TourDeFarce

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Here is Reach for the Dead, the first single from the new Boards of Canada album Tomorrow's Harvest, out 10 June on Warp. It's been seven year's since the Scottish duo's last release, and this year arguably only the world's favourite Frenchmen Daft Punk have outgunned them in the pre-release album buzz stakes. This week, Boards of Canada projected images of their new album onto the side of a building in Shibuya, downtown Tokyo following a series of mysterious clues left online and an unannounced 12-inch release for Record Store Day. Surely only The Flaming Lips playing in Space can top this (yes, Wayne Coyne talked on BBC Radio 6 this week about the possibility of doing this). Please make this happen, Wayne.

I've seen Beck do some pretty ambitious things live, like serving up dinner for a group of puppets onstage during a Radiohead support slot. More recently, Mr Hansen released an entire 'unrecorded studio' album as a book of sheet music. However this reimagining - and that's an understatement - of David Bowie's Sound and Vision with a 170-piece orchestra, a gospel choir and even a yodeler (though not one quite up to the standard of the performer in Focus' 1971 Magnum Opus Hocus Pocus) perhaps tops it all. The video was shot in Los Angeles this week for car manufacturer Lincoln's new "Hello, Again campaign." Prepare to have your mind well and truly blown.

London-based three piece Darkstar are back with new album 'News from Nowhere'. Once a band labelled as 'post-dubstep,' News from Nowhere sees Darkstar move into more lush, experimental electronic pop territory to great effect. The addition of James Buttery's vocals is probably the most striking example of their 'new' direction, but although the album has a brighter, more accessible sound than 2010's North there are endless nuggets of electronic experimentation to be discovered and the album bears scrutiny to repeated plays. I love North and saw the band live at Field Day in 2011, albeit in a small tent with some serious sound issues, and this album should see Darkstar open up to an even wider audience this year. Order News from Nowhere here and stream the album in full below. Released on 4/5 Feb on Warp.

Paddy Power. This was taken early in the morning in the hills above Ubud in Bali. We took a drive up to the volcano before cycling all the way back down again through villages and past more paddy fields.

Fog on the Tyne. The Gateshead Millenium 'blinking' bridge.

— Twop Twips (@TwopTwips) October 18, 2012

An intergalactic poster for the inaugural gig of SPACEGUARD last night in Edinburgh, designed by our very own lead vocalist Becky Rose Fisher.

They can try and shove copyright infringement down our throats, removing "O's" from "lympic Cafés" forcing us to eat nothing but McDonalds, drink vast quantities of Coca-Cola and watch TV exclusively on Samsung televisions, but they can't stop us eating Olympic Onion Rings™

Twin Shadow: Patient

First band of the day (Taken with Instagram at T in the Park 2012)