‘After one gig, someone stole my car with my dole money in it’: Morcheeba on how they made The Sea

We’d made our first album and were waiting for it to come out. But we wanted to carry on writing more stuff while we were in the mood. I even cut Christmas dinner short at my uncle’s in Brixton, London, so we could get back to the studio. We would work until we passed out, then I’d sleep underneath the mixing desk with my head in the bass drum, as that’s where the pillow was.One night in early 1996, my brother Paul and I stayed up all night drinking vodka, trying to write as many songs as we could, and we came up with much of the Big Calm album

Jayson Gillham announces tour with Palestinian-Jordanian musician ahead of MSO court case

When Jayson Gillham took a stand at Melbourne’s Iwaki Auditorium in August 2024, he was told by his supporters he was “ahead of his time”.“Actually, I think I was 10 months late,” the Australian-British pianist says, a year and a half after the furore first hit.It was processing the media reports of genocide in Gaza that shifted something fundamental in Gillham, the realisation that his role as a performer could no longer remain siloed from the world outside the concert hall.“I felt I had to say and do something – respond in a musical way to what I was seeing,” he says. “That was really the moment where I thought, well, something has to change about my career

Fill that Glasto-shaped hole! The 40 best UK festivals you can still book

Who needs Worthy Farm? From woodland raves and psych freakouts to fell walks and barbecue hoedowns, there’s a festival for everyone this summer. And some of them don’t even require a tentDownload10 to 14 June, Donington, Leicestershire If you needed another reminder of the cultural capital currently wielded by the sounds and styles of the early 2000s, witness nu-metal veterans Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park headlining the UK’s biggest rock festival alongside Guns N’ Roses, who continue to fly the flag for Donington’s Monsters of Rock heritage. Further down the poster you’ll find the really adrenalised stuff: Blood Incantation’s cosmic death metal; Drain’s febrile hardcore; and Die Spitz’s peerlessly cool doom-punk hybrid. Huw BainesIsle of Wight18 to 21 June, Newport Headliner-wise, Isle of Wight offers the perfect arc for a festival weekend. Friday is all about hugging your mates while enjoying emotive, singalong bops with Lewis Capaldi; then on Saturday, with energy levels still high, Calvin Harris brings frenetic, star-studded bangers; while Sunday’s possibly dark-hued comedown is perfectly soundtracked by enduring goth titans the Cure

Shaun Micallef: ‘Charlie Pickering said that’s the only thing keeping him going – to vanquish me’

Your latest novel, De’Ath Takes a Holiday, is a vampire comedy, a satire of gothic fiction and a revision of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Why?Well, I love that period of writing, and one of my favourite books is Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, which is a satire of Victorian values. I took a leaf out of his book in wanting to do a satire of how the world got to be the way it was. I’m basically blaming this proto-Dracula figure – the Comte De’Ath – for introducing the rather bloodless, exploitative way the world works. So [in my book] he meets a whole bunch of people throughout history, including Sigmund Freud and Henry Ford, and influences them

The Guide #236: Is celebrity casting a cynical marketing stunt or does it help to democratise theatre?

Timothée Chalamet might have smirked his way out of an Oscar. Sabrina Carpenter might have been roundly snubbed at the Grammys. But there’s one place both would be welcomed with open arms: the UK theatre scene.It seems we can’t get enough of celebs on stage (acting chops preferable but not mandatory). This week alone, London’s West End features Stranger Things star Sadie Sink, singer Self Esteem and Strictly cutie pie Johannes Radebe

I thought I’d been coping with my sister’s death – a Taylor Swift song showed me I hadn’t

As I sat in a park during the pandemic, listening to the Evermore album on my headphones, one song finally released the grief that I’d pent up for five yearsWhen the pandemic hit in 2020, it had been five years since my sister, Emily, had died. She had lived with cystic fibrosis her whole life, yet we were a close, tactile family. We laughed, hugged and sang often. When Emily died, relatively suddenly, aged 30 (I was 27), I coped with it as well as anyone could. In fact, I prided myself on how outwardly resilient I seemed: I spoke to a therapist, started a new job