This is utterly heartbreaking. Once heard, never forgotten: Candi Staton’s first-hand memory of one of the worst racist terror incidents in US history, in which four little girls lost their lives.

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Lots of good films this year, and a massive revival in cinema receipts thanks largely to an old-fashioned head-to-head with Barbenheimer over the summer. And I’ve just noticed that five of my top ten have female directors, which must mean #MeToo has had some sort of impact in cinema.

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Gotta confess it took me a long while to take Olivia Rodrigo seriously. First there was her background as a Disney princess in High School Musical. Then there was her phenomenal pop success.

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Brian Auger is a name that rings a distant bell to me but ought to ring a lot louder. He’s a bit of a zelig, turning up with his Hammond organ in the unlikeliest places ever since the ’60s. Not just his organ either.

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Devon Ross is an American multi-hyphenate: model turned actor turned musician – not just an MTA but an ATM.

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Here’s something weird and appropriately trippy from Wiltshire producer DJ Emma, celebrating the invention of LSD – or, to be specific, the world’s first acid trip.

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Isabella Lovestory is a trailblazing new reggaeton star from Honduras, via Canada, and this is her self-styled “bad bitch anthem” called Fuetazo.

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Here’s an autumn playlist to warm the cockles of the ear: from obscure ’70s rock to pioneering ’80s funk, first wave hip-hop and New Wave country, free jazz and doom folk, dub, blues and even some prog – plus  tributes to those we lost in November, Shane MacGowan and Killing Joke’s Geordie Walker.

With a jazz background, a love of 1970s soft rock and a voice like Thom Yorke, former Midlake front man Tim Smith has always been hard to pigeonhole. A decade after quitting the band, the famously perfectionist Smith releases his first album as Harp – a new project with his wife, Kathi Zung.

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I’d never say we were really friends, and we came from very different backgrounds. But as fellow punks of the same age (he was born on Christmas Day just 16 days before me) Shane and I had an acquaintance.

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