The Bulletin: Arts & Culture News | 23 January

COMEBACK KINGS: THE RETURN OF PRINCE AND SENSER
Senser staged a slight return in 2009, releasing an album – How To Do Battle – and touring worldwide. The band, who first came to prominence in the early '90s with their deeply political brand of heavy rock, industrial and rap, included a DJ from legendary illegal rave crew Spiral Tribe, and were favourably compared at the time to bands like Rage Against The Machine and Pop Will Eat Itself. Using the PledgeMusic crodfunding platform, the band have announced their return in 2013 with a new album – To The Capsules – and live dates across Europe. You can pre-order the album now by pledging a donation. There's also a snippet of first single Witch Village available below.

Another artist staging a comeback this year is Prince. His Royal Purpleness has "done a Bowie" by releasing a new song and video via his website, with minimal fanfare and press attention. The new cut, titled Screwdriver, features a typically sex-injected Prince chorus ("I'm your driver, you're my screw!") and, a riff that could've been penned by Rick Parfitt. If you try and forget that last fact, the new song is rather enjoyable – a rhythm and blues stomper with a catchy chorus. Stream it at Prince's new website.

NEW VIDEOS FROM PAWS, THAVIUS BECK AND CODY CHESNUTT
Scottish garage-rockers PAWS rather special debut album Coke Float on Fat Cat got a great review from us back in October, and the band gave us a hilarious interview to boot. Now they're back with a new single and video for the track Sore Tummy, featuring Alice Costelloe from Big Deal. Stream the video below, and catch PAWS live on 14 Feb at Glasgow's Mono.

Thavius Beck is the electronic superproducer, sometime-rapper and Ableton Live ambassador behind the albums Decomposition (Mush), Dialogue (Big Dada) and The Most Beautiful Ugly, the last of which came out on Plug Research, and garnered an excellent review from us back in September, We also interviewed him back in 2009, and had some delightfullly esoteric chat about Hermetic philosophy.This week he unveiled the video for Joy, taken from the latest album.

Gnarly helmet-wearing neo-soul veteran Cody ChesnuTT releases the new single from his critically lauded album Landing On A Hundred on March 18 on One Little Indian, following it up with some dates down south. Last year, ChesnuTT gave a revealing interview to The Telegraph about his decade in the music business and his latest album. Watch the video for 'Till I Met Thee, directed by critically-acclaimed film-maker Terence Nance.

SO LONG HMV... HELLO INDEPENDENTS?
Record Collector Magazine have capitalised on the possible imminent disappearance of music retail giant HMV from the high street by compiling a free online directory of the UK's independent record shops. HMV may currently account for a gigantic share of the market in terms of sales of music and DVDs, but Record Collector Magazine argue that because the independent shops are more numerous, HMV's potential demise could be seen as an opportunity to support the independents, of which there are a great many more. According to the magazine, there are 700 independent record shops in the UK, compared to just 236 HMV stores. Get online noe and find out where your local independent is - go and buy some vinyl!  

DANIEL LOPATIN RE-WORKS CLINIC
Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, has re-worked tracks by Liverpool post-punk/synth-pop four-piece Clinic, to produce a follow-up to their 2012 album Free Reign, released on Domino. The new album Free Reign II is influenced by "burnt '60s / '70s dub," Amon Düül II and Les Rallizes Dénudés, according to Lopatin, and is out on 4 March. Listen to two of Lopatin's re-works below.

FESTIVAL WATCH: REWIND SCOTLAND, PRIMAVERA SOUND
Rewind Scotland is "the '80s Festival" - a chance to kick back and enjoy some of the most commercial, best-forgotten music of what was, on occasion, a pretty hideous decade for music, fashion, culture and humanity in general. Taking place at Scone Palace between 26 and 28 July, this year's bill lacks many of the artists we would have picked, in an ideal world. So no Giorgio Moroder, no Vangelis, no seminal Sheffield post-punk bands, no Depeche Mode. Natch. Luckily A Flock of Seagulls are playing, and they have one good song. If you look carefully, you'll also see Soul II Soul, meaning that street soul and hip-hop are at least represented. The rest of the lineup is enough to make you perforate your eardrums and run screaming into the woods in search of cover, as a march of hideous, past-their-best also-rans mumble out their back catalogue: you can catch Jason Donovan, UB40 (the Ali Campbell version -- unbelievably, there are two now), Level 42, Kim Wilde, Rick Astley a whole host of other acts. The horror, the horror. If you've manage to hold back the vomit, and haven't slipped into a coma through sheer lack of interest, tickets are on sale from Friday.

In other festival news, Primavera Sound, Barcelona's annual experimental music extravaganza, announces its full lineup for 2013 later today. Eyes on the website for details, where they're counting down the seconds until the announcement. A tantalising leaked poster for the 2013 festival promises some big, big names - although unconfirmed officially, it's an A-Z of all the bands you like, from Aesop Rock to Blur via Cabbbibal Corpse, Death Grips and El-P, right through to Yeasayer and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. If even half the bands on the leaked poster are playing, this could be the 2013 festival to rule them all.

CASSETTEBOY VS. OBAMA
Audio-agitator and cut-and-paste satirist Cassetteboy is at it again, this time mashing up Obama's inauguration speech. "We must faithfully execute members of the United States congress, all the math and science teachers, and a little girl from the streets of Detroit," Obama tells a cheering crowd. That's good policy!

LEGO STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES OUT RELEASED ON DVD
The Lego Star Wars animations are always a lot of fun – they jokingly tell the story of what happens between the Star Wars episodes, sending up characters, classic scenes and lines from the original movies. Their latest offering, The Empire Strikes Out, takes place between Episodes IV and V, and is out on DVD in the UK on March 18. Stream the episode below (via Indie DB).

Lego Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Out - Indie DB

SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER TRAILERS: AFTER EARTH, WORLD WAR Z, PACIFIC RIM
The release dates of these three science fiction movies are approaching fast, so we thought we'd haul out the trailers, and give you a look at the goods (yes, zombies count as science fiction – argue with us in the comments below if you disagree). Brad Pitt vehicle World War Z hits UK cinemas in June - scripted by Damon Lindelof, from the astonishing book by Max Brooks (to which it bears scant resemblance, by the looks of things), the trailer makes this one look pretty bloody awful, if we're honest. Badly CGI-d deadheads, dubious reliance on "I MUST SAVE MY CHILDREN" tropes and a woeful disregard for the source material do not bode well at all. The trailer's worth watching though, just for a cameo by Glasgow's George Square, playing the part of Philadelphia. Could the curse of Val Kilmer have finally attached itself to Pitt after his embarassing Chanel ad? You decide!

Then there's Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim, due out in July. What can we say about this? It's a smash-em-up CGI extravaganza, with humanity's last hope (Sons of Anarchy sexpot Charlie Hunnam... possibly in line to replace Pitt as the only viable alternative to Ryan Gosling, for ladies and gents who like a bit of rugged eye candy) leading a battalion of warriors (including the always-watchable Idris Elba) into battle, battering seven shades of shit out of extra-dimensional sea monsters in their gigantic robot suits. Yeah, sign us up for this one. Plot? WHO CARES. It's Transformers for people with a functioning brain! It's Gundam versus Cthulhu! We say – get in.

Last but not least, you'd be a fool to count out Will Smith, undisputed king of the Summer blockbuster. His offering, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, is After Earth, and sees Smith battling pterodactyls and saber-toothed tigers alongside a plucky young clone (or perhaps son – damn, I think we may have given away the twist...). It looks... shiny. But nothing in the preview looks quite as awesome as Del Toro's giant robots. It hits UK screens in June.