CD: Jazzsteppa - Hyper Nomads

'Hyper Nomads': 'A confusing, confounding roller-coaster ride of a record – but thrilling nonetheless'

Israeli drum'n'brass duo take dubstep on a rollercoaster ride

It's always interesting to see how revolutions in music get folded back into the fabric of the culture that fomented them. Dubstep, which changed club culture so dramatically in the mid-2000s, is now an intrinsic part of that culture from mainstream to margins, and the forms it takes as it beds into these various parts of the ecosystem are manifold. And Jazzsteppa – two Israelis named Gal and their trombones – turn their hands to a fair few of those forms.

theartsdesk at the Glastonbury Festival 2011

Read no other account. This total Glasto journal is subjective, but also definitive

Thursday 23 June

Haven’t left yet but someone sends me an email saying, "Not going to Glastonbury this year and feeling rather smug about it." What are they feeling smug about? The fact that they’re going to have a forgettable, normal weekend while this extraordinary event is going on? It is, of course, to do with ideas of rain. A lot of the pre-Glastonbury coverage focuses endlessly on rain and mud, as if home comforts are everything. When did comfort become the big cultural draw?

Sónar 2011: Day 2

Kathleen O'Brien aka Katy B, singing direct to the dancefloor

Our man tests his mettle as the rave kicks up a gear

Thursday was gentle – an easing into the festival experience – but yesterday is when Sónar Festival really kicked into gear. With tapas and Estrella coursing round their veins, the audience was thoroughly drawn into Barcelona's bohemianism and ready to go from the beginning of the day. Which is a good thing, as shameless, in-your-face rave music seemed to be the order of the day.

CD: Adventures in Dubstep and Beyond Volume 2

Ministry of Sound offers up a tour of popular music's cutting edge

Fascinating and imaginative trip to the vanguard of British bass music

Dubstep has now permeated pop. Drum and bass was the last British underground bass music to rub up against the mainstream but back in the mid-Nineties the major labels didn't know what to do with it. Apart from launching Goldie's career and leading David Bowie up another excruciating dead end, it failed commercially. Dubstep, on the other hand, has been eagerly embraced by US stars - Jay-Z, Rihanna and Britney Spears, to name three - and UK acts such as Chase and Status, Skream, and Magnetic Man have stormed the charts. This assimilation is invigorating but sometimes, when the latest dubstep-flavoured Euro-pop nugget hits the airwaves, one pines for the raw deal. This is where Joe Muggs steps in.

Showtime! - UK dancehall on the rise again

Lady Chann: The face of the new wave of UK dancehall

A new event aims to shine new light on British/Caribbean music

This month sees an audacious attempt to showcase British dancehall music, when the Cargo venue in Shoreditch hosts the multi-artist revue Showtime!. The Heatwave collective have brought together vocalists from various UK underground scenes, linked by a strong influence from the high-energy Jamaican sounds of the past 30 or so years. While many of the artists involved have found success in crossover scenes like rave, jungle, grime and garage, the appeal of dancehall itself (also known by the overlapping terms bashment and ragga) has traditionally been restricted to predominantly black audiences.

CD: Africa Hitech - 93 Million Miles

Bravura electronica genre-collision lets the machines sing

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a masterpiece – but it could easily have been a bloody mess.

Asian Dub Foundation - Music of Resistance, Brighton Dome

Dance-punk rebels rip it up as festival openers

It's been a while since I've spent time with Asian Dub Foundation. In the mid-Nineties, when they first appeared, they were one of the most exciting acts around and I enthused about them in print at every opportunity. They were born of an east-London community music project, mashing up the then-new sounds of drum and bass with agitprop showmanship and anti-racist politics. The result was a visceral live act that fitted as well beside the rising Brit-Asian wave (Talvin Singh, Nitin Sawhney, Badmarsh & Shri, etc) as with punky post-Levellers roots rock.

CD: Katy B - On a Mission

Katy B: 13 tracks of easy-going shiny dance pop

Likeable young singer from Peckham delivers lively pop tinted with club cool

Katy B has something of the everygirl about her. Part of her appeal is that, unlike Ke$ha, The Saturdays and so many other female pop stars, she hasn't embraced pole-dancer chic, nor does she appear to be gagging to be spread over the pages of Heat pondering her love life, her diet or her cleavage. Katy B is a 21-year-old from Peckham who looks like a 21-year-old from Peckham.

Watcha Clan, Rich Mix

Watcha Clan: They should stop trying to be all things to all music fans

A talented, versatile group just too keen to please everyone

Why do bands still insist on dabbling in drum’n’bass? It was always an absurd, overwrought style, even when it first assaulted our eardrums in the mid-1990s. It’s more like a technological malfunction of the drum machine than a natural, felt groove, hurtling along, as it tends to, at a ridiculous 200 beats per minute. Ironically, Marseilles’s Watcha Clan probably think it’s one of their strengths that they throw a couple of tracks into their live set powered by this anachronistic rhythm, but they are much more effective when utilising less familiar grooves.

theartsdesk Q&A: Producer/DJ Carl Craig

Detroit originator looks back over 20 years of techno and jazz

Carl Craig is extraordinarily easygoing. Most dance producers of his seniority and level of achievement would come with at least a publicist in tow, but when we meet him in his London hotel, his only entourage is his nine-year-old son, playing happily with an iPad or chatting to the photographer as we talk, and Craig is very easy and engaging company.