What the £~{± … ℑ⊇◊⊆ℜ from Mater Suspiria Vision. Photograph: YouTube Scan the array of recent blog buzz bands and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in the middle of a migraine. †‡†,  Gr†ll Gr†ll, ℑ⊇◊⊆ℜ and GL▲SS †33†H all use dots, dashes and triangles in their names and on their flashy websites. Some [...]

Supreme lovely … John Coltrane channels the divine through his sax. Photograph: Redferns Miles Davis was a good authority on the saxophonist John Coltrane, who played in one of the trumpeter’s bands in the 1950s. Their time spent working together began with Davis’s rise to stardom and ended not long after the magnificent Kind of [...]

The ‘extraordinary’ Jimi Hendrix with the Experience at Olympia, London, on 22 December 1967. Photograph: Ray Stevenson/Rex Features On the morning of 21 September 1966, a Pan Am airliner from New York landed at Heathrow, carrying among its passengers a black American musician from a poor home. Barely known in his own country and a [...]

Battle star: MIA, as depicted by unique wedding snapper Ravi Thiagaraja Photograph: Ravi Thiagaraja “Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam (born 18 July 1975), better known by her stage name MIA, is a Sri Lankan/British songwriter, record producer, singer, rapper, fashion designer, visual artist, and political activist.” And right now, perched on a sofa at the XL Records [...]