Stephen Malkmus of Pavement fame has been in the UK this week touring his seventh album Sparkle Hard, as Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks.
 
Cat Power’s Chan Marshall was also in the UK the same week for her Roundhouse Camden show which Stephen went along to.
 
The Sparkle Hard LP came out back in May and featured Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon on a track Refute.
 
Next year will be Pavement’s 30th Anniversary but Malkmus has downplayed any chance of a reunion in interviews because of the Jicks touring and him having other projects going on.
 
We’ll hear more on those in due course in the music news - I checked in with Stephen Malkmus for BBC Radio 6 Music to see how it’s all been going on the road…

​A special run of gigs for Warchild have been announced with Jon Hopkins, Alexis Taylor and Everything Everything on the bill.
 
The three ‘Safe and Sound’ shows are taking place on the 25th, 26th and 27th November at Shepherd’s Bush Empire with all proceeds going towards Warchild’s Learn To Live campaign, raising money for children affected by conflict.
 
Jon has played a few charity gigs in the past few years for Help Refugees, Amnesty and the David Lynch Foundation and has Alexis Taylor and George Fitzgerald providing support on November 25th kicking off the trio of gigs.
 
The producer has had a huge year, releasing his fifth solo album Singularity in May, headlining festival stages including Wilderness, touring Europe and the next run is a huge UK tour.
 
I checked in with Jon Hopkins for BBC Radio 6 Music to discuss this charity show and how it marks the start of a different kind of live setting for his music…

We recently heard from Reeves Gabrels on his work on the re-versioned Never Let Me Down album coming out on the new Bowie Box Set Loving The Alien later this year.

He of course is also a member of The Cure and played with them at their British Summertime Hyde Park show earlier this month.

There’s no doubt about it, that show will be remembered in years to come.

In the midst of a heat wave, England had got through to the semi-final of the World Cup for the first time in many years earlier that day and the band played a storming set including many of their hits.

I spoke to Reeves for BBC Radio 6 Music to get a bit more insight into what it was like from the band’s viewpoint…