(InFiné) The composers’ first collaborative album ebbs from epic, cinematic heights to delicate and dreamy lullabies
After years of touring together, Los Angeles-based composers Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore have developed what the former refers to as a “musical telepathy”. Tragic Magic, the pair’s first collaborative album, evidences this bond: born out of a short series of improv sessions in Paris, it’s a wonderfully immersive set of new age and ambient tracks, where Barwick’s airy, reverbed vocals and atmospheric synth washes interweave with, and accentuate, Lattimore’s twinkling harp.
The album sessions took place shortly after last year’s California wildfires, which the two musicians experienced as residents. Accordingly, tragedy and hope cut through the dreamlike haze of these unfurling compositions. With its delicate harp loop and hushed whispers, opener Perpetual Adoration is as sweet and dreamy as a lullaby, while the gorgeous, moving Haze With No Haze carries a quiet desperation in the brittle, staccato melodyand Barwick’s yearning high register. As always, her lyrics are indiscernible, words blurring into texture and shapeless whispers, but teem with feeling.
(Rough Trade) The duo’s 13th album finds Jason Williamson as baffled and infuriated as ever at the state of the world, with help from some unexpected collaborators
Over the course of a dozen albums, Jason Williamson (words) and Andrew Fearn (music) have journeyed from DIY to the album chart Top 5 by providing a gut-punchingly bleak and amusingly absurdist commentary on the financial crash, austerity, Brexit and the rise of the far right. On their 13th LP, Williamson again convinces in the role of a potty-mouthed bystander, baffled and infuriated by what goes on around him, whether empty lives in the digital age (“Weights and wanking / Hard bodies and phone lights / That’s all we got”), Trump’s US (“Maga’s off their tits”) or minor daily irritants: “Lazy dog walkers on short walks, mate, wanker!”
However, developments here should gently broaden their appeal. Williamson displays a welcome new vulnerability on the harrowing Gina Was, about a childhood incident. Meanwhile, Fearn is subtly developing his production, venturing beyond electro-punk to use classical strings on Double Diamond and a broader range of collaborators. The combination of Willliamson, Game of Thrones actor Gwendoline Christie’s furious rap and Big Special’s David Bowie-ish crooning on The Good Life makes for one of the most hauntingly catchy things they’ve done.
Women allege Spanish singer subjected them ‘to inappropriate touching, insults and humiliation … in atmosphere of control’
The Spanish singer Julio Iglesias has broken his silence over allegations that he sexually abused two women who worked in his Caribbean mansions, saying he has never “abused, coerced or disrespected any woman”.
The 82-year-old entertainer, whose career spans six decades, had been accused by two female former employees who allege they had been sexually assaulted and subjected “to inappropriate touching, insults and humiliation … in an atmosphere of control and constant harassment”.
The title is loaded with meaning for all Koreans, and will give fans globally an insight into the folksong culture that shaped the world’s biggest K-pop group
BTS announced their long-awaited comeback and world tour this week, with their first full-length album in nearly four years set for release on 20 March.
On Friday, the K-pop group revealed its title – Arirang – a choice that carries profound emotional weight for Koreans. So what does it mean, what is its significance for the Koreas, and why did BTS choose it?
An appetite for self-destruction left Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies hugely influential but financially insecure. They’re back with a big show and their first album together since 1995
‘There isn’t one songwriter, and so the flavour of the band is always going to change,” says Dave Vanian, reflecting on 50 years of the group of which he has been the sole constant member, the Damned. “Captain Sensible is a great fan of syrupy pop music and prog and glam rock. So his writing is very poppy, melodic and quite wonderful. My writing is more melodramatic, more theatrical. And Rat Scabies was a mod who really loved bands like the Who. That melting pot would either not work at all, or be an absolute firecracker.” As the history of the Damned attests, it has, on occasion, been both.
There have been three break-ups: in the late 70s, late 80s and early 90s; Sensible and Scabies have had repeated spells out of the band; Scabies only started working with them again in 2022, after 27 years away. “The rift was really between him and Captain,” says Vanian, though at one time or another, it seems as though each of the three principals has been in a relationship-ending rage with one or both of the others.
Kenny Chesney reveals he "does a lot of witchcraft stuff" to his body, including plasma exchange, cold plunges and IV treatments in his wellness routine.
(Columbia) Framed as the music Williams wanted to make post-Take That, Britpop surpasses pastiche and swerves unpredictably. Homoerotic paean to Morrissey, anyone?
The arrival of Robbie Williams’s 13th album has been a complicated business. It was announced in May 2025 and was supposed to come out in October, when its title would have chimed with the 90s nostalgia sparked by the Oasis reunion. Williams spent the summer engaging in promotion, unveiling fake Britpop-themed blue plaques around London and staging a press conference at the Groucho Club. There was a launch gig at storied Camden venue Dingwalls, at which he performed not just his new album in full, but his 1997 solo debut Life Thru a Lens.
It was a bold choice, given that Life Thru a Lens initially threatened to derail his solo career: at the time, the now nakedly obvious supernova hits Angels and Let Me Entertain You were overlooked while people criticised Williams’s muddled attempts to fit in with, well, Britpop. On stage at Dingwalls, he made the surprise announcement that the album now wasn’t coming out until mid-February, admitting with winning candour that he didn’t want to compete with Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl. Now it’s suddenly appeared, without explanation, two weeks into January: presumably because Williams will have fewer competitors in the albums chart this week, giving him a greater chance at breaking the record he currently jointly holds with the Beatles for the most UK No 1 albums ever.
The Police frontman’s ex-bandmates Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland are arguing they are also owed a portion of his income from streaming and download sales of the band’s music
‘Iconic performers’ will visit 10 European cities, as event reels from boycott over Israel’s 2026 participation
The Eurovision song contest will go on its first ever tour to celebrate its 70th anniversary, its organiser has said, as it reels from a boycott due to Israel’s participation.
Five countries have pulled out of the contest over Israel’s war in Gaza, leaving 35 to participate in the world’s biggest live televised music event – the fewest since entry was expanded in 2004.
After a series of cryptic billboards teasing fans, the As It Was singer reveals the title and release date of his first record since 2022
After a brief teaser campaign in which billboards around the world promised “we belong together” and “see you very soon”, Harry Styles has announced his fourth solo album.
Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally will be released on 6 March. It was produced by Kid Harpoon, the British songwriter and producer who has worked on all of Styles’ previous albums. The artwork shows the 31-year-old pop star wearing sunglasses and ducking beneath a disco ball seemingly suspended from the night sky.
The Renaissance composer wrote hauntingly sublime music – and committed a grisly double murder before descending even further into psychosis. As a new stage work revisits his life, its director asks if art can be separated from artist
Carlo Gesualdo wrote some of the most darkly sublime music of the late Renaissance. He also savagely murdered his wife and her lover in their bed. Now be honest: which would you like to discuss first?
The art will always be secondary to the atrocity, however magnificent the madrigals and sacred music. Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, had been cuckolded by the Duke of Andria in a long-running tryst that had become the scuttlebutt at court. The premeditated double murder of 1590 was a truly grisly affair, concluding in the public display of their mutilated bodies on the steps of the palazzo for several days.
Though the show will close in New York next month, a North American tour will continue, and productions in Australia, Germany and South Korea are planned.
Apple indique que 2025 a été une année record pour ses services. Et l’App Store a enregistré sa fréquentation la plus élevée entre le 24 décembre et le premier janvier.
Apple indique que 2025 a été une année record pour ses services. Et l’App Store a enregistré sa fréquentation la plus élevée entre le 24 décembre et le premier janvier.
Peter Frampton’s Frampton Comes Alive!, one of the bestselling live albums of all time, is turning 50. You won’t find that on this list, however: instead there’s metal, soul, and an ‘indecently exciting’ No 1 …
Already stars in Black America, Maze became the ultimate if-you-know-you-know band among British fans of underground soul thanks to Live in New Orleans. It perfectly encapsulated their appeal: smooth but not slick, an awesomely tight band making breezily relaxed music, one fantastic song after another.
Daniel Reuss/Noord Nederlands Orkest/Cappella Amsterdam (Pentatone) Noord Nederlands Orkest and Cappella Amsterdam breathe colour and light into work from the composer’s most austere period
In his later years, Igor Stravinsky became fascinated by serialism, both as a means of distilling musical thought and as an intellectual and stylistic challenge for a composer entering his 70s and 80s. The results struck some contemporary listeners as austere, but there’s a self-effacing purity and beauty about this complex, intellectually probing music that deserves a wider audience than hitherto. Kudos, then, to conductor Daniel Reuss, whose precise yet vital interpretations teem with colour and light.
There are four main works here. In Memoriam Dylan Thomas from 1954 is an extended, impassioned setting for solo tenor of Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. Threni, a spiny, multifaceted jewel from 1958, sets words from the Book of Lamentations. The haunting Introitus and bristling Requiem Canticles, from 1965 and 1966 respectively, complete the set, interspersed with briefer pieces including an unpretentious Lord’s Prayer and the severely cerebral two-minute Elegy for JFK.
Sting and his former bandmates go to the high court over a royalties dispute this week – the latest chapter in the song’s remarkably fractious story
This week’s high court hearings between Sting and his former bandmates in the Police, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, are the latest chapter in the life of a song whose negative energy seems to have seeped out into real life.
Every Breath You Take is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Copeland and Summers against Sting, alleging that he owes them royalties linked to their contributions to the hugely popular song, particularly from streaming earnings, estimated at $2m (£1.5m) in total. Sting’s legal team have countered that previous agreements between him and his bandmates regarding their royalties from the song do not include streaming revenue – and argued in pre-trial documents that the pair may have been “substantially overpaid”. In the hearing’s opening day, it was revealed that since the lawsuit was filed, Sting has paid them $870,000 (£647,000) to redress what his lawyer called “certain admitted historic underpayments”. But there are still plenty of future potential earnings up for debate.
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