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From pubs to festivals to arenas, out and about with tQ
Almost exactly a year after the UK voted to leave the EU Luke Turner finds the experience of watching Kraftwerk play live has acquired an unexpected melancholy aspect. Do we Brits no longer deserve their European futurism?
Heralding the start of the UK's 2017 festival season - and what a promising start it was too with the sun shining for most of the day - Thomas Hobbs, Patrick Clarke, Aurora Mitchell, Tara Joshi, Anna Wood and Christian Eede report back on what this year's edition of the festival had to offer. (Photographs by Valerio Berdini unless stated)
Arcade Fire's Win Butler promised Reflektor would sound like a mix of "Studio 54 and Haitian Vodou," prompting calls of cultural appropriation. Now, he co-owns a Haitian restaurant and fuses American pop and Haitian konpa as DJ Windows 98. Haitian music nerd David Henderson traces Butler's Haiti obsession back to its source
Adam Ant tours his anthems and his insect nation fill the Royal Albert Hall. It’s a comeback which can only be hailed as triumphant. Chris Roberts argues that the later, solo hits are every bit as dynamic as the Antmusic which gave us the early Eighties’ brightest star
Newcastle's Boiler Shop was the birthplace of the industrial revolution. Now a new music venue, it was the perfect setting in which to witness the graceful evolution of Einstürzende Neubauten. Photos by Jay Dawson / Boiler Shop
Tariq Goddard didn't realise that he liked metal until he went to see Neurosis live at Koko and found their "songs of engagement and endurance" chimed with his own advancing years. Photos © Benedetto Manzella for the Heathen Harvest Periodical, 2016
With performances from The Ex — as well as their spotlighting of Ethiopian music in Fendika and Zerfu Demissie — and Brazil's Elza Soares, at he tenth anniversary year of Utrecht's Le Guess Who?, Noel Gardner finds a festival that has shifted its weight and broadened its vision in search of more. (Photographs by Tim van Veen, Jan Rijk and Jelmer de Haas)
This year's Unsound Festival in Krakow takes place against a background of bleak political news across the globe, making its theme of Dislocation a timely one. Luke Turner and John Doran explore this via stunning performances by Miss Red to Matmos, Senyawa to Yves Tumor and many many more. Photos by Anna Spysz & Theresa Baumgartner
Attending London's recent Felebration — a fairly Ronal portmanteau celebrating the life and work of Fela Kuti — Lottie Brazier finds a performance rightly reverent of history even as it creates new meaning for all involved, and an event which, in our current Right-lurching climate, is both necessary and in danger of disappearing
Arab Strap's filthy muse was the antidote to late 90s Britpop and joyless indie rock. Now they're back two decades on Luke Turner finds that their songs of love and sex gone awry are more needed than ever. Live photo thanks to Paul Fegen
Live in London, at a show made necessary purely by an outpouring of love, Karl Smith finds Björk delivering both a manifesto for ferocious empathy and proof that respect and mutual reciprocation is powerfully transformative. (Photographs by Santiago Felipe)
At this year's edition of Berlin Atonal, Maria Perevedentseva finds a festival packed with art installations and music ranging from the DJ-friendly to all-out carnage, which – having found its footing so spectacularly in recent years - seems not quite so sure what exactly its next step should be. (Photographs by Camille Blake)
The spirit of punk rock is not to be found in obscure band T-shirts, screaming distortion, authentic sounding lyrics or pedal boards, argues John Doran. The real fireworks are created by nakedness and a true philosophy of liberation
In Massive Attack's performance at this year's Rock en Seine festival in Paris, Jeremy Allen finds a performance that asks more questions than it answers and a timely mirror image to the uncertainty of our age. (Photographs by Christophe Crénel)