The concept is simple. Beck gets a bunch of his music mates around and reinterprets a classic album over the course of a day. Then he gets long-time collaborator Nigel Godrich round to tart it up and posts it on his site, along with some suitably low-fi videos.

Leonard Cohen and The Velvet Underground have got the treatment so far.

First track off the new Massive Attack album was previewed last night on Zane Lowe’s Radio One show. Splitting The Atom features D. and G. along with Horace Andy. Listen here.

  Mssvttck - Splttngthtm by slsrx

I know this is a total indulgence, but Kind of Blue, the album that pretty-much shaped modern music, was 50 years old this week – a pretty good excuse to post this video of a simply fabulous version of So What. Brilliant.

There will not be a dry eye in the house when Edwyn Collins takes the stage at the Edinburgh Festival on Saturday night. 30 years since the release of Falling & Laughing, back in the town of his birth and it’s his 50th birthday.

But the real celebration will be for the remarkable and brave progress he is making from the two serious strokes and subsequent MRSA he suffered in 2005. There’s some great footage on the BBC Radio 4 site showing him rehearsing for the Edinburgh show and an interview with Edwyn and his wife, Grace, where they talk candidly about his illness and recovery.

This is at least ten years old, but I only stumbled upon it at the weekend. MMW have long-been one of my favourite bands – they are all shit-hot musicians and this collaboration with John Scofield is amazing. But just look at their faces. This is some seriously extreme jazz-gurning. You could watch this with the sound turned down and still know what they were playing. Great stuff.

Really looking forward to having a go at this. 

David Byrne is a genuine genius and his Playing the Building project is just another example of his restless creativity.

So if you don’t own it already, do believe the hype. Here’s my favourite track – Tweedy’s best in years. Are they real Nudies, they're wearing?

As collaborations go Dangermouse, Mark Linkous and David Lynch is about as good as it gets. Dark Night of the Soul is an art/music/film collaboration which may or may not see the light in the next couple of months. You can download the the photobook here, but until Dangermouse resolves his differences with EMI, the music content – featuring a veritable who’s who of guest vocalists from Iggy Pop to Wayne Coyne -  is limited to a blank CDR for you to use when you’ve found out where to download it for free anyway.

Here is N.A.S.A’s brilliantly inventive video for “A Volta”. It’s closer to a mini animated short than a pop video. Violence, swearing, and a drug-taking mouse.

Wilco gave away a download of their cover of “I Shall Be Released” with the Fleet Foxes, in return for a pledge to go out and vote at the US election. At last someone’s posted a live version on You Tube.

If you haven’t heard the Jay-Z/Radiohead mash-up currently doing the rounds on the net, it’s pretty damn cool.

You can download it here.

Here's Brooklyn's finest playing the best track from the best album released this year on Jools Holland's show a couple of weeks back. What a class act?

Magazine - simply the best and most influential English post-punk band of them all - are reforming to play two shows next year to mark 30 years since their first gigs.

They only made three or four albums in the late 70s and early 80s but you can hear their influence on everyone from Radiohead to the Kaiser Chiefs. Fans are encouraged to vote for the set list for the shows at their My Space site.

Good excuse to dig out the classic Top Of the Pops performance of "Shot by Both Sides"

Tom Waits launched his current world tour - which is getting gushing rave reviews – with this typically, well, Tom Waits ish press conference.

via Pete Neame

Managed to get tickets to see “An Honest Jon’s Chop Up” at the Barbican on Saturday night. From Mali music (natch!) to 70’s soul diva Candi Staton via some English acoustic folk, the spin-off label’s A&R policy is nothing if not eclectic, and it was great to see both floors of the stuffy old venue on their feet.

There’s already some crappy, mobile-phone footage on You Tube, but I saw quite a few cameramen on stage so hopefully something slightly-better quality will be available soon.

In the meantime here’s a clip from Damon Albarn’s 2002 Mali Music review at the same venue to whet the whistle.

I think I started to lose interest in Beck when he started getting all Scientologist-on-my-ass a couple of years ago.

Which is a shame, because it means I’ve only really got in to “The Information” (his most complete album yet?) in the last couple of months. Further redemption seems to be on the way with his next album - I really like the first single, “Chemtrails” – which is due out soon.

Clearly he’s a nutter - but a talented nutter all the same.

I’m posting this because a) I like unusual cover versions and, b) Radiohead’s rather sycophantic fans are getting themselves all worked-up about this on You Tube.

Yorke’s vocal isn’t a patch on Beth Gibbons’ and this lacks the great little retro-sounding drum machine on the original, but quite nice all the same

It's great to see that Bruce Weber's 1988 masterpiece "Let's Get Lost" - his Oscar-nominated biopic of Chet Baker - is getting a long-overdue re-release. I was never a big Baker fan, but you can't fail to be moved by Weber's sympathetic documentary of the troubled trumpeter's career.

Here's the trailer, which features plenty of shots of pre-addiction Baker when he could comfortably claim to be the James Dean of jazz, as well as some footage of Chet just before he died.

His version of Elvis Costello's "Almost Blue" manages to be both one of the best and one of the worst cover versions ever recorded - at the same time.

I knew it was going to be bad, but not this bad! As one Gawker blogger points out, it sounds like a recording of signing along into a old-timey tape recorder while wearing headphones listening to the original.

The line-up for Massive Attack's Meltdown festival was announced in The Observer last Sunday and the annual bun-fight for tickets officially started this morning.

Most media coverage has focused on Grace Jones and the rarer-than-a-Pete-Neame-round UK performance from the Yellow Magic Orchestra. For me, though, the pick of the festival will be Terry Callier's performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the Friday night.

Callier is no stranger to these shores and his annual Jazz Cafe residency is anticipated with almost religious fervour by his many British fans. He's 62 now, but rather than kicking-back and living off his extensive back catalogue, he's in the form of his career and his writing and live performances just seem to get better and better.

Here's the great man performing Lazarus Man. Got my tickets already.