The hill I will die on: ‘Being a DJ’ isn’t a proper job
In what other field is a couple of hours’ work taking the credit for somebody else’s brilliance so venerated, says Guardian Opinion joint production editor Phil Mongredien
Fred Again review – guest-heavy homecoming for the golden boy of UK dance is an eclectic triumph
Following a six-night stint in NYC, Fred Gibson returns to London for a brilliant, five-hour melange of his own tracks and wildly energising guest-star mini-sets
‘The music could not stop for three days’: how Sirāt went on a road trip to the dark heart of rave
Club culture is notoriously hard to capture on film. Oscar-tipped director Oliver Laxe explains why he had to organise his own music festival in the Moroccan desert to find deeper meaning in dance-floor ecstasy
Harry Styles: Aperture review – a joyous, quietly radical track made for hugging strangers on a dancefloor
Styles is wonderfully loose and unhurried on the lead single to his new album, taking a bold path away from the rest of today’s mainstream pop
Resolution festival review – admin hell, an epic club night and flamenco voguing
Intriguing new works by Seirian Griffiths, Qi Song and Isadora D’Héloïsa explore in-between states in this month-long showcase of the future of dance
Sébastien Tellier: ‘I thought I’d be famous after Eurovision – but nobody noticed’
The musician’s elegant electropop marked him out as one of the ‘cool French dudes’, before an attempt to literally crash the Song Contest fell badly flat. Now back with an adventurous new album, he talks about the man who stole his identity and why he doesn’t care for ‘good taste’
Songs about new beginnings – ranked!
From CMAT and the Carpenters’ fresh starts to the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun and Nina Simone’s Feeling Good, starting again is a rich theme in pop. Here are some of the best examples
‘By 15, I was hanging out with Skrillex’: the idiosyncratic club music of reformed EDM kid Villager
Disillusioned by his early EDM success, Alex Young bought hardware, embraced UK dance culture – and reinvented himself
The best songs of 2025 … you may not have heard
From a folk murder ballad to an impassioned call for peace, Guardian writers pick their favourite lesser-heard tracks of the year
Jewish klezmer-dance band Oi Va Voi: ‘Musicians shouldn’t have to keep looking over their shoulders’
After 20 years playing around the world, the group had two UK gigs cancelled this year after protests from activists. It’s made them feel targeted for who they are, the band say
Paranoia, pop-dubstep and perfectly odd gems: the best old music we discovered this year
Strange folk, lost pop, disco oddities and, um, Dido – here are the forgotten tracks that became this year’s most replayed revelations
The 10 best global albums of 2025
Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with mournful minimalism, Mohinder Kaur Bhamra’s 1982 album of Punjabi disco makes a comeback and Venezuelan-Guatemalan duo Titanic serve up ecstatic tracks
‘Happy by Pharrell is exceedingly annoying – but I love it’: DJ Roger Sanchez’s honest playlist
The DJ does Journey at karaoke and gets the party started with Daft Punk. But which Stevie Wonder track would he like played at his funeral?
The Rolling Stones give blessing to Fatboy Slim’s Satisfaction sample after 25 years
The mashup Satisfaction Skank was unofficial for years but band allow Norman Cook to remake it using original stems of their 1965 hit
Hedonism is back: Manchester clubbing mecca Sankeys to reopen
Sankeys will return in January 2026 in a city centre venue – and no phones will be allowed on the dancefloor