Music

In drone and minimal music, the sonic conditions that develop in the middle of a piece, be it a recording, performance or composition, often come to define the work in a more pronounced manner than how the work begins or ends. This ‘middle’ region is inherently temporal, but because of the extended and sometimes marker-less durations one encounters in minimal music, it proves to be elusive – and thus one, while listening, often has a continuous sense of being inside of a potentially boundless sound.

Manchester International Festival, UK

Depending on your point of view, the composer, writer and conductor is either a purveyor of cold-hearted didacticism, or a creator of glittering musical worlds

Yale Union, Portland, Oregon, USA

Sculpture, field recordings and the ghosts of dead rappers

‘So shallow is this show that I left with the surprising sensation of knowing even less about Björk than I did when I entered’

PJ Harvey records a new album in public

‘This emergent style is not so much a genre as a sensibility – an approach to rhythm, texture and referentiality that stands apart from long-established modes’

From deep soul explorations of topical subjects and the plight of the poor to musing reflectively on art, life, God and outer space

The audio, visual world of Diego Perrone

How to survive exile

‘There’s no extracting the concept from the commodity in any of Hoff’s many strands of work’

From Samuel Beckett’s plays to Nick Cave’s music, the artists and filmmakers discuss the evolution of their artistic imaginations

‘Pop today is a broad church, but no one would ever argue that it’s not fun’

A new work by jazz pioneer Anthony Braxton

In pursuit of Erik Satie

Why so many musicians are discouraging the use of smartphones at shows

On the 20th anniversary of Derek Jarman’s death, Paul Schütze speaks to Simon Fisher Turner about composing music for his friend’s movies

Henry Flynt talks about half a century’s worth of wildly divergent activities

Dropped from the psychic landscape of British pop and undetected by the radar of retromania, where did these diverse communities go?