‘We made horse semen into little shakers’: the quest for music’s most extreme sounds
From cannabis plants to screaming peacocks, swallowed microphones to babies in utero, musicians are rejecting regular instruments and software-derived sound
June 2021
‘I don’t want to remember these things’: dark pop poet John Murry on surviving rape, heroin and family strife
The singer-songwriter talks about his adoptive relative William Faulkner, his violent childhood and heroin – and saves a surprise until the end
December 2019
Vaughan Oliver, celebrated 4AD graphic designer, dies aged 62
The Observer's obituaries of 2019
Scott Walker remembered by Michael Morris
April 2019
The 50 best songs about Europe – ranked!
Brexit is delayed – so voyager avec nous on a trans-European tour of music, from Paris to Berlin via Finistère. Tout le monde à bord!
Eimear McBride: 'Scott Walker was capable of touching the universal'
Walker’s mesmerising music came to explore new realms of experience with merciless daring. It changed her work – and her life – says the acclaimed novelist
'They’re film scores to his imagination': music stars pay tribute to Scott Walker
'Brave and uncompromising': readers' tributes to Scott Walker
Pop's great adventurer: how Scott Walker reached the heart of darkness
Alexis Petridis
Scott Walker – a life in pictures
Scott Walker, experimental pop hero, dies aged 76
August 2018
Scott Walker joins Sia to soundtrack Natalie Portman film Vox Lux
The new film by Brady Corbet, about a pop star trying to balance her career with motherhood, will premiere at the Venice festival
March 2018
Readers recommend
Readers recommend playlist: songs about clocks and watches
Scott Walker, Slowdive, Smokey Robinson and Della Reese are among the artists spinning this week’s clockwise playlist
January 2018
Scott Walker: 'My last album was pretty perfect'
Unmissable culture of 2018
Kendrick cruises, Wiley confuses and Gaga goes OTT: the essential pop for 2018
October 2017
BalletBoyz: Fourteen Days review – daring dance created at breakneck speed
Working to a tight deadline, Javier de Frutos, Iván Pérez, Christopher Wheeldon and Craig Revel Horwood respond to the theme of balance in new pieces, presented alongside Russell Maliphant’s Fallen
