Peter Asher on being music’s incredible ‘Everywhere Man’: ‘The secret is simple’

As the musician and producer reaches 82, a new documentary reveals his life working with everyone from James Taylor to Carole King to Paul McCartney

Mentors, muses and new music: conductor and composer Ryan Wigglesworth

The musician first visited Aldeburgh as a teenage fanboy. Now, he is at the centre of this year’s festival as its featured artist – and he’s opening with his favourite opera

‘I was dazzled. I thought the walls would fall down’: the oral history of DMZ, the label and club night that gave dubstep its soul

In an extract from Aftershock, a definitive new history of dubstep, DMZ’s Mala, Coki and Loefah recall the bass drops and pacifist mentality that went into their creation

The best albums of 2026 so far

From Thundercat’s all-star funk to Kacey Musgraves’ hymns to solitude, we look at some of our favourite music of the last six months from across the pop spectrum

James Blood Ulmer, adventurous US guitarist and vocalist, dies aged 86

Musician who spliced jazz, funk and blues, including in a spell on a major label in the early 1980s, was celebrated as ‘fearless’ by his family

'We were going off the cliff': Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil on inventing grunge

As he publishes a memoir, the pioneering guitarist talks about rejecting spandex and hair metal, his fears for breakthrough hit Black Hole Sun – and completing nine unfinished Soundgarden songs

‘You escape the slaughter. But there’s a long tail of sadness’: musician Bedouine on the strangeness of Arab life outside the Middle East

With roots in Armenia, Syria and Saudi Arabia, the singer-songwriter now lives in the US. But despite her Carole King-style sound, her homelands are never far from her mind

Post your questions for David Byrne

As the former Talking Heads frontman releases his concert film American Utopia in 4K, he will join us to answer your questions

'So rogue': country superstar Shania Twain turns London pub into saloon

Fans from across UK descend on Shacklewell Arms for intimate gig that leaves them wanting one more song

Add to playlist: the introspective ‘Afromood’ of Nigerian star Strei and the week’s best new tracks

Less interested in spectacle than vibe, the Delta State artist’s subtle atmospheric projects are carving a quietly distinctive path

Zoh Amba: Eyes Full review

(Matador) Better known as a formidable free jazz saxophonist, these thrashing songs about the artist’s Tennessee childhood home share a similar genre-pushing intensity

‘I knew it was over for us’: the bands who got left behind when punk exploded

Fifty years ago this week, the Sex Pistols played their first Manchester gig – and upended pop culture. But what was 1976 really like before punk arrived? From swing bands to ‘spaghetti rock’, we discover a lost history