The gentleman pictured above is Martin Green. In 1995 he was a prime mover behind The Sound Gallery, a double-album compiling groovy British easy listening and library music from around 25 years earlier which until then had been (mostly) overlooked. It was as trailblazing a compilation as Lenny Kaye’s 1972 garage-psych set Nuggets.

The lockdown which began in March is now noticeably easing, although in the realm of gigs and festivals things are still nowhere near operative. Nonetheless, theartsdesk is responding to the changes by ceasing our many weeks of New Music Lockdown Specials and looking forward to an increasing amount of actual live events. This week, we can only offer one, alongside plenty of streamed entertainment, but it’s early days. Here’s to the future. Dive in!

Coronavirus blah blah blah. Glastonbury cancelled. What to do? Didn’t go to the 2010 festival for reasons too tedious to go into. Suffered the worst FOMO of my life. This is different. There is no Glastonbury. But sitting around at home… we’ve all been doing that for months…

On the Record, the latest documentary from Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering (acclaimed directors of The Hunting Ground), dives into the sexual misconduct allegations against music mogul Russell Simmons, the so-called ‘Godf

Orange Crate Art makes most sense in the context of Van Dyke Parks’s solo career rather than that of Brian Wilson’s. For the former it was preceded by Tokyo Rose, an orchestrated set tackling the intersections of American-Japanese cultural and socio-political relations. All the way back to his debut album, 1967’s Song Cycle, Parks has created albums with American signifiers as their pegs.

Director Nick Green’s new three-parter follows on the heels of his A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad and comparisons are sure to be made between his two subjects.

If you want to pinpoint the genius of Robert Lepage’s multi-faceted seven-hour epic, that has returned to the National Theatre 26 years after it first dazzled British audiences in 1994, you might as well begin with a stethoscope.

Moby is perhaps better known these days for his two ultra-candid biographies, Porcelain and Then It Fell Apart, than he is for his massive album successes of two decades ago. His memoirs are compulsive, unique windows into the screwed up life of an intellectually inquisitive, punk rock-spirited, rave nerd who accidentally, briefly experienced superstardom.

With them having famously been just teenagers when they released their debut single in 1994 it seems fitting – and not a little tongue in cheek – that the indie rock trio chose Teenage Wildlife for the title of their 25th anniversary compilation. The name – from a David Bowie song that appears on the “rarities” disc of the three-disc set – is clearly one that resonates: it also belongs to a documentary about the band, itself almost a decade old.

Watching Dark Waters, the latest film from director Todd Haynes (Carol, Far from Heaven), I kept thinking — what’s the opposite of a love letter? The film is based on the work of Rob Bilott, a real-life lawyer who uncovered a corruption scandal so toxic that it was literally poisoning us. Dark Waters stars Mark Ruffalo as Bilott, and it functions as a dignified takedown of DuPont: the chemical giant responsible for the poison.