With youth unemployment as high as it's been in 20 years, the Mayor of London, MP for Uxbridge & South Ruislip and Telegraph columnist has added a fourth string to his bow and signed up to write a new Shakespeare biography — due 2016 — with a sorely-needed advance of £500,000
Elizabeth Aubrey takes a trek across Manchester with Gareth Smith, aka Vanishing, as he talks about the future of the city and his brand new album, Shelter Of The Opaque, released exclusively to our Sound & Vision subscribers. All Vanishing portraits by Der Fotoautomat, photographs of Manchester by Elizabeth Aubrey
David McKenna rounds up the cream of the latest electronic, jazz and indie rock releases from France, taking in Maghrebi sounds from Lyon, farty drum machines and oceanic musique concrete. Homepage image of TripleGo
David McKenna flags up some French compilations released in response to the Covid-19 crisis and reviews new music from Felicia Atkinson, Franco-Senegalese rapper Zuukou Mayzie and the final album from Black Devil Disco Club
For his second column on a single classical record bought for a quid in a charity shop, Phil Hebblethwaite unpicks a devastating twofer – the Alban Berg Quartett playing a pair of late Schubert pieces in which this most cultish of composers dares to contemplate his sentence of death by sexually transmitted disease