business. Hip-hop culture mags cropped up to survey the soundbombing. Clinton was President. Gas was $1 per gallon. A Bellevue-certified eccentric like Kool Keith could get Doctor Octagon dough from Dreamworks to squander in and around the West Hollywood IHOP.

During that last spring of the 20th Century, Rawkus Records released Soundbombing II-- an Underground Now That's What I Call Music!-- that banged incessantly in dorm rooms across America and England. It marked the first and only time Eminem and El-P shared space on wax. Yet it didn't feel that weird at the time. People still used the phrase "on wax" and Shady had only recently signed to Interscope. To balance his quality time with Dr. Dre, Marshall Mathers also worked with people like Thirstin Howl III and Outsidaz. As the demented fan from "Stan" said: "I like that shit you did with Rawkus too, that shit was phat." Not only did people still use the word "phat," they opted to build clothing lines around it.

You can trace the genesis of El-P's solo career back to Soundbombing II's "Patriotism". A five-minute fulguration to American culture and the military-industrial complex, it was credited to Company Flow, but his one-time rhyme partner Bigg Jus sat on the sidelines. The next year, the group released its final single, "DPA". It was the second release on the fledgling Def Jux and doubled as a mission statement. This is "heart of darkness," El-P fulminated and as if to prove his point, George W. Bush "won" the Electoral College several months later. He may have been referencing Joseph Conrad, but the Brooklyn bomber soon received a bête noire worthy of Richard Nixon and Raoul Duke. The new imprint existed to chronicle the fear and loathing. And by 2007's I'll Sleep When You're Dead, he confessed to "a gonzomatic fear turning [him] Hunter S. Thompson."

At least that was the image that took root. The reality was more and less sophisticated. Bizarro attempts to break the mold with funk-fusionists Chin Chin and the original Lonely Island, Party Fun Action Committee, rarely received the attention they deserved. Nor did the mutant howls of Camu Tao, whose genre-clobbering experimentation influenced Kid Cudi, Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire, and Danny Brown. Luck didn't lend itself to the Def Jux enterprise. Rjd2 could have re-made Deadringer a half-dozen times, and both label and artist could have reaped that soccer mom Moby licensing money. Instead, he ditched turntables for the microphone, signed to XL, and offered prayers to the mustache of John Oates. Meanwhile, meal tickets Cannibal Ox couldn't get it together for a sophomore album and were last seen wandering lost around the Gardens of Asgard.

That's a lot to deal with for any label head, let alone one tasked to redesign the Delorean every five years. It's hard enough to rap and make beats professionally, never mind having to worry about C-Rayz Walz wanting help with his 401(k). Factor in the ravages of online piracy and the tragic death of Camu Tao, and bombing the system seemed like the only obvious option. Yet what might've been most damning was that Def Jux became imprisoned by ideals that belonged to a different era. Even if most of their artists had long outgrown the "Us vs. Them" mentality, outside perception didn't always chart the progression.

By now, Eminem was making 12-step anthems for trailer trash. Soundbombing II star Common was allowed to wear angora and cinematically woo Queen Latifah with his low-post moves. But El-P and by proxy Definitive Jux were stereotyped with opinions like the one A$AP Worldwide co-founder Yams offered earlier this year: Company Flow fans don't buy A$AP Rocky records. Maybe that was true 10 years ago (if A$AP Rocky been out of Junior High), but the truth had become closer to El-P's response: I'm in Company Flow and I listen to A$AP. It was the rap equivalent of the Battle of New Orleans. The cease-fire had been signed, but there was one last conflict before putting the era to sleep.

With the exception of the Jay-Z/Kanye/Young Money/Rozay axis, the rap game has largely flattened out (or bottomed out, depending on your angle). A guy like Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire can get a deal from Universal after releasing a free mixtape over old Necro and El-P beats. Waka Flocka fronts this month's XXL, but Killer Mike and El-P get second billing alongside Chief Keef, Curren$y, and Slaughterhouse. 2Chainz is playing Rock the Bells. Things are more similac than they've seemed in a long time.

Cancer 4 Cure is both reinvention and inversion. El-P's first album since putting Def Jux on hiatus in early 2010 marks a break from the old order and another call to arms. Whereas Fantastic Damage served as a Def Jux coming out party and I'll Sleep When You're Dead synthesized the sweaty jitters of the mid-Dubya daze, Cancer 4 Cure consciously creates its own iron galaxy. None of the Def Jukies appear, save for Despot. In their stead are eXquire, Danny Brown, and a snarling Killer Mike, whose El-P produced R.A.P. Music is already the front-runner for rap album of the year. Any one of their guest spots could be a hip-hop quotable, if we still lived at a time when people cared about the Hip Hop Quotable. But my vote goes to Danny Brown, self-described as "Ric Flair/ With thick hair/ Yelling out 'woo'/ Getting head in the director's chair."

Cancer 4 Cure's closest analogue may be Portishead's Third: the textures and tones are distinctly different from past releases, but it's unimaginable that it could be made by anyone else. El-P has described the record as fight music abstracted. To be more specific, it's fight or flight music. Primal response mechanism rap. And like any good storyteller, his narratives are rooted in conflict. On "Tougher Colder Killer", El-P inhabits the mindset of a soldier haunted by post-traumatic stress, who made "his enemy dig his own grave at the point of a gun." "For My Upstairs Neighbor" finds the protagonist getting grilled by cops about a domestic violence situation in his apartment building. He tells "Columbo" nothing, but later confronts the abuse victim in the stairwell and whispers to her, "do the thing you have to and I swear I'll tell them nothing." Meanwhile, "Works Every Time" is a drug dealer dialectic between the urge to self-medicate and the consequences of the obliteration.

The closest thing the record has to a love song is "The Jig Is Up", where the hook uses the words of Groucho Marx to describe a relationship: "I wouldn't want to be a part of any club that would have me." Even "Sign Here", a song grappling with sexual power issues uses an interrogation room as a metaphorical backdrop. You don't need me tell you that it's heavy. It's a record from El-P, a man who could make Pollyanna see poltergeists. But to balance out the hangman's tension, there's "Drones over BKLYN" and "The Full Retard", two clavicle-cracking rants reminiscent of the old El-P, with rhymes "short and fat like Joe Pesci" that would "slap you out of your fucking shit."

The beats. The synths sound like they've been stolen from a bargain bin on Alpha Centauri, stocked with futuristic workout anthems for robot soldiers. Listening to it in daylight hours can make you feel allergic to sunlight. Most rumble at 130 to 140 BPM and feel uniquely congruent with and ahead of the times. After all, the producers at L.A.'s Low End Theory and the early London dubstep architects all owe a small but significant debt to El's experiments with negative space and bone-chipping bass.

What grounds the record is a scarcely subliminated obsession with death. Dedicated to Camu Tao, whose demise directly preceded its creation, the characters are forever warring with some imminent end, whether creative, romantic, or literal. It's rare when re-inventions seem so deliberate but unselfconscious. And through the struggle it gains a certain scarred freedom. It's simultaneously able to stand alone but alongside that trademark blend of sneering New York City skepticism. It sheds the bullshit of the past and is stained with the weary residue of an incalculable number of cigarettes, weed deliveries, bodega runs, and blind turns. It's the best kind of tribute El-P could make: a record that you can pump like they do in the future.

Ahead of Slayer's Reign In Blood ATP IBYM show and the release of PHILM's debut album Harmonic, Dave Lombardo tells Toby Cook about his 13 favourite albums

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