This week, from Reich to Kendall and Celibidache, three musicians who prove there is no such thing as “pure music”, whether we’re talking about a technique, a mode of musical expression or a musician’s legacy.

Steve Reich turned 90 on Saturday, and I’ve been thinking about his early tape pieces from the mid-1960s, It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out. They’re such vital works not only because they opened his imagination to what could happen if you made a micro-canon – playing the same material slightly faster or slower – which is what happened when one of his tape machines slipped out of sync with the other: it’s that these are human voices that Reich is setting. It’s Gonna Rain is made from the voice of Brother Walter, a Pentecostal street preacher in San Francisco, whose warning of apocalypse in 1965 Reich recorded and looped against itself, over and over, so that Brother Walter’s voice becomes a wall and wail of sound, a sonic realisation of the sublime inundation he’s announcing. Come Out was made in 1966 with the voice of Daniel Hamm, one of the Harlem Six, six black men wrongly convicted of first-degree murder in New York. Reich’s piece was commissioned for a benefit event for their legal costs as “background music for passing the hat”.

These pieces don’t just set words, Reich says they “set human beings”, using the vocal recordings not only as musical material but political inspiration and emotional expression. Techniques that are seemingly all about narrowly musical processes – looping, canon-ing, fugue-ing – are embedded in the facts of where they were made and how, and whose voices are being represented by whom.

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‘This is Courtney doing her makeup on the ’95 Lollapalooza tour. I was documenting my generation being hijacked by corporate greed – and destroyed following the sacrificial death of Kurt Cobain’

When I was going through the archives for my rock photo book, I came across my first ever self-portrait, at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, in front of Jim Morrison’s grave. I am a 13-year-old on an awkward trip with my cool father. He had no respect or interest in Jim Morrison, and that photo is like every photo I’ve taken from that moment on – I’m trying to take agency over what is happening. Photography was the absolute first thing that gave me a feeling of having my own say. It became a way of creating my own universe, one that I could trust. It was absolutely my first love.

I was sidetracked into music in a beautiful way by these radical women and a countercultural movement, so the subject of my photographs just changed. It was me within this environment, on stage with Hole, backstage with these luminary, wild people, travelling across the world. My photography followed and morphed with me, and my camera documented my generation being hijacked by corporate greed and destroyed in the wake of the sacrificial death of Kurt Cobain. It was a generational call to document the Lollapalooza ’95 tour, where this photo was taken, for us to understand later. It was also when the wild alternative freaks crossed into the mainstream.

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Black communities across the globe have large and complex vocabularies to describe race, shaped by their specific cultures and histories

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One thing you might not know about this newsletter is how much it is shaped by behind-the-scenes chat. The Long Wave team, and its broader family at the Guardian, is a mini-diaspora in and of itself – one that is constantly in conversation. Often, during our meetings, someone will mention what was assumed to be a quirk of their specific background, only to discover that it is replicated almost entirely across the board. This week, we spoke about the fact that in many of our cultures, there is not just one word for “Black”.

“Green”, “red”, “yellow”, “blue”, “wheat”. These are some of the words many tribes in parts of Sudan use to describe complexion. There is no “Black”. I tripped over my words trying to explain to colleagues what these colours denoted – each category is infused with so much cultural depth. In fact, in some cases, they are not even descriptions of complexion, but of features, of broad ethnic background, and even of attractiveness. “Green” means dark, but also implies a sort of uniformity of colour, an even hue, and therefore almost a comeliness. Yellow is lighter, and comes with an unstated connotation of beauty. Blue is the darkest, and is sometimes pejorative, but other times just a description. “Wheat” is the one most likely to be a compliment, a shade that does not diverge too sharply into light or dark.

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Jeremy Strong’s slow-talking Facebook founder turns into a cameo, background to a thriller about a whistleblower that somehow never mentions Trump

Here is a film for all those people who solemnly deplore social media in conversation but haven’t quite got round to deleting their accounts. Sixteen years have gone by since The Social Network, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher; this was the addictive, obsessive-compulsive movie about the birth of Facebook in Harvard’s macho-competitive cauldron of student sexism and nerdy self-pity, starring Jesse Eisenberg as the fast-talking, arrogant, not-necessarily-evil genius Mark Zuckerberg. Now Sorkin is back with a sequel of sorts, directing his own script – and now Zuckerberg is basically evil, but also weirdly slow talking, as if all the zinging, smart-alecky Sorkinesque dialogue energy of the first film has been siphoned away in early middle age and dispersed among the insurgents in the new cast.

Sorkin’s jittery, funny, syncopated style is unmistakable, as distinctive in its way as David Mamet, although he has one joke about “spatula” being a Yiddish word that he has borrowed from Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. It is the story of how in 2021, Zuckerberg’s Facebook empire was challenged by courageous whistleblower-employee Frances Haugen and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz, who were on a mission to tell the world how Zuckerberg, scared by falling revenue, changed the algorithm so that engagement was supercharged by rage bait and hate speech, malice and envy. Facebook, moreover, didn’t factcheck political ads, thus driving a huge, nationwide surge in extremist groups and teen bullying and becoming a major player in the Capitol riots. (Having said that, this film does not say aloud the word “Trump” and rather cravenly declines to specify Maga activity.)

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There’s a lot of Brando badboy baggage attached to this classic outerwear – here’s how to look chic rather than stompy

In lots of ways, the arrival of autumn makes getting dressed easier. Not having to shave above your knees. Enough pockets to make a handbag optional. But it’s not all plain sailing. For instance, I don’t think we talk enough about how hard it is to carry off a leather jacket.

I thought maybe it was just me. And then I came across Lucinda Chambers – Vogue fashion director for 25 years, now co-curator of gorgeous platform of desirables Collagerie – remarking that she found leather jackets tricky. Lucinda is without a doubt one of the best-dressed women in London, always rocking a strong look – colour, stripes, great jewellery, unexpected shoes – so I was amazed and a bit gratified to find even she struggles.

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The US midterms may not be as much of a spectacle as the presidential elections, but they are just as important and can completely change not just the course of a presidential term, but federal legislation for years to come. The Guardian unpacks how these elections work, what the results mean and how they affect American life.

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Campaigners set up in more than 1,200 tents in Puerto del Sol square say challenge now is to translate a groundswell of public support into concrete change

At a makeshift lunch counter tucked within a maze of tents at a housing protest camp in Madrid, Sélpide San Luis pointed to the dizzying pace of change.

“We built a city in a week,” said the 26-year-old, whose videos documenting day-to-day life at the encampment have attracted tens of thousands of views on social media, as she pointed to the more than 1,200 tents set up in the central Puerta del Sol square. “We have urban planning, the streets have names and we’ve put surveillance systems in place. And thanks to what we’re doing here, media have not stopped talking about the issue of housing – something that we’ve been trying to get on the agenda for so long.”

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We zijn drie jaar verder na 7 oktober 2023. Maar de diepe morele en politieke betrokkenheid bij de catastrofale situatie in Gaza rechtvaardigt geen discriminatie van mensen hier in Nederland, schrijft. Shermin Amiri in zijn laatste column.

De Russische autoriteiten ontkennen dat er een uitbraak van de pest is, maar hun terughoudendheid met informatie voedt juist de geruchten. „Het onderstreept een fundamentele zwakte van een regime dat in toenemende mate op censuur en leugens is gebouwd.”

Vijftien jaar geleden was de techbaas nog een geliefde underdog in Hollywood. Inmiddels is het maatschappelijke gevoel rondom tech en sociale media gekanteld, en dat is in films als The Social Reckoning te merken. Kan Hollywood dat gevoel wel goed vertalen, nu het zélf steeds meer een techindustrie wordt?

De boodschap van vrijwel alle nieuwe collecties voor voorjaar 2027 tijdens de Paris Fashion Week: plezier hebben met mode. Geen ingewikkelde conceptuele vrouwenmode, maar praktische kleren.

Meer dan twee derde van de minderjarigen die in 2025 via verschillende migratieroutes Europa bereikten, deed dat zonder ouder of andere volwassen begeleider. Veel van hen kregen onderweg te maken met uitbuiting en geweld.

118 Things to Do Instead of Doomscrolling. Including “put together a puzzle”, “go for a bike ride”, “hold a plank for as long as you can — even if it’s only a second”, and “make your own limoncello”.

Een motorrijder uit Schiedam die in 2024 bij een straatrace in Lelystad een dodelijk ongeluk veroorzaakte, is veroordeeld tot een taakstraf van 240 uur. Het slachtoffer was een 18-jarige man die ook aan de driftrace meedeed.

Een motorrijder uit Schiedam die in 2024 bij een straatrace in Lelystad een dodelijk ongeluk veroorzaakte, is veroordeeld tot een taakstraf van 240 uur. Het slachtoffer was een 18-jarige man die ook aan de driftrace meedeed.

Woont u in de Lauwersregio, in Oost-Groningen, in de Vechtdalregio, in de omgeving Noord-Veluwe of in Midden-Brabant? PAS DAN OP! Houdt uw kroost binnenboord, bescherm uw poedel en aai de cavia nog eens lief want u leeft inmiddels in WOLVENGEBIED. Ook deze vijf prachtige alsook onschuldige Nederlandse gebieden zijn ten prooi gevallen aan de smerige klauwen van de wolf. En ook daar zal hij zijn zaad planten. Want dit jaar zijn er alweer 56 nieuwe veroveraars geboren, zo melden wolvenwatchers in een wolvenupdate. Dus DOE NIET OPEN als er in de Lauwersregio, in Oost-Groningen, in de Vechtdalregio, in de omgeving Noord-Veluwe of in Midden-Brabant binnenkort iemand op de deur klopt terwijl u pannenkoeken bakt en denkt: hoor wie klopt daar kinderen, aha, dat is vast de paketbezorger, die hijgt ook altijd zo hevig en die roept ook altijd aaawoee als de poorten van de hel niet snel genoeg worden geopend.