Dan Snaith is back with a new Daphni single, ‘Sad Piano House’. The dizzying, infectious track marks his first new music since his latest Caribou album, Honey. Check it out below.
“i dj’ed a lot last year in the lead up to the caribou album and inevitably ended up making a bunch of new music to play out in those sets,” Snaith explained. “i’d made this one but knew that i wasn’t sure about it or when it would ever get a release so i sent it over to ben ufo and he started playing it and people started asking me about it. now i’ve finally got a chance to finish it off and release it. i’d given it the temporary title ‘sad piano house’ when i sent it because it’s piano house… but, you know, not that kind of piano house… i didn’t really intend for that to be the final track title but once it appeared in a couple of tracklists for radio shows and people started asking about it, the title stuck.”
In the realm of contemporary art, the boundary between creation and education is increasingly porous. Artists today are not only makers but also mentors, researchers, and facilitators of experience. For Yanan He, the roles of artist and educator are not parallel identities but interconnected practices. Her work in jewellery and her approach to early art education form a feedback loop: creation informs teaching, and teaching reshapes creation. As both a practitioner and pedagogue, she reframes education not as a one-way transmission of skills but as a space for mutual discovery.
Crafted Foundations: Jewellery as Cultural Translation
From 2009 to 2012, Yanan He studied in the Silversmithing and Jewellery department at the Glasgow School of Art, known for its rigorous craft-based training and progressive artistic inquiry. This experience provided her with a strong technical foundation while encouraging conceptual exploration. Her award-winning series *Traces of Time*, recipient of the Richard Hubbard Arroll Memorial Prize, draws inspiration from traditional Chinese architecture. Through recomposed decorative motifs and rhythmic structural elements, Yanan creates oxidised silver vessels inlaid with gold leaf. These works embody a dynamic interplay between heritage and innovation, inviting viewers to perceive ornament not as static symbol but as a living rhythm of visual expansion.
The contrast between materials—the darkened silver and the luminous gold leaf—further enhances the narrative of time and transformation. Each piece speaks to the temporality embedded in built environments and how craft can echo cultural memory while proposing new formal vocabularies.
To Teach as an Artist: Reframing Early Art Education
After returning to Beijing, Yanan established her own studio where she began integrating artistic creation with educational practice. Eschewing rigid curricula, she chose to teach children as an artist rather than a conventional art instructor. In her studio, lessons became shared explorations. Children sketched, patterned, built, and observed—not to replicate predetermined forms, but to develop personal visual languages.
For students aged 4 to 12, Yanan emphasised the ludic nature of art: making as both idea and play. This approach encouraged sensitivity, curiosity, and embodied thinking. Rather than positioning herself as the arbiter of knowledge, she became a co-explorer, guiding children to find value in process and perception.
Her educational methods reflect her own creative process: iterative, intuitive, and responsive. In return, her interactions with young learners have continually influenced her studio practice, revealing new emotional registers and alternative ways of seeing.
Bridging Educational Cultures: China and the UK
‘Dun Huang Murals’ Chinese culture art project at Harrow Beijing, 2018
Educated in both Chinese and British systems, Yanan is acutely aware of the contrasts between them. Chinese art education, grounded in Confucian values, privileges discipline, technique, and respect for tradition. British art education, shaped by progressive pedagogies, encourages independent thinking, conceptual development, and cross-disciplinary experimentation.
Rather than seeing these models as oppositional, Yanan works to synthesise their strengths. She introduces structured craftsmanship alongside critical inquiry, helping students navigate both form and meaning. During annual study trips to the UK, her Chinese students visit institutions like the British Museum, the V&A, and the National Gallery, experiencing firsthand the diversity of Western art history and museum culture. Conversely, her studio in China incorporates hands-on research of Chinese heritage sites, such as the mural paintings of Dunhuang and Yongle Palace.
‘History of Western art’ – Art story telling activities at the National Gallery in London, 2023
This cultural exchange expands the boundaries of art education. Students come to understand both their local traditions and global contexts, learning to ask not only how to make, but why to make.
A Two-Way Nourishment: Pedagogy as Practice
Yanan’s philosophy echoes wider conversations in the art world on the reciprocal nature of teaching and making. In a panel titled *Why Artists Should Teach* (Freelands Foundation, 2023), artists discussed how education forces them to articulate tacit knowledge, reconsider assumptions, and remain intellectually agile. Yanan’s experience affirms these ideas: her students’ questions often disrupt artistic habits and open up uncharted creative possibilities.
She also sees a particular value in artists teaching children. Artists, attuned to nuance and expression, can recognise the latent creativity in each child and protect it from premature standardisation. By treating each child’s response as meaningful, Yanan nurtures a sense of agency and originality from the earliest stages.
For Yanan He, education is not a fixed system but an evolving practice. She believes it should be driven not by efficiency or formality but by vision, empathy, and flexibility. Her dual role as artist-educator enables her to reimagine the classroom as a site of artistic experimentation and the studio as a pedagogical space. Whether through her vessels or her teaching, she offers a sustained inquiry into how tradition can remain fluid, how children can be creators, and how art—at any age—can be both personal and shared.
The Missed series is a rather sentimental body of work by Chinese-born and London-based artist Xinan Yang that wrestles with themes of memory, identity, belongings, and cultural displacement. Her solo exhibition From Home, on view from September 11 to October 7 at Lauderdale House, coinciding with the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrates family togetherness. Yang’s paintings hold tension in their visceral realities and undeniable vulnerabilities.
As I entered the Lauderdale house, at the turning of the staircase, a vibrant yellow wall display with Yang’s Missed series – oil paintings of blurred, anonymous figures frozen in the timelessness of family life. The salon-style display mimics the photo arrangements often seen in living rooms, almost déjà vu-like sense of home. Though modest in scale, the work is conceptually dense. Further enquiry, artists capture these fleeting moments of remembrance through collected family photos found in flea markets, delving into the themes of collective memory, loss and grief.
What should be comforting is also uncanny – the familiar becomes unfamiliar.
‘These fragile photographs are the sole physical evidence of these once present individuals that existed in the world, challenging fundamental binary oppositions such as “past/ present,”“alive/dead,” and “presence/absence.” The presence of their past surrounds me now reduced to a common commodity.’ — Xinan Yang
The use of second-hand photographs is Yang’s practice, not only an aesthetic choice but also a critical strategy – one that first emerged in her early family portrait painting I Still Care, exhibited in the Saatchi Gallery during London Grads Now 2020. Yet, in the Missed series, Yang engages the politics of photography itself — using painting to meditate on the time, reframe the family narrative and reclaim both its truth and gap.
It requires massive care and resists the immediacy of the snapshot. Her approach is grounded in Max Weber’s concept of verstehen — “understanding through feeling.” Painting, for her, is a form of sociological inquiry; she examines the identity and formative experience of the family dynamic and reinterprets through the paintbrush. Does not seek to reconstruct the lost identities but honors their unknowability. The softness of facial features is not a concealment, but an invitation – a gentle ambiguity where the collective family can unfold without being bound by identity.
Entering the corridor, the second half of the exhibition shifts from archival recovery to internal myth-making. These images feel both personal and archetypal, rendered in soft yet layered tones, they drift between magical realism and reality. The symbol emerges from Xinan’s own diasporic experience, forming a visual grammar of distance, care and return.
“ I transitioned from critiquing family album to expressing my sense of displacement from my homeland and family, through symbolic visual language. Bird, for me, represents cyclical migration and desire for spiritual return. Our family dog stands in emotional substitution and as a symbol of family ties. The moon, as a recurring motif in this part of the exhibition, embodies longing. rhythm and reunion.” — Xinan Yang
Through the contrast between the dense arrangement of archival works and the openness of her symbolic paintings, Yang creates a visual rhythm of contraction and release. Viewers are invited to step in close, examine intimate details, and then step back into the border compositions. This careful pacing echoes the emotional texture of diasporic memory, fragmented and nonlinear. From Home does not seek to resolve – they resonate the ambiguity of identity, home, and emotional distance.
A distinctive aspect of Yang’s practice is her ability to maintain contradictory/ambiguous stances without resorting to cliches. As an Asian woman artist working in the UK her work contributes meaningfully to the ongoing and evolving definition of British visual culture – a culture shaped by a multiplicity of cultural layerings and transnational intimacies. Rather than offering a definitive narrative of migration or memory, Yang proposes a visual and emotional space where such narratives remain open, non-prescriptive and deeply human.
When Vic Greener, former aspiring Hollywood actor, buys a foreclosed home in the Hudson Valley with money he got from a toothpaste commercial, it sets a series of actions into his life that will, eventually, result in his death. He moves into the first one with his wife Heather, but when a 7-foot-tall garbageman moves into the duplex, encroaching on their lives as Heather pulls freakishly large produce from her garden, things get eerie. Same as when their mute toddler opens his mouth only to ask about an unearthed necklace. As Vic falls deeper into the foreclosure business, and as Junior grows up and works with his father before heading off with some dreams of his own, it’s clear the houses are a distraction from his abandoned dreams.
OurCulture sat down with Harris Lahti to talk about Foreclosure Gothic, the uncanniest book of the year so far, unsettling children, and family legacy.
Congratulations on your debut novel! I know portions of it were published before, but how does it feel so close to release?
My life’s kinda organized in this way where I have two kids, I work full time, I’m pulling my house together, and I’m just really hoping it’s received well. I’m just looking for validation to continue doing this thing! [Laughs]
I liked that the chapters were vignettes, connected stories within a larger story. Was this what you had in mind for the novel?
I don’t think I was writing with a goal in mind. The second chapter, “Sugar Bath,” I wrote in one sitting, the one with graves in the basement. And I was reading certain books at the time that influenced the style and it came out as this fully formed one from the ether. Then I wrote the last chapter, trusting this voice and riding in the same way. The way I wrote it was trying to piece these stories together to make them make sense. As you populate the timeline with different stories by pulling ideas out of each of those, it allows this organic, intuitive structure to establish itself.
I think you use time so interesting in the novel — why did you want it to be a family saga between the Greeners instead of a more isolated period?
Man, it’s so horrible that time gives things meaning. I heard that in The White Lotus, and I was like, ‘Crap, that’s what books do!’ Anyone going to live long enough is clearly going to face the decision whether or not to have children based on their socioeconomic predicament, their character. The episodic nature of it is a good way of cutting out the fat and avoiding the more pedestrian and domestic normalcy that could establish itself and turn a story like this into a slog. I like the idea of getting in late and getting out early. The leaping structure allows each chapter to reinvent itself and build its own world and feel more lived-in. I’m a big believer in discovery being more important than inventing — so mining the synapses between the stories to create other stories is more exciting when there’s more to work with.
You renovate houses in the Hudson Valley — is it as eerie as you depict it in the book?
[Laughs] The photos are real, and a lot of the stranger elements in each story are true. If ghosts exist, I would have seen one. I might be the wrong person to ask that question just because maybe you think it’s eerie, but I remember being 4 or 5 and driving up to one of the houses my dad just bought on this gravel road. He’s pulling out junk and laying it in the road, like, ‘These toy model cars are gonna get me $500.’
But there are darker aspects to it. For example, the house behind me was the first house I renovated with my own money. There’s just layers of things you get through where you learn the whole family story. You walk into the living room and there’s a TV, and armchair, some pills on a table, and you can kind of see this person was sleeping here, taking pills, that was their life. But below all the garbage accumulated around the area, there’s signs of a more organized domestic life. You realize that as you go through the papers and read all the receipts, what has more or less dust on it, you understand that the woman’s parents died, she was a junkie, just lived in the house until it was foreclosed on. It’s a terrible story, but underneath you see that this was an actual life; there was happiness, there were garden beds beneath the brush.
Tell me a little about the unsettling photos interspersed in the book — most were taken by you or family members, right?
Yeah, that raccoon picture — a photographer was living at my parents’ house and set up a camera. She was into death, she’d take pictures of dead birds and dead animals. She knew there were coyotes, bears in the woods, so she put this raccoon out and set-dressed it, thinking an animal would come and eat it, but that’s not what happened. So I put that in the book and wrote a story around that image, just because it was so strange and weird. It was saying something about nature I was interested in. And [after that], I realized I had the grave one story was based on, because my father pulled it out of a basement. So I posed it in the basement and used it the same way. I kept thinking about the different stories and things started to calcify.
Talk to me a little bit about how you crafted the more chilling aspects of the book: I’m thinking about the tall garbageman, the toddler who speaks only to explain the history of an unearthed necklace.
I think with fiction, there’s this phrase, to ‘dilate the attractor.’ In that garbageman story, the most tension being created was the bodily threat. So, why not make him enormous, which would make him more threatening? A lot of the time, you’re playing on those evolutionary impulses and fears. Especially inside of this world, where realism and surrealism are blending, which I think is an interesting aspect of the gothic genre. The kid thing — I think kids were always mysterious to me. The book was finished before I had children, and kids had this wisdom and simplicity that made me uneasy. Not to mention, watch any horror movie and there’s always a kid doodling one of their relatives covered in blood or something.
Vip flipping all of these foreclosures felt like a virus, or an addiction; he says only one more, then he gets invested and finds another project. Is that how you pictured it?
Yeah, it’s a warning for me, it’s a warning for my dad. My dad was an actor, and he ran the same kind of arc I did, then around this age, you have kids and realize you have to provide for them. It’s nice to have a house, it’s nice to have nice things. There are certain comforts to having money, which I think cut against what it means to be an artist. I had a lot of anxiety and fear about that being my life, my dad’s life. There’s an impulse that you have to submerge or validate success, however minor, as something you should be doing.
So you’re Junior!
Yeah! Well, the way I’ve been thinking about it — Stanislavski was the pioneer of method acting, and one thing he talks about is emotional authenticity and putting your lived experiences into another character, to make that representation realer. As a writer, it’s not very interesting to watch someone write — it’s very heady, cerebral. By grafting it onto my dad’s story, it provides a more concrete and uncanny device to play with that I think is much more compelling on the page. Action is what drives drama. My dad will be the first person to tell you — he refers to himself as the main character of the book. I keep reminding him, ‘No! This is what my life is and could be!’
When Vic and the garbageman start building the treehouse, Heather thinks of it as “a literal shantytown overhead growing to resemble the madness contained within his mind.” But to me, Vic seems content with this random pivot in his life. Is this just her overthinking his involvement?
No, I don’t think so. I think Vic is high on success at that moment. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. I think he’s lying to himself for the expediency that will open up for him with his future. At that point in the story, I think he’s harboring resentment, but he’s buried it so deep that this new thing is starting to emerge as his creative outlet in a way that he’s gonna double down on; it’ll provide him with that sense of contributing and not being selfish or living up to his mother-in-law’s feelings about him.
So Heather sees it all along?
Yeah, I think she’s an interesting character because she sees things very clearly, and her love for Vic is kind of unconditional, and there’s a certain level of horror contained within someone loving you unconditionally, because there’s no check or balance on your own actions. You’re left to make decisions that are wholly on your shoulders. Operating in a vacuum is a very scary thing.
I think the chapter where Junior decides to stay in Costa Rica, abandoning his family to become a novelist is my favorite — it shows the difference in passion and goals between him and his father so well.
The best short stories are the ones that are unique but also relatable, and we all have a Costa Rica we want to escape to, to live out our dreams, that are much harder to achieve than we’d ever imagined, given time and space. Once it’s on your shoulders to do the thing you’ve always wanted to do, your abilities change and warp.
I thought the grotto chapter was so revealing — an old acting friend invites Vic to a party where they do coke, and he and Heather’s relationship takes an interesting turn in the car ride back home. What did you want to do with this section?
I think it’s another example of Heather remembering the passion of their life before their kid. Vic has this feeling of being over the hill, then stepping back into it, then feeling even more over the hill in the aftermath. Just as a reminder that some doors are better left shut. I think that’s helpful for him in his current life. I really like deploying sexuality and eroticism in their relationship because I feel it says things they’re not willing to say to each other and never will, but in the later chapters, it’s a way of forgiving and remembering what brought them here. Even if it’s too horrifying to draw those demons out any further into the opening. It’s this thing you do when you’re completely naked, but there’s another feeling of nakedness beneath it all. Psychologically, are they naked? I’m not sure.
Vic’s about repression, you know — every step of the way, he’s repressed. When it gets closer to that core, the more elevated and heightened and energetic and frenetic the stories become.
Yeah, the book ends circularly, with Vic’s passion being what causes his downfall. Was this always the plan?
No! I don’t think writing is magic, but there are moments when you’re writing where it comes to you in a way that feels outside of you, and the ending was another example of that. It was something that I felt I endured, and walked around gloomily for days afterward. I always trust that one sentence opens the next one, and so on, and then you have pages that are coherent and have an organic flow that I always try to cultivate.
Sort of like improvisation.
That part, for sure. It is kind of an Oedipal novel, in the way he had to go. I’m not against stories ending with a big bang; the more muted, cerebral stories are the more exciting. I saw a Goodreads review where someone said [Foreclosure Gothic was] “if blue balls was a book.” It’s the idea of edging you towards a climax and then not giving you one. Subconsciously, I felt like there needed to be this moment of true horror we step into. I love horror movies, and my favorite parts of them are the first half-hour. Watching people live their lives, it charges everything with this importance, because you know it’s moving toward something foreboding. Maybe I just wanted to provide that climax, but it was fun as shit to write.
Finally, what are you working on now?
The novel I’m working on is a house book — I want to write three of them, just to get the trilogy. I live by this hyperpacificist Christian community — they immigrated here during World War II. There’s 300 of them. I live in the woods. They’re back there! [Turns laptop around] It’s beautiful. There’s lakes and pathways and a school. They’re the sweetest people; the women wear skirts and the men look like farmers. Everything they do is so nice. But what’s interesting to me is how shitty they make me feel. They turn every misdemeanor I commit into a felony, by proximity, because I’m not living that lifestyle. I know they’re not judging me, but there’s this weird sense of judgement I impose on myself. The book I’m working on is about a guy who buys a foreclosed house, is fixing it up, going through problems with his wife, as these people continue to swarm and make him feel worse about himself. It’ll happen either in the house or at Lowe’s. Those are the two settings.
Purple was Prince’s color, not just because of his 1984 album, Purple Rain. The colour has become a tribute to Prince’s legacy. The artist got his own official Pantone color in 2017, capturing his unique color he called “Love Symbol #2.”
One designer who used this color, and much more, was part of creating the Prince.com website. Catherine Uhlrich was essential to capturing Prince’s digital legacy for the Prince Estate. As a digital design luminary and creative strategist with an impressive portfolio boasting collaborations with giants like Nike, H&M, and Google, Uhlrich is no stranger to consistently pushing the boundaries of digital experiences. Her tenure at prestigious agencies such as Instrument, AKQA, and Base Design has solidified her reputation as a versatile and visionary leader. Currently based in New York City, Uhlrich also dedicates her time to nurturing the next generation of design talent as a teacher at Gobelins School, further contributing to the design community as a judge at Awwwards and Gobelins School.
In this exclusive expert analysis, we delve into one of Uhlrich’s most captivating projects: her contribution, while at Base Design NY, to the redesign of Prince.com on behalf of the Prince Estate. Uhlrich offers a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges and triumphs of capturing the essence of a musical icon in the digital sphere.
Designing for a world-renowned, award-winning musician like Prince is no small feat. Where do you even begin? Uhlrich explained that the journey started with deep collaboration and extensive research on the Grammy Award-winning musician who changed pop music in the 1980s.
“We did several workshops with their team and gathered a lot of information about him and his fans. Lots of brainstorming sessions,” Uhlrich recalls on the creative process. “By then, the brand team had finalized the identity, and we – the digital team – started working on the web strategy. After establishing our mission and our pillars, we started structuring the content. The design was intentionally kept minimal to let the existing content, the images, and videos, shine.”
This approach highlights a key principle in Uhlrich’s design philosophy: letting the content speak for itself. By creating a clean and unobtrusive framework, the website allows Prince’s artistry to take center stage.
A Fragmented Universe: Reflecting Prince’s Eclecticism
One of the most striking aspects of the redesigned Prince.com is its seemingly fragmented, yet intentionally organized structure. “The website is complex and fragmented, it is chronological but not in the traditional sense. How did you want to organize it?” we asked.
Uhlrich illuminated the strategic thinking behind this unconventional approach: “Yes exactly, we came up with the idea that Prince.com should be a hub that hosts different microsites. Prince was eclectic, and we had to translate and honor his multifaceted life, career, and skills.” This concept allowed the team to capture the diverse facets of Prince’s persona, from his musical genius to his fashion-forward sensibilities.
She further elaborated on the historical context: “He was a pioneer when he released his music online in the 1090s; we had to honor his curiosity for the web as well. It’s a sort of Prince universe if you want. The users can explore in their own way as well, whether you are an existing fan or discovering the Artist for the first time. It is very immersive, but the main navigation is extremely simple and user-friendly.”
This “Prince universe” approach caters to both seasoned fans and newcomers, offering a rich and engaging experience that respects the artist’s innovative spirit. The emphasis on user-friendly navigation ensures that the complex structure remains accessible and intuitive.
“Become”: A Unique Contribution
When asked about her unique contributions to the project, Uhlrich shared her passion for the “Become” microsite.
“I had so much creative freedom. My favorite moment was when I got to imagine the microsite called ‘Become.’ The experience opposes Prince’s early life and the city he grew up in, Minneapolis. I literally created a split screen between his bio and the map of the city.”
This innovative design allows users to explore Prince’s biography in tandem with a map of Minneapolis, highlighting the key locations that shaped his early life. “You can either read the text only in a linear order, or freely explore the map that has key locations that influenced Prince’s life,” Uhlrich explains. “A third way to navigate is to keep both panels open and explore both at the same time. It is a very immersive and fascinating story.”
The “Become” microsite exemplifies Uhlrich’s ability to create engaging and interactive experiences that deepen the user’s understanding of the subject matter. By seamlessly integrating biographical information with geographic context, she provides a unique perspective on Prince’s formative years.
Capturing an “Infinite” Legacy
Prince’s legacy transcends music; he was a cultural icon, a fashion visionary, and a champion for artists’ rights. Capturing this multifaceted legacy in web design was a significant challenge.
“His legacy in terms of music and culture is infinite. He was a fashion icon, a music genius, a performer, and an amazing producer,” Uhlrich said. “He paved the way in terms of music rights, breaking free from his label and releasing music online, etc. Overall, I’d say that the main idea was to start opening the vault and commemorate his legacy, celebrate his fans, and show what a visionary he was. Creating narratives, immersive experiences, and showing how relevant he still is.”
The website serves as a digital archive, a celebration of Prince’s unparalleled creativity and enduring influence. Uhlrich emphasizes that the website is “only the translation of his Creativity.” She adds, “We can all be inspired by Prince, and we tried to be as experimental and creative as approachable as his music was.”
Honoring the Fanbase: Prince2me
Beyond his artistic achievements, Prince’s connection with his fanbase was a crucial aspect of his legacy. Uhlrich and her team recognized the importance of capturing this relationship on Prince.com.
“I’d say that it is his fanbase. People who knew him, who followed his career, who worked with him,” Uhlrich reflects when asked about often overlooked aspects of Prince’s legacy. “We tried to encapsulate this aspect in the microsite called Prince2me. We invited the visitors to leave a message for him. We were inspired by the messages left at Paisley Park when he passed away. It was so moving. We were so grateful for how the site got received; we could really feel how loved Prince was.”
The Prince2me microsite provided a space for fans to express their love and appreciation for the artist, creating a digital memorial that echoed the heartfelt tributes at Paisley Park. This feature underscores the website’s role as a community hub, fostering a sense of connection among Prince’s devoted followers.
A Lasting Impact of Prince’s Music Legacy
Catherine Uhlrich’s work on Prince.com stands as a testament to her skill in translating complex ideas into engaging digital experiences. By embracing the artist’s eclecticism, respecting his innovative spirit, and honoring his connection with his fans, she and her team created a website that truly captures the essence of Prince’s legacy. The project serves as an inspiration to digital designers and a fitting tribute to a musical icon whose influence continues to resonate across the globe.
David Byrne is back with news of his next album, Who Is the Sky?. The follow-up to 2018’s American Utopia is set to arrive on September 5 via Matador Records. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the upbeat new single ‘Everybody Laughs’, which is accompanied by a video directed by multimedia artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo. Check it out below, and scroll down for the album cover, tracklist, and Byrne’s upcoming tour dates.
Produced by Kid Harpoon (Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus), Who Is the Sky? features appearances from St. Vincent, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, The Smile drummer Tom Skinner, and American Utopia percussionist Mauro Refosco. The record’s 12 tracks were arranged by the members of New York-based chamber ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra.
“Someone I know said, ‘David, you use the word ‘everybody’ a lot,'” Byrne said in a press release. “I suppose I do that to give an anthropological view of life in New York as we know it. Everybody lives, dies, laughs, cries, sleeps and stares at the ceiling. Everybody’s wearing everybody else’s shoes, which not everybody does, but I have done. I tried to sing about these things that could be seen as negative in a way balanced by an uplifting feeling from the groove and the melody, especially at the end, when St. Vincent and I are doing a lot of hollering and singing together. Music can do that – hold opposites simultaneously. I realized that when singing with Robyn earlier this year. Her songs are often sad, but the music is joyous.”
“It took me a second to realize, oh yeah, these songs are personal, but with David’s unique perspective on life in general,” Kid Harpoon (aka Tom Hull) added. “Walking around New York listening to the demo of ‘Everybody Laughs’ was so joyous, because it made me feel like we’re all the same – we all laugh, cry and sing. The thing about David that resonates with a lot of people is that he’s in on the joke. He gets the absurdity of it all, and all of these personal observations are his perspective on it.”
Byrne recruited Ghost Train Orchestra after hearing their 2023 tribute album to the blind New York composer and street poet Moondog. “David sent me some demos and asked us to put together some orchestral ideas,” Ghost Train Orchestra leader Brian Carpenter recalled. “Curtis Hasselbring and I quickly wrote a couple rough draft arrangements of his songs for Ghost Train, including ‘My Apartment Is My Friend,’ which was the first song we rehearsed at our tiny rehearsal space in Chinatown. To hear him singing with us for the first time on that song was just incredible.”
“I suspected that intimate orchestral arrangements would bring out the emotion I sense is there in these songs,” Byrne expounded. “It’s something that folks don’t always hear in my work, but this time for sure I thought it was there. At the same time, I also see myself as someone who aspires to be accessible. I imagined that Kid Harpoon would help with that, as well as being a set of trusted ears, since there was a lot going on. People think of producers as people who mainly make a record sound good, and Kid Harpoon did that, but he was also aware of how important the storytelling is.”
Who Is the Sky? Cover Artwork:
Who Is the Sky? Tracklist:
1. Everybody Laughs
2. When We Are Singing
3. My Apartment Is My Friend
4. A Door Called No
5. What Is the Reason for It?
6. I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party
7. Don’t Be Like That
8. The Avant Garde
9. Moisturizing Thing
10. I’m an Outsider
11. She Explains Things to Me
12. The Truth
David Byrne 2025/2026 Tour Dates:
Sep 14 – Providence, RI – Veterans Memorial Auditorium
Sep 16 – Pittsburgh, PA – Benedum Center PAC
Sep 17 – Columbus, OH – Mershon Auditorium
Sep 19 – Akron, OH – Akron Civic Theatre
Sep 21 – Schenectady, NY – Proctors
Sep 23 – Syracuse, NY – Landmark Theatre
Sep 25 – Buffalo, NY – Shea’s Buffalo Theatre
Sep 27 – Washington D.C. – The Anthem
Sep 28 – Washington D.C. – The Anthem
Sep 30 – New York, NY – Radio City Music Hall
Oct 1 – New York, NY – Radio City Music Hall
Oct 3 – Boston, MA – Boch Center Wang Theatre
Oct 4 – Boston, MA – Boch Center Wang Theatre
Oct 7 – Wallingford, CT – Toyota Oakdale Theatre
Oct 8 – Portland, ME – Merrill Auditorium at City Hall
Oct 10 – New York, NY – Radio City Music Hall
Oct 14 – Richmond, VA – Altria Theater
Oct 16 – Philadelphia, PA – The Met Philadelphia presented by Highmark
Oct 17 – Philadelphia, PA – The Met Philadelphia presented by Highmark
Oct 21 – Toronto, ON, Canada – Massey Hall
Oct 22 – Toronto, ON, Canada – Massey Hall
Oct 25 – Detroit, MI – Fox Theatre
Oct 28 – Chicago, IL – The Auditorium
Oct 29 – Chicago, IL – The Auditorium
Oct 31 – Chicago, IL – The Auditorium
Nov 3 – Minneapolis, MN – Orpheum Theatre
Nov 4 – Minneapolis, MN – Orpheum Theatre
Nov 6 – Denver, CO – Bellco Theatre
Nov 7 – Denver, CO – Bellco Theatre
Nov 11 – Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre
Nov 12 – Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre
Nov 16 – San Francisco, CA – The Theater at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
Nov 17 – San Francisco, CA – The Theater at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
Nov 20 – Los Angeles, CA – Dolby Theatre
Nov 21 – Los Angeles, CA – Dolby Theatre
Nov 25 – Austin, TX – Bass Concert Hall
Nov 26 – Austin, TX – Bass Concert Hall
Nov 28 – Dallas, TX – Music Hall at Fair Park
Nov 29 – Dallas, TX – Music Hall at Fair Park
Dec 2 – Atlanta, GA – Fox Theatre
Dec 3 – Atlanta, GA – Fox Theatre
Dec 5 – Miami, FL – Fillmore Miami Beach At Jackie Gleason Theatre
Dec 6 – Miami, FL – Fillmore Miami Beach At Jackie Gleason Theatre
Jan 14 – Auckland, New Zealand – Spark Arena
Jan 17 – Brisbane, Australia – Brisbane Entertainment Center
Jan 21 – Sydney, Australia – ICC Sydney Theatre
Jan 22 – Melbourne, Australia – Sidney Myer Music Bowl
Jan 24 – Adelaide, Australia – Adelaide Entertainment Centre Arena
Jan 27 – Perth, Australia – RAC Arena
Feb 12 – Berlin, Germany – Tempodrom
Feb 15 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – AFAS Live
Feb 16 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – AFAS Live
Feb 18 – Brussels, Belgium – Forest National
Feb 21 – Milan, Italy – Teatro degli Arcimboldi
Feb 22 – Milan, Italy – Teatro degli Arcimboldi
Feb 24 – Frankfurt, Germany – Jahrhunderthalle
Feb 27 – Zurich, Switzerland – The Hall
Mar 2 – Cardiff, UK – Utilita Arena
Mar 3 – London, UK – Eventim Apollo
Mar 4 – London, UK – Eventim Apollo
Mar 6 – Glasgow, UK – SEC Armadillo
Mar 7 – Glasgow, UK – SEC Armadillo
Mar 9 – Manchester, UK – o2 Apollo
Mar 10 – Manchester, UK – o2 Apollo
Mar 13 – Dublin, Ireland – 3Arena
Mar 15 – London, UK – Eventim Apollo
Mar 18 – Paris, France – La Seine Musicale
Mar 19 – Paris, France – La Seine Musicale
Nick León has released two new songs, ‘Crush’ and ‘Millennium Freak’ featuring Etsy and mediopicky. The short yet entrancing tracks are lifted from his upcoming album A Tropical Entropy, arriving June 27 via TraTraTax. Take a listen below.
Sly Stone, the legendary singer-songwriter and funk musician behind Sly and the Family Stone, has died. In a statement, Stone’s family said that he recently passed on “after a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues.” He was 82 years old.
Born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, Stone grew up in Vallejo, California. He began performing with his siblings at an early age, making his first gospel recording with his brother Freddie and his sisters Rose and Loretta in 1952. He played in several groups on the Bay Area scene and soon became a disc jockey at the R&B station KSOL, later switching to KDIA.
In the late 1960s, Stone formed Sly and the Stoners, which would develop into the iconic Sly and the Family Stone. The band featured Fred Stewart (guitar, vocals), Larry Graham, Jr. (bass, vocals), Greg Errico (drums), Jerry Martini (saxophone), Cynthia Robinson (trumpet), and Rosie Stone (piano), who all had different racial backgrounds, which was virtually unheard of at the time. Landing a deal with Epic, the group released their debut album A Whole New Thing in 1967.
‘Dance to the Music’, the single that became the title track of their next record, peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. The band followed it up with Life in September 1968, and two months later, they landed their first No. 1 with ‘Everyday People’, which would appear on 1969’s Stand!. In 1969, The Family Stone performed at Woodstock and headlined the Harlem Cultural Festival.
At the peak of the band’s popularity, Sly developed a debilitating drug addiction, and his music grew thematically darker and musically slower. There’s a Riot Goin’ On, Sly and the Family Stone’s intense and masterful fifth album, came out in November 1971. The group’s original lineup released its final album, Small Talk, in 1974, before Sly Stone issued his debut solo album, High on You, the following year.
After the Family Stone was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, Stone made no public appearances for over a decade. In 2006, he gave his first public performance since 1987 as part of a Family Stone tribute at the Grammy Awards.
In 2011, Stone released the album I’m Back! Family and Friends. Earlier this year, Questlove released the illuminating documentary SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). In 2024, Stone published his memoir Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), and his band’s earliest known concert recording is scheduled to be released next month as The First Family: Live at the Winchester Cathedral 1967.
In their statement, Stone’s family said:
It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved dad, Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone. After a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues, Sly passed away peacefully, surrounded by his three children, his closest friend, and his extended family. While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come.
Sly was a monumental figure, a groundbreaking innovator, and a true pioneer who redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music. His iconic songs have left an indelible mark on the world, and his influence remains undeniable. In a testament to his enduring creative spirit, Sly recently completed the screenplay for his life story, a project we are eager to share with the world in due course, which follows a memoir published in 2024.
We extend our deepest gratitude for the outpouring of love and prayers during this difficult time. We wish peace and harmony to all who were touched by Sly’s life and his iconic music.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your unwavering support.
Gangs of Wasseypur, directed by Anurag Kashyap, the epic 2012 crime saga Gangs of Wasseypur stills, written by Zeishan Quadri and Anurag Kashyap, is a blood-soaked dissection of revenge, family conflict and power struggles in the coal-mining town of Wasseypur, India. Kashyap is celebrated for his unapologetic portrayal of violence, black humor, and well-sketched character arcs with an intricately woven story that travels through decades.
Gangs of Wasseypur, stillsFlashes- Gangs of Wasseypur stillsThe film follows the decades-spanning story of two feuding families, most notably that of Sardar Khan (played by Manoj Bajpayee), a man seeking blood vengeance against Ramadhir Singh (Tigmanshu Dhulia), a ruthless and powerful politician who assassinated Khan’s father. This blood feud spans generations, pulling in Khan’s sons, especially Danish (Vineet Kumar Singh) and Faizal (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), as circles of violence, revenge and shifting alliances unspool.
This sprawling story is vibrantly brought to life by Rajeev Ravi’s punchy cinematography. Ravi uses harsh light, handheld camera, and covering sets to take the audience deeper and closer into the anarchic and brutal Wasseypur. His images strike a balance between gritty realism and bold aesthetics, connecting the dark humor and emotional power that characterize the movie.
Key stills from Gangs of Wasseypur Not just his characters, even the key stills of Manoj Bajpayee from his most memorable roles still vibrantly exude these aspects: Sardar Khan is caught midway through an expression, with the light playing on his face and the darkness shading it. Another iconic still is of Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s Faizal Khan, angry barely simmering beneath his intense gaze surrounded by chaos and anguish. Busy marketplaces and cramped alleyways, authentically rendered, serve as emblems of the film’s claustrophobic tension and relentless violence.
In the end, the stills of Gangs of Wasseypur are as exciting as ever and truly summarize the depth of the ill, the kind of notorious competition on display and the sheer brutal nature of power as well as revenge in this unforgiving world.
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2000 film Amores perros (roughly translated as “Love’s a Bitch”; screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga) is a rough tale of interlinked lives set in Mexico City. Renowned for his high-octane, emotional storytelling Iñárritu brings themes of love, violence and destiny together in an astonishing work of creativity.
Mixing Odessa is a town that intersects three tales that combine through a car accident. The plot follows Octavio (Gael García Bernal) who attempts to raise money to elope with his brother’s wife after she suffers a serious injury in a car crash that killed her husband. Running alongside this is the story of Valeria (Goya Toledo), a model whose life changes for the worst after the accident, and El Chivo (Emilio Echevarría), a former guerrilla fighter now working as a hitman whose silent quest for redemption plays out in the dark.
The cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto imbues the story with emotional nuance, shooting the city’s grimy underbelly with both a harsh candor and a kinetic vibrancy. Prieto uses handheld cameras and tight framing a lot (throwing audiences into characters’ often mad worlds). It’s also a vibrant but desaturated color palette which heightens the raw human emotion, often violent, that is on display here.
Some key frames from Amores perros do a tremendous job of capturing these contrasts: Gael García Bernal’s Octavio alone, in contemplation in unforgiving, poorly lit environs that mirror his turmoil. But it’s also a sight to see, her isolated, ambitious Valeria in her palatial apartment, in a richly ornate set that, like in all of Durán’s productions, reflects the character’s loneliness and fragility. In the meantime, images of El Chivo wandering the city’s streets symbolize lonely redemption, anchoring the film’s wrenching meditation on human destiny and the ties that bind.
For ultimately, the stills of Amores perros are an encapsulation of its heady mix of desperation, desire and for the fight to connect in a fundamentally broken world.
