With just one week to go before this year's Electric Picnic it seems Baltimore beatster Dan Deacon won't now be performing after all. Having enraptured audiences in Andrew's Lane well into the night back in June, fans were eagerly awaiting his return at EP. However, despite being advertised as a new addition to the line-up back in July, it seems his appearance was never in fact confirmed. Here's the scéal straight from the horses mouth (well more like a MySpace bulletin!)

Subject: europe confusion

hello,

i just wanted to clear up some information about some shows that i am not playing but i am listed as playing. i will not be playing in europe in september. unfortunately, some of the possible shows got listed as confirmed and advertised. this has resulted in a major bummer as i cannot make these shows. i hope to make it back to europe again soon, but i do not know when that is. my apologies to everyone who was looking forward these fictional shows. this time, it honestly wasn't my f*ck up.

dan

Having been a huge hit at last year's festival and releasing one of the albums of the year thus far in Bromst, this is massively disappointing news. Here's hoping he'll be back on these shores again soon, but until then we'll have to make do with some online vids chronicling his unique approach to crowd control!

Jan

We devote ourselves entirely to this year's Electric Picnic. We've music from Fleet Foxes, Lykke Li, Echo & The Bunnymen, Two Door Cinema Club and many more Stradbally bound artists. We'll also be casting an eye over some of the non-music based activities on offer across the weekend as well as revealing which act have had the momentous honour of opening the festival bestowed upon them - think MC Hammer pants meets Vanilla Ice haircut!

The picnic people have now released the daily breakdown of acts across the fesitval weekend not to mention a map of the site, so get planning!

If you missed the show tonight at 7pm you can catch it again on Saturday at 6pm here.

Jan

Despite sounding like a horse racing commentator with chronic laryngitis it seems Bob Dylan may have landed himself a new gig as the voice of your trusty sat nav! After decades of anchoring wayward souls with his poetic odes to love and loss, Mr. Zimmerman is considering something of a career change, or at least a novel nixer! Apparently a number of GPS providers are in talks with the iconic musician in the hopes of securing his vocal services to provide voice overs for their products. Dylan himself had this to say about the prospect of becoming a dictator of directions, "I probably shouldn't do it, because whichever way I go I always end up at one place: Lonely Avenue."

You could never call Bob Dylan's voice beautiful, honeyed or even particularly pleasant but when it's telling tales of girls from the north country or heralding the dawn of a revolution it is among the most moving instruments ever committed to record. The combination of eloquent lyrics and brambled vocals is hugely affecting and most certainly greater than the sum of it's parts. So give me Blood on the Tracks for a road trip any day over Dylan telling me to hang a right at the next crossing for Highway 51.

Most likely you go your way, and I'll go mine Bob!

Oisín Leech of Lost Brothers will be chatting about their upcoming appearance at Electric Picnic not to mention recording with Arctic Monkeys, we'll also have new music from Fiery Furnaces and Barry will be linking Enya to Gnarls Barkley in this week's Six Degrees of Separation. Please note exposure to Enya's music will not exceed 7 seconds.

Also as a follow on to our last blog entry, it's good to see Radiohead releasing new music in a bid to reassure us that although albums may be a thing of the past, their music most certainly isn't! Tune into hear their free download only single 'These Are My Twisted Words' on Thursday at 5pm or toddle on over to radiohead.com and welcome it into your music library. A hint of Amnesiac track 'Dollars and Cents' about it, not to mention echoes of Portishead's 2008 release 'Third'.

Jan

According to Thom Yorke Radiohead's album releasing days are over. In today's Guardian he confessed that he just 'can't bear the idea of doing an album again'. Apparently the scale of such projects have become too much for the Oxford five-piece to cope with.

As a lifelong Radiohead disciple I'm gutted by the news - the release of a Radiohead album was always something of an event, even when it was sprung on us in the case of 'In Rainbows'. I remember being glued to my radio in the days leading up to the release of OK Computer on the promise that Dave Fanning would play a track or two ahead of the release. My fingers were primed to press 'Play/Record' at a moments notice and for days after I played those cassette recordings to the point of disintegration.  

Then there was the seemingly indefinite gap between OK Computer and Kid A. Ed O'Brien's online diary chronicled the fractious recording sessions and fears grew that there may not have been a band at the end of the process, let alone an album.

The summer of 2002 saw the band road test new material, that was to become Hail To The Thief, on an Iberian tour of small theatres. Poor quality recordings surfaced online within hours and again pulses raced at the chance to hear what this next album might sound like.

Well no more. No more limited edition releases of album picture books, road maps and fabric covered library books that never fit comfortably in a CD rack but were so beautiful you didn't care. It seems that from now on we'll have to make do with the odd EP available for digital download only. Well at least that's something.

Jan

Kevin Dunphy of Indiecater Records drops in for a chat about his digital only label this week, we've new music from The Dodos and Theoretical Girl and we prove that Dolly Parton and Mark E.Smith are separated by a mere six degrees!  

We're currently putting the finishing touches to our Electric Picnic special which you can hear on Thurs 27th August. We'll be shoe-horning as many tracks from as many Stradbally bound acts as we can into that show so if there's any in particular you want to hear just post a comment and we'll see what we can do!