WITNESS Kronos Quartet and Mary Kouyoumdjian Phenotypic Recordings 14 March 2025 As a first-generation Armenian-American whose family was directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, composer, documentarian, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Mary Kouyoumdjian is eminently qualified to use her skills to create an artistic portrait of the horrors of violent conflict. Likewise,

It is 1845, and a man in Paris has promised to make someone’s wedding ring appear inside an orange. He borrows a ring from his audience, which promptly vanishes inside a handkerchief. A small tree on a table is wheeled onto the stage, and the astonished audience watches as, in less than a minute, the

The question of how to get away with murder has driven many crime dramas, but none more powerfully than Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley, which hews closer to character study than thriller. Netflix’s 2024 limited series Ripley reimagines the young, inexperienced criminal of Minghella’s film as a seasoned professional akin to the

Wolfgang Flür was, famously, a member of Kraftwerk during their triumphant synthpop reign that began with Autobahn in 1973. Flür left the band in 1987, disenchanted with Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider’s preference for cycling over creating music. Flür himself, though, went back to his pre-Kraftwerk vocation of designing furniture. He didn’t release any new

The Darkness are known for imbuing glam metal with homespun English kitsch, fuelled by Justin Hawkins’ piercing, polished falsettos and buzz-saw guitar riffs. A riff-driven band, the Darkness benefit from Rufus Tiger Taylor’s tom-tom heavy drums, and Frankie Poullain’s rubbery basslines. Their musical acumen was never in doubt, but their determination to write novelty songs,

Last year was prolific for pop music, and 2025 is shaping up to be similar, as artists chime in with their different perspectives on the current over-documented, hyper-individualized era.Streaming diversified pop music by making listening a solitary activity. No longer did the genre that strives for a large listener base need to cater to being

The world lost a good one when it was last call for Shane McGowan. The frontperson of the Pogues left this life in 2023, leaving behind a singularly enjoyable and inspiring legacy captured in part on this mighty sampling of their work. To their fans, the Pogues delivered a vision of a rough, sometimes cruel

Once a cultural icon, Kanye West’s Yeezy brand has suffered a dramatic fall from grace. Now, one of the internet’s most passionate fan communities is shutting down in protest. The Yeezys subreddit is going read-only from this point forward. Why? They say that the Yeezy name is tarnished. They referenced the fact that Yeezy released

“I am a bit old-fashioned,” says Chas (James Fox). He’s a vicious enforcer for a London gangster who, after killing a man, pretends to be a juggler named Johnny Dean and inveigles his way into the huge bohemian Notting Hill mansion of Turner (Mick Jagger), a retired rock star. Chas describes the milieu to a

Today! Mississippi John Hurt Craft Recordings / Bluesville 28 February 2025 Mississippi John Hurt first recorded in 1928 for the blossoming Okeh label, but his music didn’t catch on like his contemporaries. Maybe his voice didn’t have the same grittiness that early blues listeners craved. Hurt seemed content working on the farm and providing for

In Japanese literary sensation Sayaka Murata’s novelVanishing World, sex between married couples (both for pleasure and for procreation) has all but vanished. In response to a largely absent male population throughout the Second World War, extensive research and development of artificial insemination practices subsumed Japan’s medical and scientific community, inevitably supplanting natural conception within families

For Los Angeles-based composer, producer, and guitarist Dustin Wong, guitar loops seem to occupy the center of his creative flow. That’s certainly the case with his earlier albums on Thrill Jockey, like Infinite Love (2010) and Mediation of Ecstatic Energy (2013), as his highly skillful and disciplined playing is given a mechanical, synthetic propulsion while

Arcadia Alison Krauss and Union Station Down the Road 28 March 2025 Alison Krauss hasn’t recorded with Union Station in 14 years—since Barack Obama’s first term, as Rolling Stone’s David Browne noted in his article announcing the act’s latest album, Arcadia. During this time, a lot has changed, including the departure of key Union Station

In 2005, it would have been impossible for Will Sheff to believe that Black Sheep Boy would be Okkervil River’s high-water mark. He was on such a creative streak that Black Sheep Boy Appendix, released the following year, actually included a few songs (“No Key, No Plan”, “Another Radio Song”) that rivaled anything on the