As Mad Men enters its penultimate season, its creator and stars are staying tight-lipped about the fate of the characters – but that’s only to be expected from this endlessly intriguing, enigmatic TV drama, says Gerard Gilbert

The Leisure Society's third album is a quintessential curate's egg, with plenty of earnest folk-rock strummage, and a few brilliant highlights distracting from several songs as weak as their punning titles, notably “Life Is a Cabriolet” and “One Man and His Fug”.

You've never heard of it – but dance music festival Ultra drew 330,000 revellers last week. Arielle Castillo reports on a new American passion

The Strokes

Omara “Bombino” Moctar's 13-minute “Tigrawahi Tikma” was one of the standout cuts on last year's Songs For Desert Refugees compilation, its driving guitar trills exemplifying the enduring strength of Tuareg desert-blues.

The Russian composer Victor Kissine's work has been accurately described as possessing a “reticent musical language”, a characteristic skilfully demonstrated by Gidon Kremer's Kremerata Baltica on this album of three chamber-music premieres.

It's rather apt that John Eliot Gardiner's marathon cycle of Bach cantatas should finally be completed with those written for Ascension Day, recorded at St Giles Cripplegate 12 years after the original “pilgrimage” recordings of 2000. The four cantatas feature mostly new soloists but sustain the series' high standards.

Moving and thought-provoking, this marvellous re-telling of the tragedy of Herculaneum and Pompeii in AD79 focuses on the everyday and concludes with a presentation of body casts of a selection of those who died.

'Art is as much about design as it is art. And design is as much about art'

Our movie history has its high points, but Chris Rea acting isn't one. Andrew Roberts presents a hall of national cinematic shame

Forget the Vanessa Hudgens of High School Musical – her role in Spring Breakers involves a riot of sex, drugs, and guns. Gill Pringle meets an actress who's growing up fast

Derry is this year’s City of Culture, but the nerve centre of the celebrations will forever be associated with its troubled past

Born near Cologne, living in Antwerp after a long period in Italy, and active in the courts of Spain and England, Rubens (1577-1640) was an artist of European dimension.

When artist Ilya Kabakov left Soviet Russia, he found a soulmate. Now their art makes millions

Murdered Spanish poet’s key work to debut at New York exhibition