Michael Gira (born 19/2/54) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, author and artist. He founded Swans, a band in which he sings and plays guitar, in New York during the late 1970s. Since that time, Gira and Swans have been a major influence in the experimental rock scene and in the 1980s were lorded as the “loudest band on the planet”. Not ones to sit still, however, they evolved continuously, taking on new sounds and influences until grinding to a halt in the late 1990s.

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”, the ineffable progressive rock epic that occupies side two of 1971’s Meddle, is having a moment. Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets released a sensational one-sided 12-inch vinyl version of the track on Record Store Day, April 12. Recorded at the Centennial Hall in Frankfurt last August, the 23.04-minutes single – which plays from the centre outwards – reached number six in the vinyl chart, dropped, and is rising again.

My new album, Fantasies, recorded with pianist Richard Fu, is the culmination of my years-long fascination with the wonderful genre of instrumental opera fantasies. I first fell in love with opera fantasies while attending summer music camps as a teenager. Franz Waxman and Pablo De Sarasate’s fantasies on Bizet’s Carmen were staples of the summer festival repertory of my violin-playing peers, and they were my first exposure to this sub-genre.

“Sandra” is one of my favourite tracks from my album Between The Moon and the Milkman which was released last year.  While living in Paris a few years ago I shared a flat with an older French lady. We loved to chat every night when I came home from work, but one time she told me a story that stayed with me about her late husband, who was an abusive alcoholic. When he died, his only final wishes were to be buried. So of course, she had him cremated.

When I arrived at St John’s College, Cambridge, in April 2023, it was a daunting prospect to be taking over the reins of a choir with such a distinguished recording heritage: there have been more than 100 albums since the 1950s on some of the UK’s top labels. 

Occasionally, when I pass my own reflection, out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of the likeness of my father, shining out through the bones in my face. In this way his ghost walks with me. 

Sometimes the making process can feel like that, a matter of training our peripheral vision to retrieve the images and ideas that are flickering at the edge of our field of view, existing in the same dimly lit space as dreams, primal impulses and hazy memories. 

Amid these troubling times, can we not all live in the world of the 2025 Oscars' runaway success story, an ever-smiling Sean Baker? That thought increasingly crossed my mind as the 97th Academy Awards crawled towards its close, a promise early on from host Conan O'Brien not to "waste time" abandoned more or less as soon as it had been spoken.

It started with a Guardian long-read. I’m ashamed to admit it since so many shows could say the same, but that was the beginning.

David Lynch’s final two features mapped a haunted Hollywood of curdled innocence and back-alley eeriness. Mulholland Drive (2001) seemed the ultimate LA noir, till Inland Empire (2006) dug into deepest Lynch. The eighteen fallow big-screen years preceding his death this week show the loneliness of his vision in his medium’s conformist capital, which he nevertheless adored. “It’s kind of a trick in the light [that] is magical,” he said of his adopted hometown’s allure. “It gives you the indication that anything is possible. It’s critical for me to feel that light.”

Billie Holiday sings again, Olivia Laing tends to her garden, and Biran Klaas takes a chance: our reviewers discuss their favourite reads of 2024.