If anyone in British music still deserves that rinsed-to-death term "maverick" it is Battersea-born "Dr" Alex Paterson. From roadie for postpunk industrialists Killing Joke in the early Eighties, he went on to work as an A&R then - originally collaborating with The KLF's Jimmy Cauty - formed The Orb in the heat of the acid house explosion to bring the world "ambient house". 

Some 20 years ago, a series of albums called Artificial Intelligence on WARP Records aimed to promote techno as home-listening music. They made up a frequently sublime collection, but unfortunately the word “intelligence” in their title was picked up by a movement through the 1990s that became known, horrendously, as “intelligent dance music” (IDM) and tended to the belief that intricacy and awkwardness made music somehow superior to that made with more sensuous or hedonistic aims in mind.

We're pleased to announce The Arts Desk is a media partner of the Denovali Swingfest London on 20 and 21 April at London's The Scala. It's a good match, as Swingfest and the Denovali label, like The Arts Desk refuse to acknowledge artificial boundaries between “high” culture, the avant-garde and grassroots electronic and club music.

A story of six years of conflict in the West Bank set against more timeless details of life in the Palestinian town of Bil’in, 5 Broken Cameras brings the reality of resistance to the expansion of Israeli settlements – a conflict between unarmed locals and the Israeli army with its modern armaments - to the viewer in a far fuller way than we see in news reports.

There's a lot that's right with this album. Love This Giant sounds like Talking Heads for one, suggesting that David Byrne has made his peace with what made him great in the first place, and has seemingly stopped his slide into becoming a fascinating conceptualist and writer but slightly boring performer. It also, in several places, sounds strikingly like Róisín Murphy's Ruby Blue album made with Matthew Herbert, which given this is one of the most criminally underappreciated records of the 21^st century is no bad thing at all.

Well, who could have predicted that? For once the Grammys proved that the US recording industry establishment is up for the challenge of reflecting the sense of a world in social and cultural flux by throwing surprise after surprise, bombshell after bombshell, at its shocked audience. It was a night of victory for the underdogs and the radicals, a sense of musical revolution in the air, with all bets off. OK, no, of course it wasn't. But we can dream, right?

Nova Scotia-born Leslie Feist is the very model of a 21^st-century artist: independent in spirit yet able to work the mainstream industry to her advantage, technologically savvy and au fait with all the means to build and sustain a profile and sales while still maintaining some sense of artistry and dignity.

A good measure of the passion felt for an act is how much of their crowd dresses like them. And though Leslie Feist is hardly Lady Gaga in the image stakes, it's gratifying that even in a rush to get to our seats I'm able to count at least five “Feist fringes” on audience members that I pass. It's a subtle tribute to a subtle artist, one who has come to major success without fanfare or grandstanding and attracts a discerning and knowledgeable fanbase.

After a quarter of a century at the alt-rock coalface Canada's, Cowboy Junkies can hardly be accused of slouching. Sing In My Meadow is part three of a rapid-fire four-album project that began last year with Renmin Park, which was inspired by a trip to China, and continued with a tribute to the late Vic Chestnutt.

When a band of a certain vintage comes in from the cold suddenly to record a new album you can reasonably expect one of three things: total nonsense, a half-decent throwback or, if you’re very lucky, a proper comeback. Eighties art-metallers Jane’s Addiction have already had one pretty impressive return this millennium. That was 2003’s Stray, their first original release since 1990’s classic Ritual de lo Habitual. The question fans of Lollapalooza music have been asking in the last few months is, can they pull off the same trick again?