From Corsica and Karnataka to snug sleeping bags and new hotels

Our food culture was a laughing stock until 20 years ago When rationing ended back in 1954, British food had a lot to catch up on. As a teenager I used to save up loads of money to go to France and spend it all on good food there. It may have been only 21 miles from England, but Calais tomatoes were a completely different proposition from Dover ones. On one exchange visit, instead of buying cigarettes and alcohol, I spent my money on juicy steaks from a butcher and delicious potatoes at a grocer, and had a feast.

Basement Jaxx's creative resource has let them survive the 1990s' dance-pop heyday with hardly a scratch.

Bostich + Fussible are one-half of Mexico's Nortec Collective, a production team that seeks to combine the country's traditional norteño music with techno beats and synths.

The crossover territory between classical, jazz and pop has remained largely uninhabited since the era when prog-rockers strove to assert their musical chops with ill-advised symphonic works and temporary alliances with classical musicians who sometimes – as Frank Zappa learnt to his dismay – regarded the commission with a disrespect bordering on contempt.

Basement Jaxx's music has always hinted at the epic and symphonic, so one can understand the temptation to take things one step further by employing an actual orchestra, Metropole Orkest of the Netherlands, to reinterpret their hits in quasi-classical mode.

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Clasping an espresso at his management's London offices, the French synth star Pascal Arbez, better known to his acolytes as Vitalic (pronounced "vee-tal-ique"), shakes his head despondently. "All the time I am told that dance music is in danger, or even that it is dead," he says. "It's stupid. All you need to do is check the internet or go to a club or a festival and you can see how alive it is," he sighs. "But attitudes are beginning to change. Dance music has become stronger definitely. La Roux play electronic music and look what they have achieved. And I hear [the Dutch disc jockey] Tiësto has more fans than Madonna."

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The problems which attended the troubled gestation of Basement Jaxx's fifth album – among them family illness, relationship break-up and a lack of confidence about their direction – have clearly left their mark on the aptly-titled Scars, the weakest release of their 10-year career.

Little Boots
"Glastonbury was obviously a highlight for me this year, as was my mum crying her way through the entire set from side of stage. DJing wedding songs dressed in a full bridal gown to about 2,000 people in the early hours of Latitude was another. Especially because we managed to make the biggest conga line I've ever seen. But I think my favourite moment was at Leeds. My little brother came along and it was his birthday so I'd got him and his friends backstage passes for the weekend, which I think already upped his street cred, but at the end of the set I got him on stage and had the entire crowd to sing happy birthday to him. It was great just to see his face. He's definitely the coolest kid in school right now."

There's more to Cheshire than cheese

Cool beats raise the temperature

While the producer and DJ Alex Paterson has been the core member of the ambient, electronic group The Orb for over 20 years, he has been ably seconded in his pioneering sonic endeavours by creative musicians such as Jimmy Cauty, Kim Weston (aka Thrash), Simon Phillips and Thomas Fehlmann.