Sex Bomb Tom Jones in the style of a 16th century chanson by music theory and ear training lecturer Jonas Quin.

From Jonas Quin's site: Every project starts with a song that makes me wonder how it would sound in a historical style for days on end. When the melody just asks for it, when the text has some nice expressive passages, or simply if I have to laugh at the mere thought. That's when I know this is something that I want to dig deeper into. ... Each part is filmed seperately and then cut together in davinci resolve. For me, the score is the center of the video, the wobbling heads around it serve one of the following two functions. The first one is actually pedagogical: in depicting visual singers, I hope to help viewers understand the structure of the music, for example the imitatory patterns, the use of Cantus Firmus, the exceptional dissonances. The second function is to underline my main philosphy: that – at least – not all of this is to be taken entirely seriously. The sheet music of his pieces are available on his site. Some of the songs: You Spin Me Right Round as a Cantus Firmus ( Cantus Firmus is the practice of taking a pre existing melody and composing harmonies over it in particular set patterns) The other song that's been woven in here is a Kyrie Eleison which is a name of a prayer of Christian liturgy, Greek for "Lord, have mercy" and often heard in Gregorian chants. Original pop song version of Spin Me Right Round Jonas Quim illustrates his process in this video in which he composes Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in the style of various composers of the Renaissance era. Some more highlights: One Night in Bangkok (stay for the frrrrrt....frrrrrt wind instrument sounds near the end) Staying Alive

In Narromine – redubbed ‘Dollymine’ for the weekend – the country music star’s face is everywhere and a warm spirit of inclusivity is all-embracing

On a sporting oval in a rural Australian town 15,000km from Knoxville, Tennessee, dozens of Dolly Partons saunter down the runway as a boisterous crowd cheers and swats away flies with their cowboy hats.

As the sun begins to set, Jim Beams are flowing and music is blaring. One lucky punter is about to be crowned this year’s best-dressed Dolly, complete with sash, trophy and bragging rights.

The Narromine Line Dancers chat before performing for the crowd

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© Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

© Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

© Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

The makers of Coraline return with their distinctive animation style in a magical tale of a secret world of strange beasts, talking animals and evil governesses

Here is an engaging family movie from the Portland-based Laika studio that created Coraline. It is a fantasy adventure in Laika’s distinctively crafted stop-motion animation, written by Chris Butler from the bestseller of the same title by Carson Ellis and Colin Meloy, the latter being a band member of The Decemberists, one of whose tour posters we duly glimpse in this film. The director is Laika’s lead animator Travis Knight. It’s a forthright, exuberant, good-natured and old-fashioned children’s tale which CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien might have recognised, a story about the mysterious glory of going on a quest and the terrible fear and wish-fulfilment euphoria of being called upon to confront secret forces that the grownups know nothing about.

The setting is modern-day Portland, Oregon, a groovy city whose hipster-ish stores (there’s a coffee shop actually called Dripster) and Woke 1.0 signage are affectionately mocked. But most of all, the film is aware of a huge forest park next to the city, a place here mythologised as the impassable wilderness or “wildwood” where strange creatures, fairytale nobility and wisecracking talking animals reputedly dwell, of which the city-dwelling humans are entirely ignorant. Prue (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is a 12-year-old girl whose parents (voiced by Jake Johnson and Maya Erskine) are a couple of amiable hippies who believe in natural forces and benign magic. They have another child, Prue’s baby brother Mac, who Prue has to look after one day, pushing him in his stroller around the city and having to endure a certain classmate of hers tagging along. This is nerdy Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) who has a crush on her.

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© Photograph: Album/Alamy

© Photograph: Album/Alamy

© Photograph: Album/Alamy

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

• This week’s question: Why is a child saying ‘Na-na, na-na-na!’ so annoying?

Why are national anthems almost always orchestral? When – and by whom – was it decided that brass and strings best represent a country’s identity? Where are the power-pop or folk varieties? Ross Gomes, by email

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

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© Photograph: Hybrid Images/Getty Images/Image Source

© Photograph: Hybrid Images/Getty Images/Image Source

© Photograph: Hybrid Images/Getty Images/Image Source

The choir leader and presenter on not fitting in at his all-boys grammar, how synthesisers changed everything, and his ‘dithering’ start on TV

Born in London in 1975, Gareth Malone is a choirmaster and broadcaster. He began his career running youth and community choirs for the London Symphony Orchestra and first appeared on TV in 2006’s The Choir. He has since created choirs with Leicester schoolboys, Aylesbury prisoners, as well as the Military Wives, which produced the No 1 single, Wherever You Are. He lives in London with his wife and three children. His new live show, Sing-A-Long-A-Gareth: At the Movies, is on tour across the UK this autumn.

I was 15 and just coming into my own with my confidence, as you can tell by the double denim and the pose. The photo would have been taken at a party at my parents’ house in Bournemouth. When I wasn’t filling up guests’ drinks, I’d be playing some songs – it looks like I’m playing B flat major, so I suspect at this very moment it was Hey Jude.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Gareth Malone

© Photograph: Courtesy of Gareth Malone

© Photograph: Courtesy of Gareth Malone

Leeds Grand theatre
Patrick Nolan’s thoughtful staging for Opera North shifts Pushkin’s story forward to explore the transition from Soviet state to elitist excess

For an opera rooted in 19th-century Russian romanticism it’s surprising how effortlessly Eugene Onegin can be brought up to date. Patrick Nolan’s thoughtful staging for Opera North, a co-production with Irish National Opera and his own Opera Queensland, manages to capture the aching melancholy of Pushkin’s original while reflecting on the equally gloomy transition from the Brezhnev-era Soviet state to the reckless excess of the pre-Putin oligarchy.

For Tatyana and Onegin, Tchaikovsky’s opera is a case of the road not taken, subtly reflected in the gently elasticated timeframe adopted here. In Act I, Leslie Travers’ crumbling civic gymnasium is commandeered to rehearse a pageant in praise of Soviet agricultural policy. When Madame Larina and the housekeeper Filipyevna chatter on about times past, Lenin-emblazoned flags remind us they would have grown up in the shadow of Stalin. As the gaudy tracksuits and 80s bling (costume designer Elizabeth Gadsby having a field day) of Act II give way to formal evening wear and diamonds in the final act, it feels as though an entire way of life has been swept away, and with it any chance to correct the mistakes of the past.

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© Photograph: James Glossop

© Photograph: James Glossop

© Photograph: James Glossop

Bev Craig pledges £2m in funding to nurture local artists by improving access to rehearsal and production space

The Manchester mayor, Bev Craig, has said the city’s music scene is about more than just Oasis, as she announced funding to nurture a diverse range of local artists, be they “guitar bands or not”.

Craig pledged the £2m investment funding in Greater Manchester, as the city region hosted a conference for the creative industries at MediaCity in Salford.

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© Photograph: Marieke Macklon/The Guardian

© Photograph: Marieke Macklon/The Guardian

© Photograph: Marieke Macklon/The Guardian

They spent their heyday on yachts, then rolled up their sleeves in the wilderness years. Ahead of a Halloween show at the O2, pop’s great survivors explain their staying power

In 2022, Duran Duran were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It felt like a big deal, a sweet moment of acknowledgment for the band’s five-decades-long career, the 100m records sold, the string of bulletproof hits: Save a Prayer, Rio, Hungry Like the Wolf, Girls on Film. They were inducted by actor Robert Downey Jr; Drew Barrymore, Naomi Campbell and Gwen Stefani were on hand to pay heartfelt tribute and, as keyboard player Nick Rhodes points out, “It’s a big national live TV broadcast in America that goes out to millions of people,” so the band booked some warm-up shows. “And it so happened that there was a date that came up in Las Vegas on 31 October,” says Rhodes. “And I looked at everyone and said: ‘Well, we can’t do a normal show. Las Vegas on Halloween – surely that’s the opportunity for a little bit of fun?’”

They worked up a set of suitably themed material, including covers of Billie Eilish’s Bury a Friend and Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer. There were, of course, costumes involved, because, as Rhodes drily notes, “When have Duran Duran ever not dressed up?”

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© Photograph: Stephanie Pistel

© Photograph: Stephanie Pistel

© Photograph: Stephanie Pistel

The singer shamelessly blasts Lady Gaga in the car and is brought to tears by Portishead – but which song does she have to be careful listening to?

The first song I fell in love with
I remember listening to Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by Eurythmics when I was really young. There was something about the line at the beginning that I was completely intoxicated by.

The first download I bought
When I was about 10 or 11, I would put my headphones on and wander through the park all angsty listening to Fake Tales of San Francisco by Arctic Monkeys, my first download on my iPod Nano. I loved the storytelling, the characters and the gritty tableaux they described: it felt so real, even though it was far away from where I grew up.

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© Photograph: -

© Photograph: -

© Photograph: -

David Önaç uses insurance documents for work funded by Lloyd’s of London after research uncovered its slavery links

A centuries-old insurance document detailing the trafficking of enslaved Africans began with the words: “In the name of God, Amen.”

For Dr Errol Francis, the artistic director and chief executive of the arts and heritage charity Culture&, the contradiction was striking: an invocation of God in a document that treated human beings as cargo.

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© Composite: Guardian

© Composite: Guardian

© Composite: Guardian

Sam Rockwell voices the gumshoe who becomes embroiled with Scarlett Johansson’s femme fatale in this big-hearted and beautifully designed fantasy spectacular

Brad Bird, the Spielberg of animation, applies his masterly authorial touch to a terrific family film that retrieves the genre from the doldrums of dull, AI-formulaic stories and visuals. This animation is smart, witty, humane: a fantasy spectacular with old-fashioned entertainment values and some amazing cityscape design showcasing a beguiling and sweet romance.

The setting is a city of marvels in a world to come, a retro-futurist urban landscape with hints of Metropolis and Blade Runner; there are plenty of regulation moving walkways, flying cars and eerie hologram billboards, yes, but a light touch to put the fun back into what could be just cliche. Here is where an old-school noir thriller is to take place with tough private detectives and bad guys wielding state-of-the-art laser-particle firearms (this explains the title, though I’d hoped that it might also include some reference to 1980s Republican politics). There are careworn cops, cynical club owners and alluring shady ladies with touches of Lana Turner and Veronica Lake. The airborne automobiles also have the bulbous lines of a previous century, and the TV monitors show black-and-white images; plasma flatscreens have evidently been disinvented.

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© Photograph: Skydance Animation

© Photograph: Skydance Animation

© Photograph: Skydance Animation

While some heard the former Black Midi frontman out, others made for the exit as he addressed accusations

When Geordie Greep finally took to the stage in Vancouver this week, noticeably without his band, the crowd was hushed and the atmosphere tense. His lateness, however was the least of his problems.

Greep, a Brit school graduate and the former frontman of Black Midi, had been accused of sexually assaulting a woman while on tour. Flyers had been handed out outside the venue spelling out the allegation against him. “Let him know what Vancouver thinks of rapists,” they read.

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© Photograph: Alex Ladicos

© Photograph: Alex Ladicos

© Photograph: Alex Ladicos

Feted for cooking up shows that can be mouthwatering as well as thought-provoking, the artist discusses his fusion of South Korean and European culture

When I meet Jaha Koo in Oslo, where he has just been honoured with the prestigious International Ibsen award, I hand him a congratulatory packet of Haribo. The alternative would be a jar of kimchi but one of the many things you learn from Koo’s captivating theatre shows is that air travel and fermented vegetables can be a disastrous combo. When he moved to Berlin from South Korea with 10kg of his grandma’s finest kimchi, it became “bloated like a dead whale” and exploded on his balcony. His new neighbours were unimpressed.

In Koo’s current touring production, Haribo Kimchi, he examines how this unlikely fusion of two foods represents his cultural identity. He does so while preparing an onstage banquet for two lucky audience members. Despite spending many years in Europe, where Haribo gummies originated around a century ago, Koo still finds himself considered foremost as Korean by Europeans. But when he returns to his original homeland he is not always seen as Korean either.

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© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg in Aaron Sorkin’s sequel to The Social Network, and the Last One Laughing star reckons with divorce in her new standup tour

The Social Reckoning
Out now
The David Fincher-directed The Social Network has only come to seem more canny over time, with the site co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg being held responsible for all manner of social ills. In this sequel from Aaron Sorkin (this time directing and writing) based on the incidents around the 2021 leak of internal Facebook memos, Zuck is embodied not by Jesse Eisenberg but Jeremy Strong.

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© Photograph: THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection/3F1J0TW THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection Film still

© Photograph: THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection/3F1J0TW THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection Film still

© Photograph: THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection/3F1J0TW THE SOCIAL RECKONING, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, 2026. ph: Leah Gallo / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection Film still

Stephen King’s high-school scare-’em-up is reinvented for 2026, and the pop superstar brings the love in her feelgood live extravaganza. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

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© Composite: Courtesy of Prime

© Composite: Courtesy of Prime

© Composite: Courtesy of Prime

His integrity is one reason I’ve stuck with him, says Nick Davey

Elvis Costello has been a role model since I was a bespectacled teen and he appeared on the music scene to provide some credibility for NHS glasses. I no longer keep the scrapbook, but did cut the clipping from the Guardian in 2022 when he nominated his Honest playlist. His integrity as an artist and a human being has been one reason I’ve stuck with him for 49 years. I was delighted, therefore, to see consistency in his picks for his second Honest playlist (4 October), with Georgie Fame as his alpha and Louis Armstrong’s Keepin’ Out of Mischief as his omega. He seems, however, to have forgotten about his teen party listening. And we’d better not ponder the reasons for his change in response to “The best song to have sex to”. Thanks for keeping my hero in the spotlight.
Nick Davey
Chesterfield, Derbyshire

• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

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© Photograph: Adam Beeson/Alamy

© Photograph: Adam Beeson/Alamy

© Photograph: Adam Beeson/Alamy

Director general called for ‘a little less conversation, a little more action’ – but from what other songs could he draw inspiration?

The BBC director general, Matt Brittin, has started the job at a time of huge crisis. Money is short, jobs are being cut and it’s likely entire channels will be culled to stem the tide. This is a moment that requires great motivational charisma, which is why, in a recent all-staff call, he urged BBC employees to be “a bit more Elvis – a little less conversation, a little more action”.

Clearly, this isn’t great. But maybe this is how things are now. Perhaps, if you really want to unite a flagging workforce against a vast and inevitable decline, you need to start quoting song lyrics at them. With that in mind, here are some more that Brittin could use in his next call.

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© Composite: Getty Images

© Composite: Getty Images

© Composite: Getty Images

Ahead of new album Hippies, Thugs and Heroes, the British folk music legend will join us to answer your questions

From Fairport Convention to his musical partnership with then-wife Linda and on to solo albums that still trouble the UK charts, Richard Thompson is an undisputed icon of British folk music – and ahead of his latest release, entitled Hippies, Thugs and Heroes, he’s joining us to answer your questions.

Now 77, Thompson’s career began in his teens when he formed Fairport Convention and struck out into writing new material rather than covers and folk standards: in so doing, albums such as 1969’s Liege and Lief became part of the British folk canon themselves.

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© Photograph: Paul Clampin

© Photograph: Paul Clampin

© Photograph: Paul Clampin

Drawing from post-hardcore, twee and emo, the Exeter trio’s intoxicating energy feels like an invitation to form your own band

From Exeter, UK
Recommended if you like Boyracer, the Promise Ring, Rites of Spring
Up next Little Bastard EP out now

It’s tempting to view any half-decent scene as either a magical happening or a simple quirk of geography and timing. In reality, they’re more like monuments to the importance of showing up. For that to continue to happen, you need bands like Pushbike. Rattling through four songs in well under 10 minutes, each crooked hook, euphoric yelp and cheesewire guitar lead on their Little Bastard EP feels like an invitation to form a band, draw a flyer, or book a show.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Molly Boniface

© Photograph: Courtesy of Molly Boniface

© Photograph: Courtesy of Molly Boniface

(Blue Note)
This elegant contemporary reinvention of 1963 album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman pairs Marsalis’s post-bop sax with Reeves’ agile vocals, to time-stopping effect

In the early 1960s, the Impulse! label tried to steer its star saxophonist John Coltrane away from increasingly uncompromising and experimental music that it feared might be scaring its customers. Label boss Bob Thiele suggested a more palatable all-ballads album with a little-known African American supper-club singer called Johnny Hartman, whose warm, Bing Crosby-like baritone but bracing absence of schmaltz had already impressed Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. Coltrane and Hartman hit it off perfectly, and the 1963 album, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, was an unexpected mini masterpiece of restraint, flawless timbral expressiveness, and mutual understanding.

Invited by Blue Note Records in Coltrane’s centenary year to curate his own tribute, post-bop sax luminary Branford Marsalis made that album the template for Dedicated to You – done as contemporary reinventions, not mere cover versions. Marsalis invited Dianne Reeves, a vastly experienced jazz singer with a Sarah Vaughan-like mix of flawless intonation and agile spontaneity, to take the vocal role. “Listening to all the great singers coming up”, Reeves has said, “I learned that they stood in the band, not in front of the band. They saw themselves as co-creators of the sound.”

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Shervin Lainez

© Photograph: Courtesy of Shervin Lainez

© Photograph: Courtesy of Shervin Lainez

(New West)
Following 2023 breakout Time Ain’t Accidental, the best songs here are when Williamson strips back country music, rebuilding it as something familiar yet different

In her essay Goodbye to All That, Joan Didion writes that she left New York City when “the golden rhythm was broken”. Texas-born alt-country singer Jess Williamson borrows the title for the aching opening track of her sixth solo album, on which she contemplates whether she has had enough of Los Angeles. But while Didion was looking back on leaving the city of her youth behind, Williamson is still in LA, wrestling with competing desires to stay or flee.

This tumultuous love-me, love-me-not is set to Williamson’s most traditional soundscapes to date: “Deep in the woods I feel the hum of the city,” she sings on Hum of the City in her strongest Texas drawl over mournful strings and twiddling banjo. Gone are the iPhone-programmed drums that made her 2023 breakout Time Ain’t Accidental so appealingly offbeat, and while the Americana flourishes give weight to Williamson’s nostalgia for her native Dallas, at times they make the album stodgier and less imaginative than her previous record.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Jackie Lee Young

© Photograph: Courtesy of Jackie Lee Young

© Photograph: Courtesy of Jackie Lee Young

Frankfurt Radio Symphony/Altinoglu
(Alpha)
Conductor Alain Altinoglu brings weight and purpose while the instrumental solos are piquant and precise.

If the Leningrad was Shostakovich’s official response to the second world war, the Eighth Symphony was his answer to the question: “Will you tell us what you really think?” Written while the fighting was still under way, its immediacy remains striking today, a quality reflected in Alain Altinoglu’s purposeful interpretation with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony orchestra.

You hear that directness at once in the way the strings dig deep, bringing remarkable colours to a 26-minute Adagio that, in the wrong hands, can sound merely bleak and black. Not that Altinoglu shuns the horrors: his phrasing and textural dynamics bring fearsome weight and a sense of wide-eyed terror to the composer’s protracted cry of despair. The orchestra covers itself in glory with instrumental solos that are piquant and precise. Resonant details are captured by an outstanding German production team that manages to outdo the Berlin Philharmonic’s excellent 2020 account under Kirill Petrenko (Shostakovich fans will need both).

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© Photograph: Ben Knabe

© Photograph: Ben Knabe

© Photograph: Ben Knabe

Whether on the frontline in Ukraine or skate parks in Soweto, the genre is still a vital outlet for disaffected people everywhere. Here, musicians explain how they rage against the machine

Andriy Zholob, vocalist/guitarist, Beton: When MTV arrived in Ukraine, I heard Nirvana, the Offspring, Bad Brains, Social Distortion and thrash metal, and realised that all this started from punk rock. Our drummer and I were in a ska-punk band first, but when our vocalist became pregnant we started Beton in 2017 and played lots of festivals.

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© Composite: Jess Clark for the Guardian: Getty Images/ Katrīna Līva Dalbiņa, Alejandra Núñez, Assante Chiweshe, Ruslan Bulgakov, Valeriia Nekhvodiuk, Yulia Sachul

© Composite: Jess Clark for the Guardian: Getty Images/ Katrīna Līva Dalbiņa, Alejandra Núñez, Assante Chiweshe, Ruslan Bulgakov, Valeriia Nekhvodiuk, Yulia Sachul

© Composite: Jess Clark for the Guardian: Getty Images/ Katrīna Līva Dalbiņa, Alejandra Núñez, Assante Chiweshe, Ruslan Bulgakov, Valeriia Nekhvodiuk, Yulia Sachul

Billboards with cryptic messages hinted at the band’s possible reunion. Now, in a video posted to social media, they’ve confirmed there’ll be a national tour

Powderfinger has confirmed the band is getting back together for a national tour in 2027 after a series of cryptic clues were posted on billboards and social media this week.

It’s the first time the 18 times Aria-winning Australian rock band has played live since its Sunsets Farewell Tour, which wrapped up in the band members’ home town of Brisbane in 2010.

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© Photograph: Tess Peni/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Tess Peni/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Tess Peni/REX/Shutterstock

(Interscope)
Adored by the A-list and filling arenas, but without huge smash hits, the Australian singer treads his own distinctive path through pop via shoegaze, Balearic and the Smiths

A few years back, the New York Times reported on the phenomenon of the “middle-class pop star”. The feature bluntly explained that this signified “a pop star who isn’t that popular”, for whom the word signified not commercial dominance, but “a sound, an aesthetic, an attitude”. It isn’t an entirely new phenomenon: you may recall a game late 00s attempt to differentiate critically acclaimed but commercially underground pop artists – Alphabeat, Frankmusik and the Clik Clik among them – from the massed ranks of chart-topping TV talent show graduates by grouping them together under the generic banner of “wonky pop”. But the arrival of social media clearly changed things dramatically, enabling artists who seldom, if ever, encroach on the charts’ upper reaches to develop ferociously loyal – and very online – followings, reliably packed-out shows and a genuine aura of celebrity to go with their good reviews.

Troye Sivan might well be the apotheosis of this phenomenon. Over the last 12 years, his albums have shifted respectable, rather than earth-shattering quantities. Intermittently, the odd single has become a mainstream hit, but their success is vastly outstripped by his profile – arena tours, features in broadsheet newspapers and style magazines, interviews on late night US chatshows – and indeed his standing among huge stars. He has been glowingly written about in Time magazine by Kylie Minogue. Nicole Kidman appears in the video for the title track from She’s the Best. Madonna apparently gave personal approval for him to use a sample from 2000’s Music on another of the album’s singles, Party. He has duetted on hits by Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande and Charli xcx, with whom he co-headlined a US tour just after the release of Brat.

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© Photograph: Marcus Cooper

© Photograph: Marcus Cooper

© Photograph: Marcus Cooper

the internet is eating itself does a deep dive into the AI record label targeting boomers (SLYT).

Charing Cross theatre, London
Büchner’s jagged masterpiece about a soldier’s descent is told with enchanting and stirring songs that occasionally defuse its stark terror

When Georg Büchner died aged 23 in 1837, he left behind Woyzeck as a bundle of papers that would be ordered and reordered for years to come, eventually discoloured by treatments used to decipher the playwright’s handwriting. His two dozen scenes, with a handful of extra fragments, form a tragic patchwork that is mirrored, in this musical version, by a similar number of stained pieces of cloth stitched into the stage curtains and by the 27 folk songs that thread the story together.

It remains the downfall of Franz Woyzeck, a desperate soldier sinking into madness who grows suspicious of his partner, but – as the first names of its romantic title suggest – the story seeks to better understand both characters. Büchner’s Woyzeck suffers from visions and hallucinations; here they are joined by traumatic battlefield flashbacks. Franz was a war hero, says Marie admiringly, adding a courageous backstory to Büchner’s downtrodden squaddie and suggesting that she sees a glimpse of Franz’s former vigour in the drum major (here named Varg) who brazenly pursues her. In the play, that leads to an affair, but the musical’s Marie fights off Varg when he attempts to rape her and it is the rumours of infidelity that accelerate Franz’s frenzy.

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© Photograph: Danny Kaan

© Photograph: Danny Kaan

© Photograph: Danny Kaan

Ahead of the Irish alt-rockers’ highly anticipated fifth album, Dopamine Chamber, we count down their potent, occasionally political, catalogue

A single inspired by the birth of bassist Conor Deegan’s daughter, It’s Amazing to Be Young is a lovely example of Fontaines DC operating in euphoric mode, a relatively recent addition to their emotional mood board: “Sometimes,” offered frontman Grian Chatten, “optimism is a necessary delusion.”

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© Photograph: Theo Cottle

© Photograph: Theo Cottle

© Photograph: Theo Cottle

Susan Tomes
(Hyperion)
From Marianne Martines – taught by the family lodger, Haydn, to Teresa Carreño who played for Lincoln, there’s names new and old in this fascinating and appealing collection

This attractive compilation came out of Susan Tomes’ research for a book on female pianists across history. As she discovered, many wrote music as well, producing short works for the salons and domestic circles to which they were frequently restricted. Thanks to pioneering performers such as Tomes, some of the dozen women presented here are familiar names, but several will be new to many, as will their appealing compositions.

Take Marianne Martines, given lessons in lieu of rent by the family lodger, Haydn. Her miniature A major sonata possesses the sparkle of Scarlatti. Marianna von Auenbrugger died aged 23, but she was taught by Salieri, who paid for the publication of the Mozartian E-flat major sonata recorded here.

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© Photograph: Robert Philip

© Photograph: Robert Philip

© Photograph: Robert Philip

The director talks about what she learnt from her mother, working with a rookie Tim Burton, and 20 years of her cult classic Marie Antoinette

Hello, I’m Cherry, I’m 14 and an aspiring film-maker. I love how your films capture what it feels like to be a young girl growing up. We hear so much about the famous men in your family, but how have the successful women in your family inspired and influenced you? Your films capture the experience of what it is to be a young girl in a way words often can’t. CherryEmma
That’s nice to hear, thank you. I feel like I got a lot from my mom about being true to yourself, following what you’re interested in and seeing the beauty in your surroundings. My mom always noticed odd details in life, so a lot of my films are made up of those kinds of things.

Your films beautifully capture the isolation of hotel rooms – spaces completely detached from a character’s past or future. If you were forced into that stillness and could choose to preserve only one cherished memory while erasing another for ever, what would they be? Malpractice1
It’s hard to pick a memory, but recently we had a party in Versailles for the anniversary of Marie Antoinette and New Order played. When they started playing Ceremony [from the soundtrack] and the lights went on, I just know that in the future when I have to remember a happy memory, that’s going to be it. Even painful memories are part of making you who you are, and you learn from them, so I can’t think of anything I would erase.

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© Photograph: LaPresse/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Live News.

© Photograph: LaPresse/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Live News.

© Photograph: LaPresse/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Live News.

Ymarfer Byw, which was praised for its ‘musical excellence’, beat 14 other albums to the prize of £10,000

Singer-songwriter Dafydd Owain has won the 2026 Welsh music prize with his second album Ymarfer Byw.

The emotionally charged record, which also won Welsh language album of the year in August, beat albums by the likes of Gruff Rhys, the Royston Club and Art School Girlfriend to the prize of £10,000.

ADJUA – Everything Is Beautiful

Aleighcia Scott – Taith

Ani Glass – Phantasmagoria

Art School Girlfriend – Lean In

Cerys Hafana – Angel

Chroma – 25 Forever

Dafydd Owain – Ymarfer Byw

Dewin – Dan y Dderwen

Gruff Rhys – Dim Probs

Gwenifer Raymond – Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark

Local – Too Broke to Be This Busy

Mari Mathias – Cyfarwydd

Skindred – You Got This

The Bug Club – Every Single Muscle

The Royston Club – Songs for the Spine

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© Photograph: Welsh Music Prize

© Photograph: Welsh Music Prize

© Photograph: Welsh Music Prize

The Aussie trio explain creating their new record sampling kids’ science shows and Tunisian music – and their surreal film with Haley Joel Osment

Last December, Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi, the core members of the Aussie disco-pop collagists the Avalanches, found themselves winding through the frosty, mountainous region of Minakami, Japan, with Haley Joel Osment. The pair’s lauded debut album, 2000’s Since I Left You, has become a touchstone in plunderphonics – a genre known for its innovative use of samples – and in the years since its release, the group have amassed an ardent cult following. Osment, the former child star of The Sixth Sense and Forrest Gump, seemed to count himself among their devotees, frequently liking their posts on Instagram, so they decided to reach out and ask him to board their latest project: a 35-minute movie that would accompany their new LP, No Bad Memories.

“We’d never made a film before, so it was like, ‘This could be a complete disaster for him,’” recalls Di Blasi, who is dressed in a black tee and purple cap with the logo for the cult electronic label трип when we meet in Manhattan in mid-September. “We were like, ‘We don’t really have anyone yet … We don’t even know what we’re doing.’” To their surprise, Osment signed on.

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© Photograph: Dean Podmore

© Photograph: Dean Podmore

© Photograph: Dean Podmore

A new exhibition curated by Edward Enniful looks back on the thrilling decade before smartphones, when art, music and fashion came together with a bang

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© Photograph: Eddie Otchere

© Photograph: Eddie Otchere

© Photograph: Eddie Otchere

Prosecutors say Michael Smith flooded music-streaming platforms with bots that repeatedly streamed his A.I.-generated music, earning him as much as $8 million.

© Bennett Raglin/Getty Images

After pleading guilty, a 54-year-old North Carolina man, Michael Smith, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using artificial intelligence to generate songs for a scheme that stole millions from music streaming platforms.

In a press release Tuesday, the US Department of Justice said that Smith is the first American criminally charged with AI-assisted streaming fraud.

First charged in 2024, Smith successfully ran the scheme for seven years without detection.

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© Taylor Hill / Contributor | FilmMagic

One hundred years since the BBC first broadcast choral evensong, MP and former chorister Jonathan Davies hymns a beautiful and empowering collective experience that we should praise – and protect

Some sounds seem to belong to Britain. The peal of church bells. The brass band on a village green. The roar of a football crowd. And, heard from a cathedral at the end of the day, the extraordinary sound of a choir singing evensong.

This year marks the centenary of choral evensong on BBC radio. On 7 October 1926, when the BBC was in its infancy, listeners heard a live service broadcast from Westminster Abbey. A century later, evensong can still be heard on Radio 3 every week from cathedrals, churches, chapels and abbeys across the country. It is the BBC’s longest running outside broadcast and reaches hundreds of thousands of people every week.

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© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

This week, from Reich to Kendall and Celibidache, three musicians who prove there is no such thing as “pure music”, whether we’re talking about a technique, a mode of musical expression or a musician’s legacy.

Steve Reich turned 90 on Saturday, and I’ve been thinking about his early tape pieces from the mid-1960s, It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out. They’re such vital works not only because they opened his imagination to what could happen if you made a micro-canon – playing the same material slightly faster or slower – which is what happened when one of his tape machines slipped out of sync with the other: it’s that these are human voices that Reich is setting. It’s Gonna Rain is made from the voice of Brother Walter, a Pentecostal street preacher in San Francisco, whose warning of apocalypse in 1965 Reich recorded and looped against itself, over and over, so that Brother Walter’s voice becomes a wall and wail of sound, a sonic realisation of the sublime inundation he’s announcing. Come Out was made in 1966 with the voice of Daniel Hamm, one of the Harlem Six, six black men wrongly convicted of first-degree murder in New York. Reich’s piece was commissioned for a benefit event for their legal costs as “background music for passing the hat”.

These pieces don’t just set words, Reich says they “set human beings”, using the vocal recordings not only as musical material but political inspiration and emotional expression. Techniques that are seemingly all about narrowly musical processes – looping, canon-ing, fugue-ing – are embedded in the facts of where they were made and how, and whose voices are being represented by whom.

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© Photograph: Siân O’Connor

© Photograph: Siân O’Connor

© Photograph: Siân O’Connor

‘This is Courtney doing her makeup on the ’95 Lollapalooza tour. I was documenting my generation being hijacked by corporate greed – and destroyed following the sacrificial death of Kurt Cobain’

When I was going through the archives for my rock photo book, I came across my first ever self-portrait, at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, in front of Jim Morrison’s grave. I am a 13-year-old on an awkward trip with my cool father. He had no respect or interest in Jim Morrison, and that photo is like every photo I’ve taken from that moment on – I’m trying to take agency over what is happening. Photography was the absolute first thing that gave me a feeling of having my own say. It became a way of creating my own universe, one that I could trust. It was absolutely my first love.

I was sidetracked into music in a beautiful way by these radical women and a countercultural movement, so the subject of my photographs just changed. It was me within this environment, on stage with Hole, backstage with these luminary, wild people, travelling across the world. My photography followed and morphed with me, and my camera documented my generation being hijacked by corporate greed and destroyed in the wake of the sacrificial death of Kurt Cobain. It was a generational call to document the Lollapalooza ’95 tour, where this photo was taken, for us to understand later. It was also when the wild alternative freaks crossed into the mainstream.

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© Photograph: Melissa Auf der Maur, courtesy DelMonico Books/AGO Toronto

© Photograph: Melissa Auf der Maur, courtesy DelMonico Books/AGO Toronto

© Photograph: Melissa Auf der Maur, courtesy DelMonico Books/AGO Toronto

Born and raised in Valparaíso, JM is seen as one of the last of a golden generation after a late foray

At a concert hall in the Chilean capital, Santiago, an 80-year-old man edges unsteadily down a steep staircase. With one hand he grips the metal bannister, in the other he carries a mug of hot water with a slice of lemon, as if heading to bed.

But when the red stage curtain is pulled aside for him, Luis Gómez, or JM as he is universally known, transforms in an instant. He skips on to the stage to a roar from the crowd and launches into a bolero, punctuated by hip thrusts and shuffling two-steps.

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© Photograph: Tamara Merino/The Guardian

© Photograph: Tamara Merino/The Guardian

© Photograph: Tamara Merino/The Guardian

Celebrated for his earnest, dextrous voice, Jackson crossed into the pop charts with the hits Rock Me Tonight (For Old Times Sake) and You Are My Lady

Freddie Jackson, the US singer whose smooth and romantic take on R&B found a huge audience in the 1980s, has died aged 70.

A statement from his family on social media reads: “Freddie was more than a legendary voice. He was a kind, generous soul who loved his fans, his family, his friends and his music with everything he had. For decades he gave us the songs that became the soundtrack to our love stories, our celebrations and our most treasured memories. That gift will live on for ever.” No cause of death was given.

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© Photograph: Evan Agostini/AP

© Photograph: Evan Agostini/AP

© Photograph: Evan Agostini/AP

After representing society’s dispossessed, Ponder started a music career in her 40s – then faced miscarriage, anxiety and more. She explains her survival instinct

“You can get everything you dreamed of career-wise, and your life can still crumble, and that is what happened to me,” says US singer-songwriter Danielle Ponder.

Five years ago, and five days before her 40th birthday, Ponder left her job as a public defender – a lawyer for those without the means to pay for one – to pursue music full-time. Ponder’s rich, church-reared voice and resonant music quickly lent themselves to cinematic moments: she wrote and performed the theme song for Apple TV+’s Manhunt and her trip-hop-infused track Roll the Credits has been used by adverts, TV shows and video games. Several comments on the YouTube video come from viewers who searched for it thinking she was Nina Simone. Her debut album, Some of Us Are Brave, came out in 2022 and was warmly received by critics, and she appeared on Seth Meyers’ talkshow. Her gamble had paid off. “But personally,” she says, “it felt like everything around me was falling apart”.

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© Photograph: Faith Joyvon

© Photograph: Faith Joyvon

© Photograph: Faith Joyvon

The Post Brothers, Savage Henry, Lord Cthulhu, and all Carolines jam one last time. Matt Howarth, creator of so many comics and book illustrations, passed at 72.

Official site. The Bugtown Mall.

Rereleased for its 24th anniversary, Michael Winterbottom’s freewheeling film about a journalist who championed post-punk bands couldn’t have starred anyone but Steve Coogan

Michael Winterbottom’s intriguing, daring, freewheeling movie is being rereleased for its 24th anniversary. It is about Manchester legend, Factory Records impresario, club owner and Granada TV journalist Tony Wilson, played by Steve Coogan, who was a driving entrepreneurial force behind the city’s music scene and guide to bands such as Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays.

Looking back to my original review I see that I was in some ways unconvinced, perhaps by the almost flippant, throwaway tone that is somehow evenly established from first to last, with Coogan’s Partridgean lead performance – very good though it undoubtedly is – delivering all the lines as if doing a wry piece to camera. He was arguably the only possible casting for a minor TV personality who was also a major player in the real world beyond the camera, a postmodern combination that Wilson, a sophisticated and intelligent man, himself surely savoured. Winterbottom’s A Cock and Bull Story, adapted from Laurence Sterne, is sometimes described as his postmodern work, although this film, with its fourth-wall breaking, real-world cameos and docu-realist sense of itself, is probably even more metatextual.

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© Photograph: Channel 4/Kobal/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Channel 4/Kobal/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Channel 4/Kobal/Shutterstock

Drugs, drink and dancing made Bez famous. Thirty-five years on, has he really swapped it all for filtered water, intermittent fasting and walks with the dogs?

Bez has both shoelaces undone and it’s making me nervous. Out walking his dogs, we’re up and over barbed wire, across streams and over gates. We bash through brambles and skid down slopes. I’m becoming fixated on the perilously trailing laces of his trainers and why he hasn’t tripped over them. Can he be such a thrill-seeker that a dog walk can be turned into an hour of jeopardy?

Of course he can. This is Bez, anarchic maraca-shaker, party person, the man Shaun Ryder, his Happy Mondays bandmate and partner in crime, says is a bad influence. Bez, whose real name is Mark Berry, has been in more scrapes than seems possible for one person. A small sample: knocking his teeth out in a motorbike crash at the age of 16, threatened with a gun when he and Ryder were trying to buy crack in New York, kidnapped and held hostage during another drug deal, smashing his body up in another motorbike crash in 1999 and then getting MRSA in hospital and ending up in a coma for a month.

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© Photograph: Francesca Jones/The Guardian

© Photograph: Francesca Jones/The Guardian

© Photograph: Francesca Jones/The Guardian

Court filing alleges Bryan Seaver, star’s ex-security head, had also posted no trespassing signs to thwart serving of lawsuit

Dolly Parton’s estate has alleged that her nephew and former security head used barbed wire and a no trespassing sign to avoid being served in a lawsuit, according to a court filing confirmed by the Guardian.

The country star’s company has filed suit against her nephew, Bryan Seaver, claiming that he menaced and attempted to strong-arm Parton’s estate after she died on 25 August. Seaver announced Parton’s death in a video and previously said this was “something Dolly asked of me years ago”.

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© Photograph: Andrés Kudacki/AP

© Photograph: Andrés Kudacki/AP

© Photograph: Andrés Kudacki/AP

Amazon has removed Alexa voice control for the 3.5mm aux input on several older Echo speakers, meaning users can no longer ask Alexa to play or pause audio coming through the wired connection. It's unclear why the feature was removed. The Verge reports: Ars Technica points to this Reddit poster claiming they received a message from Amazon and says an unnamed spokesperson confirmed the change. When contacted by The Verge, Amazon did not provide an on-the-record statement. The message does not include any explanation for why the feature was removed. It also doesn't mention any changes to audio output functionality like connecting an external speaker to an Echo Dot, and it appears that control of the port from within the app's settings menu still works.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meg Mac covers Tame Impala 'Let It Happen' for Like A Version (4'22 SLYT)

Previously

The term Afrobeats is applied to all sorts of genres, flattening them into one. Artists, media and the music industry must do better at showing off the richness of African pop

In 2024, South African pop star Tyla won the best Afrobeats award at the MTV VMAs. Beaming in a yellow dress, she began her acceptance speech in a celebratory tone. “This is such a big moment for African music. The global impact of Water,” – her hit single – “proves that African music can be pop music.” But as the audience’s cheers swelled, she became more sombre, describing the moment as bittersweet. “There’s a tendency to group all African music as Afrobeats,” she continued. “Even though Afrobeats has opened so many doors for us, African music is so diverse. I come from South Africa, I represent amapiano”, referring to the country’s rolling, sensual dance subgenre. Her passionate entreaty notwithstanding, months later she’d reprise her win in the Afrobeats category of the American Music Awards.

Tyla is hardly the only African artist to rail against the Afrobeats tag. Tems has spurned the term, describing her music as a cocktail of “Afro, R&B, soul and alternative elements”. Likewise, Burna Boy prefers to call his music Afrofusion, a fitting characterisation of the smorgasbord of sounds that converge in his music. Wizkid, Ckay, King Promise and Davido have also chafed at the term Afrobeats, yet it persists and holds back African music.

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© Photograph: JC Olivera/Variety/Getty Images

© Photograph: JC Olivera/Variety/Getty Images

© Photograph: JC Olivera/Variety/Getty Images

Metal band Gwar host this instalment of the horror series, which serves up darkly humorous movie morsels that would struggle to frighten a toddler

The latest in the long-running horror-feature series is, as per usual, a decidedly diverse ragbag of shorts, strung together with the thinnest of connective tissue. The theme this go-round seems to be music and sound, so it sort of makes sense that hosting duties for the interstitial bits fall to the goofy metal band Gwar, its assorted members met here cracking Halloween dad jokes in their trademark extravagant outfits.

The five mini movies vary significantly in length as well as quality. Flying Lotus’s stop-motion exercise Another Cabin posits a young boy in a rural cabin living with a mean old grannie who tries to push him forward when a tentacled demon tears the roof of the house in search of a snack. The characters’ resemblance to the cast of early 2000s series The PJs is slightly jarring, given this is such a different register, but the brevity works in its favour. In contrast Renee Zhan’s Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance, the opener, drags on a bit, but has a reasonable gags-to-gore ratio in its tale of murderous puppets taking revenge on visiting studio execs who would dare to “reimagine” some ageing IP best left dormant. The funniest gag is the bright major-scale title song the puppets (designed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop) sing about how all things must die.

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© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

The legendary conductor was acclaimed for his dazzling music-making, and infamous for his hatred of recordings. His son, writer of a new film about him, remembers a loving yet intransigent and demanding father

My father, Sergiu Celibidache, loved children more than anything because they are free and true to themselves. And yet, he once made a young boy wet himself when he dared to ask for an autograph, shouting at the poor child as if he had committed a federal crime because he knew there was a black market selling his signature behind his back.

I grew up a privileged child with presents from all around the world. I was spoiled – to the despair of my mother, who always tried to keep my feet on the ground. But the gifts were part of my father’s way of making up for his long absences – he was often away touring with his orchestras.

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© Photograph: INTERFOTO/Alamy

© Photograph: INTERFOTO/Alamy

© Photograph: INTERFOTO/Alamy