Album of the Week: Grown-up grooves make James Blake a key mover again

Album of the Week: Grown-up grooves make Blake a key mover again

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Music on Radio: Spice it up

Happy Birthday, Radio 3? In his Radio Review in this paper on Monday, Robert Hanks complained, "Essentially, it's concerned with perpetuating one quite narrow musical tradition, with little sense of the contexts that make this tradition important - that makes it more than a matter of taste." With all due respect, this, in turn, seems a rather narrow description of a network that actually strives to encompass the entire surviving repertoire of Western music over the past 1,000-odd years from vernacular medieval dance to five-hour Romantic music-drama, together with a range of contemporary activity both notated and, sometimes, improvised (Hear and Now), a fair sampling of Jazz (Jazz Notes, Impressions, Jazz Record Requests), a weekly selection of more esoteric developments in Pop (Mixing It) and fitfully, but occasionally in concentrated bursts, at least some note of the classical musics of India, Africa, Latin America, the Far East and so on (for instance, in the Traditional Music series presented this month by Brian Eno). One might well argue over the relative amounts of time Radio 3 devotes to each of these vast musical areas. Yet one will hear precious little of any of them on Radio 1.

Pop: Like Brian Eno without the concepts

Harold Budd, ambient's forefather, has been composing for 20 years. He can't play - but that doesn't bother him. He's in it for the joy. By Matt Smith

Brian Eno's generation game

The master of ambient music is pioneering a concept that takes computerised sound into an atmospheric new dimension.

Brian Eno is 'a mammal, a celebrity and a masturbator'. And his new diary could establish him as the avant-garde Alan Clark

n the back cover of A Year with Swollen Appendices, Brian Eno's diary of 1995, he supplies a handy guide to some of the things that he is: "a mammal, an Anglo-Saxon, an uncle, a celebrity, a masturbator". Further insight into the mind of the enigmatic 47- year-old more often referred to as musician, record producer and artist is furnished by his diary entry for 26 August of last year. "Pissed into an empty bottle so I could continue watching Monty Python and suddenly thought 'I've never tasted my own piss', so I drank a little. It looked just like Orvieto Classico and tasted of nearly nothing."

Perhaps culture is just a happy accident

How does evolution produce a Masaccio fresco? That, or at least a slightly more sophisticated version of the question, is the mystery that preoccupies Professor John D Barrow in his book The Artful Universe. He isn't alone in his curiosity. Brian Eno, responding to my column about his speech at the Turner Prize dinner, puts the quest this way: "Why do we evolve culture? Why are we so interested in style? What does it do for us?"

A chance for harmony amid the Mostar ruins

CHILDREN OF WAR APPEAL

THE CRITICAL LIST: THIS WEEK'S RECOMMENDATIONS

The performance

Celebrating the sound of silence

Mention Radio 3 and most pop youths will squint at you like you're some crusty old slipper-wearing square. They'd be in for a surprise if they ever thought to tune in to The Music Machine (5pm R3), a breezy daily music magazine which encompasses all sorts of genres, from classical through pop to world music and beyond. "People think they know what Radio 3 is," Tommy Pearson, presenter, says. "We're trying to prove them wrong."

The other side of Iggy

A series of passport photographs by Iggy Pop reveals a cheery side to the godfather of punk and author of the song 'No Fun'. Taken this year, they appear in 'little pieces from big stars', an exhibition at Flowers East, London E8, curated by Brian Eno in aid of War Child, the charity which provides treatment and therapy for the children of Sarajevo. For a report on the show, see Cries & Whispers, Review, page 32

INTELLIGENTSIA / Searching high and low: Andy Gill on Brian Eno's three-part lantern lecture at Sadler's Wells

It was called 'Perfume, Defence and David Bowie's Wedding', but you only found that out at the end. All the tickets said was 'Brian Eno Illustrated Lecture', which sounded intriguing enough to draw a sizeable proportion of London's intelligentsia on the wettest night of the year. The slide-lantern lecture is a form that has long since lapsed into disuse, but a mind as restlessly wide-ranging as Eno's seemed the perfect cause to revive it.

The Sunday Preview: Lecture

Brian Eno (Sadler's Wells, 071-278 8916, tomorrow). Musician, non-musician, video painter, record producer, installationist and conversationalist, Eno also gives 'illustrated lectures'. This is his first in Britain and looks, among other things, at curatorship, which he feels is an art form of the future. The subtitle is 'Three Studies in Confusion'. The title will be revealed on the night. If this makes it sound a bit dry, it won't be.
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Johnny Marr talks relationships and reunions

He's worked with Modest Mouse, the Pet Shop Boys and Beck, to name a few, and recently released his first solo album. So why, wonders Johnny Marr, do people still hark on about The Smiths?
After the flood: From Haiti to Britain, one man has captured the devastation of our increasingly deluged lands

In pictures: After the flood

From Haiti to Britain, one man has captured the devastation of our increasingly deluged lands
Death becomes her: Meet the very modern mortician who champions 'cool' funerals

Death becomes her: A very modern mortician

Ever considered baking a loved one's remains into a cake or putting their ashes in fireworks? If so, talk to Caitlin Doughty, champion of the alternative death industry.
How long can the 'Keep Calm' trend carry on?

How long can the 'Keep Calm' trend carry on?

At first it seemed clever and cute. Then the 'Keep Calm' motif went mad, spawning endless offshoots.
The man who built Brum: A lament for the demise of John Madin's Brutalist Birmingham

John Madin: The man who built Brum

The architect's buildings were supposed to leave an indelible, futuristic mark on his beloved hometown but they are now being inexorably torn down.
School of chop: Learning the art of butchery at the Ginger Pig

School of chop: Learning the art of butchery

How do you butcher a lamb? Or make Mexican street food in a British kitchen? Christopher Hirst finds out.
James Pembroke: The man who's eaten everywhere

The man who's eaten everywhere

Few people know more about restaurants than James Pembroke, who only spent five mealtimes at home during his entire childhood.
A Berliner in 1963 – but did John F Kennedy once admire Adolf Hitler?

A Berliner in 1963 – but did John F Kennedy once admire Adolf Hitler?

The young JFK praised 'superior' Nordic races during visits to Germany
Banned Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof to attend Cannes Film Festival 2013, his first public appearance since prison

Banned Iranian director to attend Cannes Film Festival

Mohammad Rasoulof to make his first public appearance since being imprisoned three years ago
Seeing the larger picture: Inspiring images of space

Seeing the larger picture: Inspiring images of space

An exhibition explores images how photography has shaped astronomy
Eat Spam and carry on: Wartime pamphlets could teach us a thing or two about healthy, thrifty eating

Eat Spam and carry on

Wartime pamphlets could teach us a thing or two about healthy, thrifty eating
Facial hair: Cat beards and the purrrsuit of excellence

Facial hair

Cat beards and the purrrsuit of excellence
The 10 Best salt and pepper sets

The 10 Best salt and pepper sets

Whether they're for everyday use or to make your dining table look just right, it's worth getting a stylish shaker...
Ferran Soriano: Predicting success if Manchester City 'vision' is followed

Ferran Soriano: Predicting success if Manchester City 'vision' is followed

Chief executive says trophies will come if a 'core' of suitable players is in place
Thomas Müller: We couldn't handle losing a Champions League Final again

Thomas Müller: We couldn't handle losing a Champions League Final again

The Bayern Munich forward tells Tim Rich his side have to shed chokers' tag after two recent final defeats