Florida prosecutors drop felony charge against Rick Ross in domestic violence case

30 October 2026 at 21:39

Miami-Dade officials drop charge of battery by strangulation against rapper due to ‘insufficient evidence’

Florida prosecutors on Thursday dropped a felony charge against rapper Rick Ross nearly a month after he was arrested in Miami Beach when a woman he was living with told police he hit her, court records said.

The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office filed paperwork on Thursday to drop a felony charge of battery by strangulation because of “insufficient evidence”. Ross, whose legal name is William Roberts II, still faces a misdemeanor charge of battery domestic violence.

Experts warn AI copyright changes could breach Australian constitution and spark huge compensation rights case

World news | The Guardian

By: Josh Butler

30 October 2026 at 17:00

Scraping copyrighted material from internet could ‘potentially’ amount to acquisition of property by government, Anne Twomey says

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Altering copyright law to allow AI companies to scrape music, books and journalism could trigger a constitutional breach, Coalition senators and the recording industry have warned, as they raise new fears it could open Australia to massive legal action and compensation claims from rights holders worldwide.

The attorney general’s department admitted it was “extremely alive” to the issue, and Australia’s leading constitutional expert, Anne Twomey, agreed there was “potentially” a concern – depending how legislation was drafted – that granting AI companies permission to scrape copyrighted material from the internet could amount to an acquisition of property by the government.

‘Ceilidh renaissance’ lures gen Z offline in search of real-life joy

World news | The Guardian

By: Rosie Peters-McDonald

30 October 2026 at 16:00

Young dancers at the Ivy House in south-east London join the older crowd amid a renewed appetite for authentic, community events

The Ivy House pub in Nunhead, south-east London, has long been associated with raucous music, with the rock legends Ian Dury and Elvis Costello gracing its stage in the 70s, and indie favourites caroline and Kiran Leonard pulling in crowds today. But last Friday, it was a traditional Scottish ceilidh dance rather than a grassroots gig luring London’s cool kids to its sticky dancefloor.

The event is emblematic of a renewed appetite for analogue, in-person experiences among a younger generation plagued by a loneliness epidemic and fatigued by meeting people on dating apps.

‘Ceilidh renaissance’ lures gen Z offline in search of real-life joy

The Guardian

By: Rosie Peters-McDonald

30 October 2026 at 16:00

Young dancers at the Ivy House in south-east London join the older crowd amid a renewed appetite for authentic, community events

The Ivy House pub in Nunhead, south-east London, has long been associated with raucous music, with the rock legends Ian Dury and Elvis Costello gracing its stage in the 70s, and indie favourites caroline and Kiran Leonard pulling in crowds today. But last Friday, it was a traditional Scottish ceilidh dance rather than a grassroots gig luring London’s cool kids to its sticky dancefloor.

The event is emblematic of a renewed appetite for analogue, in-person experiences among a younger generation plagued by a loneliness epidemic and fatigued by meeting people on dating apps.

The week’s best new tracks and the act you need to know: Dutch squat-punks Bombstrap’s uncompromising racket

The Guardian

By: Richard Foster

30 October 2026 at 15:00

The Rotterdam band are a riot of sound, look and attitude led by Eva Kah, who is as much a living artwork as she is a phenomenal live performer

From Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Recommended if you like Gnod, Discharge, Gwar
Up next Debut album Big Enemy out now via Tartarus, playing Le Guess Who festival

Rotterdam’s Bombstrap are a riotous and theatrical fusion of sound, look and attitude. An embodied version of John Milton’s Pandæmonium with the amp turned up to 11, the band revel in hardcore alternative living, internet wormholes, art-school pretensions and a gungy form of hardcore. Based in and drawing succour from one of the most famous squatted centres in the city, Het Poortgebouw, Bombstrap are a noisy counterblast to the increasing and overwhelmingly witless “circuses-and-bread” gentrification of Rotterdam.

Oh to Believe in Another World review – William Kentridge’s amazing animated ballet of black comic pain

The Guardian

By: Peter Bradshaw

30 October 2026 at 12:29

Kentridge’s cine-musical creation, made to accompany Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony, is a marvel of puppetry, dance and humour, exploring humanity, grief and idealism

The Baku international arts festival in Azerbaijan is showcasing an amazing cine-musical creation, perhaps the most amazing animation I have ever seen. Oh to Believe in Another World is an hour-long collage animation with live-action choreography by the 71-year-old South African artist and film-maker William Kentridge. It is shown with the live orchestral accompaniment of Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony, and this event is partly in honour of the 120th anniversary of Shostakovich’s birth this year, and partly to honour Shostakovich’s reportedly unrequited love (and lifelong friendship) for his student, Azerbaijani pianist and composer Elmira Nazirova.

The 10th symphony was inspired by Stalin and premiered shortly after his death, so it seems probable that Shostakovich had been at work on it for some time before this, long enough beforehand for at least some of the composition to have been conceived without any sense of Stalin’s death. Could part of it perhaps have been originally intended as an obediently dramatic tribute to Stalin? Yet the music arguably combines fear, awe, revulsion, and a hysterical reaction to the mad energy of Stalin’s genocidal tyranny, a darkly ambiguous respect for the great dictator whose victory in 1945 was a mainstay of the postwar dispensation; perhaps there is also a feeling in the music’s swirl that a great and terrible era has passed away, and with it a kind of grief at all that had been sacrificed to it.

Radie Peat: No Human Tongue Can Tell review – Lankum singer’s solo debut is the year’s best folk album

The Guardian

By: Jude Rogers

30 October 2026 at 12:00

(Rough Trade)
Collecting traditional songs of female struggle and strength, the Irish singer invests them with staggering power

Lankum singer Radie Peat’s extraordinary debut album begins without frills or ornament: just her voice, stark and low, each breath like air vibrating through the metal reeds of a harmonium. Singing Hares on the Mountain to the tune Shirley Collins arranged for 1964’s Folk Roots, New Routes, Peat accompanies herself subtly on Fender Rhodes piano before adding layers of Mellotron and Wurlitzer. Her simple, quiet approach is consistently startling and profoundly moving.

No Human Tongue Can Tell collects songs of female struggle, suffering, strength and endurance, although Peat only realised this, she writes in her liner notes, after limiting her choices by her “own mind and abilities” and “personal preferences”. Epic statements clearly aren’t her bag; her gut-deep connection with songs she’s sung live for years clearly matters more, with many delivered in new versions, pulsing with urgency.

‘Ignorance towards immigration is horrible. It’s not British’: Skepta on his long-awaited return – and his anger at the racist right

The Guardian

By: Dan Hancox

30 October 2026 at 08:00

Thirty-three months after it was announced, the grime legend’s new album is coming out. He explains how skinheads, fatherhood and rap history came to bear on its socially conscious contents

‘I can’t be perfect,” Skepta says, pulling a black Arc’tyrex beanie down over a furrowed brow with both hands. “But I can be conscious.” The self-proclaimed king of grime has always been a serious person, wary of fools and time-wasters. Focus is important to him, perhaps because he’s often multitasking: balancing his music career, his fashion label Mains, film-making and acting (his debut short, Tribal Mark, came out in 2024), his Big Smoke festival and a house music project, Más Tiempo.

He coordinates them all from the scruffy but functional studio in London’s West End where we meet. At one point, he picks up a Rubik’s Cube from the cluttered coffee table, and, over the course of five minutes of conversation, solves it. “This album has been winding me up,” he admits, referring to The Fork and Knife, which is out next week, 33 months after it was first announced. “But I think I’ve actually made something here that is what the people want from me.”

Cuts like a knife: Canadian rocker Bryan Adams trolls Trump with new song

World news | The Guardian

By: Leyland Cecco in Toronto

29 October 2026 at 20:49

Musician wrote a ‘love letter’ to Canada with a new album – and some pointed commentary about the US president

Lake Ontario, the vast body of water that straddles the US-Canada border, has gone by many names over the centuries: Lac Saint-Louis, Lacus Ontarius, Skaniadorio, Cataraqui Lake. But one thing it will never be called, says the Canadian rock star Bryan Adams, is Lake America.

In his new song Lake Ontario, Adams takes aim at the US president, Donald Trump, accusing him of “breaking the peace” between the people who live on the lake’s shores.

The ‘lake of shining waters’ is what the Iroquois called her

It’s a First Nations name – not an executive order.

But things weren’t going his way in Iran

So like a baby tossing the toys from the pram

You can push us to the brink

But where the open road divides

‘He buckled. I could hear his bass ringing out ...’ The luminous rise and tragic end of US alt heroes Morphine

The Guardian

By: Stevie Chick

29 October 2026 at 19:00

Fronted by Mark Sandman, the group brought enigmatic, elegant rock to post-grunge America. As lost demos surface, those closest to Sandman remember a man who grabbed on to life’s joys

It’s early 1998, and at Fort Apache recording studio in Massachusetts, Mark Sandman, the suave frontman of Morphine, is nearing breaking point. Morphine’s four enigmatic and blackly humorous albums have won critical acclaim and, lately, unexpected commercial success considering their uncompromising creative vision. After the excesses of grunge, Sandman considered their idiosyncratic blend of sophisticated storytelling, prowling slide-bass and Dana Colley’s atmospheric saxophone a kind of “palate cleanser”.

In 1997 Morphine had signed to DreamWorks Records, founded by industry bigwigs David Geffen and Mo Ostin. Now, working on Morphine’s first LP for his new paymasters – a batch of songs finally seeing release almost three decades later – Sandman was consumed by doubt over their direction. “For the first time, Morphine were trying to please someone other than just ourselves,” remembers Colley.

Colin Currie Group review – Steve Reich’s music is still bedazzling

The Guardian

By: Clive Paget

29 October 2026 at 17:33

Barbican Hall, London
For this celebration of the composer in his 90th year, the Colin Currie Group focused on works written in the last two decades, including the brand new In All Your Ways

There have been a fair few 90th birthday concerts celebrating Steve Reich this year, but the Colin Currie Group came up with something a little different. Eschewing the signature works of the 1970s and 80s, and with the exception of 1972’s still mind-expanding Clapping Music, everything here was written by a composer over the age of 71. Furthermore, the London premiere of In All Your Ways featured the work of a man entering into his tenth decade.

After a bitty start, the group got into its stride with a series of four masterworks back-to-back. Radio Rewrite is Reich at his coolest, five continuous movements that riff on a pair of classic Radiohead songs; those in the know can just about perceive them in the harmonic atmosphere of the slow sections and the faster music’s lyrical outlines. Currie conducted a nicely chilled reading, the playing as tight as a drum.

‘Algorithms make everything predictable’: why the CD is making a comeback

World news | The Guardian

By: Alfie Packham

29 October 2026 at 16:00

As John Lewis reports a 96% rise in searches for CD players, music fans share their reasons for ditching streaming

CDs appear to be having a resurgence. John Lewis said searches for CD players are up 96% since July, while another report on trends in music and film this year found that CD sales are up 16%.

With this in mind, we asked music fans why they favour discs over other formats, and if it is a new preference or a lifetime habit.

‘Algorithms make everything predictable’: why the CD is making a comeback

The Guardian

By: Alfie Packham

29 October 2026 at 16:00

As John Lewis reports a 96% rise in searches for CD players, music fans share their reasons for ditching streaming

CDs appear to be having a resurgence. John Lewis said searches for CD players are up 96% since July, while another report on trends in music and film this year found that CD sales are up 16%.

With this in mind, we asked music fans why they favour discs over other formats, and if it is a new preference or a lifetime habit.

The Big Moon: Forever review – the hell of hearing loss inspires a defiantly hopeful pop-disco marvel

The Guardian

By: Dave Simpson

29 October 2026 at 15:00

(Fiction)
After frontperson Juliette Jackson lost half her hearing, she wrote sad songs and felt frustrated. So she pivoted, writing herself a happy ending. The results are joyfully convincing

From the outside, it looks as if things have gone swimmingly for the Big Moon. Fronted by Juliette Jackson, a former waitress who dreamed big, they have been active for 12 years, a success in itself in these days, notching up four albums including this latest. They have enjoyed a Mercury nomination (for 2017 debut Love in the 4th Dimension), decent chart positions, good-sized gigs and streaming figures in the hundreds of thousands, or millions in the case of 2019 single Your Light.

Delve beneath the surface, however, and things haven’t always been so sunny. After their debut’s ramshackle wide-eyed pop, second album Walking Like We Do detailed the travails of contemporary womanhood, and Your Light found Jackson bemoaning her generation’s lot with a weary resignation: “We were promised the world, but so was everyone else”. 2022’s Here Is Everything was conceived during Covid and processed Jackson’s life-changing experience of becoming a mother, including the disorienting experience of lack of sleep. Tricky stuff, if nothing that made Jackson’s concerns much different from vast swathes of the population.

Spotify confirms Family Plan crackdown, but calls it a ‘routine improvement’

TechCrunch

By: Sarah Perez

22 October 2026 at 18:24

Spotify told investors its rollout of QR code verification to ensure Family Plan members live in the same household is not a "crackdown," just a routine improvement.

Taylor Swift becomes most-awarded artist in MTV history

www.telegraph.co.uk for the latest news from the UK and around the world.

By: Telegraph reporters

28 September 2026 at 07:47

Meanwhile, Madonna wins seven awards and British singer Sienna Spiro named Best New Artist

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