From Goethe to Novalis, nineteenth-century novels about artists offered stories about self-invention and self-discovery, but what happens to the artist-protagonist in an age where no-one any longer feels in control of their own destiny? Gabrielle Sicam looks to recent books by Anika Jade Levy, Brandon Taylor and Stephanie Wambugu

Photo by Juan Martin Lopez

What does the künstlerroman look like today? Flat Earth by Anika Jade Levy, Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor, and Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu are three recent novels that all seek to depict a version of the artist’s life. Today’s künstlerromane touch on all of the neuroses, desires and individualistic tendencies of the genre’s Romantic origins. Their whistle-stop tours through the artistic elite via young-and-hungry protagonists might…

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The European Court of Justice ruled in favour of producer Moses Pelham who used a brief drum loop from one of the Germans’ tracks

Kraftwerk have lost a decades-long copyright dispute with the producer Moses Pelham.

The case revolved around a two-second drum loop from the group’s 1977 track ‘Metall auf Metall’, which Pelham sampled for Sabrina Setlur’s 1997 single ‘Nur mir’ without permission. Kraftwerk subsequently took legal action over the matter in a case that has lasted almost three decades.

The European Court of Justice ruled in favour of Pelham earlier this week, as Loop Rituals reports, deciding that use of the brief sample is lawful under the “pastiche” loophole in European Union copyright law. Under this exception, work that calls to…

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Hymnal (Resung) is out in June

Photo by Frankie Casillo

Lyra Pramuk is releasing a remix EP for her 2025 LP Hymnal.

Taking in six reworks of songs from last year’s album, Hymnal (Resung) features contributions from Djrum, Laurel Halo & John Tejada, and Verraco, among others.

In a statement about the release, Pramuk said: “A global constellation of sonic voices is invited to reimagine my album Hymnal – a work of ecological grief, spiritual invocation, and queer embodiment.

“This rework project invites artists to deconstruct and recompose individual tracks as acts of sonic translation: ritual, mourning, conjuring, renewal. Hymnal (Resung) is not a remix album, but a polyphonic transmission, each piece a new vector in the ongoing dialogue between collapse and care, ancestry…

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Abigail Snail

Rad Berms

Members of Reciprocate and Sly & The Family Drone combine their considerable powers with stalwart James Allsopp on reeds to make a spontaneous and highly idiosyncratic racket

Rad Berms by Abigail Snail

‘Soul Berm’, a track from Red Berms, Abigail Snail’s debut album, sounds like three instrumentalists operating in completely different genres. There’s guest reed player James Allsopp, who’s layering messy, Albert Ayler-style skronk. Will Glaser, the band’s drummer, is rattling at his ride tentatively, wading his way around the kit. And, when guitarist Stef Kett isn’t clawing at his guitar, he’s belting out mix-clipping garage rock vocals. 

Suddenly, Glaser finds a pulse. Allsopp melds his noise into an ostinato – as does Allsopp. Strapped into the experimental jam equivalent of…

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When the grown-up, serious-minded hip hop trio released To The 5 Boroughs, a late-career album informed by the 9/11 attacks, it ought to have been a chore. Against all the odds, it wasn’t. Simon Price ch-checks out a new box set version

The Beastie Boys’ journey from juvenilia to maturity can be mapped through food. On their ten million-selling 1986 gonzo-rap debut Licensed To Ill, they were namechecking White Castle and Fatburger. Within three years, follow-up Paul’s Boutique, an album whose appeal was more selective, concluded with a twelve-minute suite named after the Provençal fish stew bouillabaisse. And, by the time of their sixth studio album in 2004, they’d outed themselves as full-on foodies and bon vivants. To The 5 Boroughs…

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The new track, which is the first release from the duo in 13 years, was uploaded to YouTube today

Boards Of Canada have shared a new track, ‘Tape 05’.

Clocking in at just over three minutes, the new cut was uploaded to YouTube today (16 April) and shared via Boards Of Canada and Warp’s social media channels with no other context included. You can watch a video for the song, centred around analogue visuals and the Hexagon Sun symbol long associated with the Scottish duo, below.

The unveiling of ‘Tape 05’ comes after speculation around Boards Of Canada’s return was triggered earlier this month when mysterious VHS tapes were mailed out to fans from addresses linked to Warp and its retail arm Bleep….

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The track comes with a politically-focused video made by US photo artist thefinaleye

Photo by Warren Du Preez

Massive Attack have collaborated with Tom Waits on a new song, titled ‘Boots On The Ground’.

The track marks the first release of new material from the band since 2020’s EUTOPIA EP, and it comes backed by a vinyl-exclusive B-side by Waits titled ‘The Fly’, which is Waits’ first new solo recording since 2011’s Bad As Me.

‘Boots On The Ground’ comes with a politically-focused video co-created by Massive Attack and US photo artist thefinaleye that draws on footage of recent US protests against the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and military action being carried out by the government. You can watch the visual…

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In this month’s antidote to the algorithm, Archie Forde examines how a 13th century apocalyptic plainchant has appeared everywhere from classical music to hip-hop and cinema soundtracks

Last Judgement, a triptych by Hans Memling, painted between 1467 and 1471

It’s December 5, 1830, and 26-year-old French composer Hector Berlioz is debuting his Symphonie Fantastique at the Paris Conservatoire. The work is set to a loose narrative that follows its creator’s descent into opium addiction, sacrilegious nightmares and infernal Sabbaths, all inspired by Berlioz’ doomed and unrequited passion for Anglo-Irish actress Harriet Smithson. He will, however, later marry her. The young Frenchman has detailed all his symphony’s programmatic elements in small pamphlets, which sit neatly on the chairs of perplexed Parisian businessmen, rising bourgeois critics…

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ADULT.

Kissing Luck Goodbye

Rage and creativity are weapons against despondency on the latest from the Detroit electroclash duo

Kissing Luck Goodbye by ADULT.

Not only does the banal evil of our time make it difficult to see hope; it also makes it hard to hold onto anger. Apathy replaces rage when exhaustion sets in. The relentlessness of the horror we are forced to witness all around and through our devices desensitises us to its brutality over time.

ADULT., the long-running musical partnership of husband and wife Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller, have held onto rage with impressive poise for over twenty-five years. Kissing Luck Goodbye is another brutal helping of broken beats and snarling vocals, never curdling into total nihilism or defeat. “The…

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Suffused with birdsong and seemingly haunted acoustic instruments, the new album from the Michigan-based artist and curator evokes the eerie sonics of the hospital ward, finds Joel Stern

16mm self-portrait by Kristen Gallerneaux

Kristen Gallerneaux’s Life Day unfolds as a sonic study in recurrence. Not repetition in any formal or minimalist sense, but more a return to a condition: a pulse, a signal, a state of suspended awareness that doesn’t fully resolve into stable time. The album’s six tracks don’t so much sit alongside as flow into each other, like unstable signals rather than discrete transmissions. They feel less composed than remembered, as though surfacing from within a foggy haze.

Across the album, rhythms persist with a curious insistence. They suggest a heartbeat,…

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