Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Charles Dutoit accused of sexual assault

Grammy-winning 81-year-old leaves his post ‘for the immediate future’ after accusations that he forcibly kissed and groped musicians over a period of 15 years

Charles Dutoit, the 81-year-old conductor and artistic director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, has been accused of sexual assault by four female musicians.

The orchestra has released a statement saying that it, along with Dutoit, “have jointly agreed to release him from his forthcoming concert obligations with the orchestra for the immediate future,” adding that it is “committed to the highest standards of ethical behaviour”.

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Steve Bicknell: ‘The ideal festival track? Laurent Garnier’s Acid Eiffel'

The Cosmic Records minimal techno man and LOST veteran empties his psychic record bag

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How I fell in love with country music | Martin Farrer

My life didn’t change when I saw the duelling banjos scene in Deliverance, but it was the first time I realised there was more to country music than the Benny Hill theme tune

My name is Martin and I love country music. There you go, I’ve said it. It’s not always an easy thing to do. When the subject comes up, I get a funny sort of look. Once you spring the c-word on people, you can see they’re thinking: “Shit, this bloke’s weird. Does he dress up like a cowboy at home and do those funny dances?”

Sometimes people like to crack a joke about country and I’ve heard most of them. There’s the one that goes: “Do you like country? Or just western?” And then there’s: “Yeeeeehaaaaa!” People think that one’s pretty hilarious. But there is one joke which is quite funny and also very telling. It goes like this. Two blokes go into a pub, somewhere in northern England. One of them, who is hard of hearing, goes to the bar to get some drinks. The barmaid says there’s a band on, a country and western band. The bloke goes back to his mate and sits down with the drinks. “There’s a band on tonight,” he says. The other bloke says “What type of band?” The other one replies: “I don’t know. Some cunt from Preston.”

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The Prodigy review – teeth rattled in dystopian breakbeat pantomime

Glasgow Academy
Twenty years on from their multimillion-selling album The Fat of the Land, the Prodigy refuse to get nostalgic, nor reduce the energy levels below total pandemonium

In an era when memories can be monetised, most bands – active or otherwise – might hungrily eye the 20th anniversary of their most successful album as an opportunity to mount a special tour to shore up their legacy and top up their Isas. Not so the Prodigy, Liam Howlett’s tetchy but tireless road warriors.

As Britpop shrivelled, their third album, 1997’s The Fat of the Land, took Howlett’s uncouth youthquake of evil techno and hot-wired breakbeats to the world; an astonishingly successful incursion into the US arguably laid the groundwork for the recent EDM explosion. Two decades on, you could forgive these Essex boys a backward-looking victory lap to fatten the brand.

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Myra Davies: Sirens review – witty spoken-word skewering of violence, patriarchy and modern music

(Moabit)

Backed by smart techno-pop production by Beate Bartel and Gudrun Gut, Canadian spoken-word artist Myra Davies delivers a supremely droll series of observations. Some are close portraits with the vibrancy of a Manet or Degas – on Golddress, she frets about a girl on the cusp of womanhood (“I’m aching to take her picture / it’s nothing compared with what the world will do”), while Inshallah is a funny meet-cute at Istanbul airport. Elsewhere there is a brilliantly pithy three-part retelling of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (“Girl and a guy on a dopamine high …”) and a cool evisceration of John Cage and his acolytes, highlighting their snobbery while lampooning their methods (“If something is boring for two minutes, try it for four / if still boring, then eight”). As she looks at our sexist, violent culture from her panopticon, Davies is omnipotent, and drily jaded. But crucially – as on Noutiné, a stark lament about a father walking free from the killing of his daughter – not aloof.

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Paul Jacobs: Pictures, Movies and Apartments review – wild, essential garage punk

(Stolen Body Records)

Pictures, Movies and Apartments offers the single most exciting opening to any album this year. The Image (Pictures) begins with kick drum, a single-note bassline and squalls of feedback, before going into a monstrously in-the-red five-chord riff, over which Jacobs howls who-knows-what. It’s the very essence of garage punk: something so primal you suspect the Sonics might have rejected it for being a little unsophisticated. Jacobs, from Canada, has – in common with so many modern garage rock artists – a bafflingly lengthy discography, full of the same kind of stuff. He’s not a one-note artist, though: he manages two or three. Born in a Zoo is just as fuzzed-up, but manages a sunshine psychedelia hook; the title track is bouncy lo-fi pop. Throughout, there are hooks and melodies – the album positively drips with them – but it’s combined with a singleminded wildness that’s desperately exciting. Pictures, Movies and Apartments might be the best garage punk record of the year.

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The Spirit of the Beehive: Pleasure Suck review – giddy peripatetic lo-fi pop pleasures

(Tiny Engines)

Philadelphia four-piece the Spirit of the Beehive are the sort of woozy, musically meandering outfit who once would have been lazily dismissed as a “stoner band”. Of course these days, when weed is legal in a number of US states and even Christopher Biggins is blazing up on ITV, that label no longer feels like such an insult. The band’s third album, Pleasure Suck, takes the lo-fi collage approach of the likes of the Elephant 6 collective – in particular the psych folk of the Olivia Tremor Control – and makes it wilder and weirder, smothering it in layers of distortion, vocal samples and synth smears. Melodies tantalisingly wash in and out of focus, ideas are developed and abandoned at the drop of a hat in favour of something more interesting – a sudden stab of noise rock, say, or a limpid freak-folk interlude. In lesser hands such capriciousness might prove annoying, but here there’s always the thrilling possibility of something new just around the corner. And when the band stumble upon something truly brilliant – such as the power-pop climax of standout track Ricky (Caught Me Tryin’) – they grip on to it for dear life.

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Lorde considering cancelling Israel concert after backlash from fans

Singer responds to open letter asking her not to play in Tel Aviv as a protest against Israel’s occupation of Palestine

Pop star Lorde is considering cancelling a planned concert in Israel after facing intense pressure from fans, especially in her home country of New Zealand.

The 21-year-old singer has responded to criticism and an open letter asking her not to play in Tel Aviv as a sign of protest against Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

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Discoteca global: why 2017 was the year Latin pop broke through

As well as being insanely infectious, tracks such as Luis Fonsi’s Despacito and J Balvin’s Mi Gente have scored billions of streams thanks to an increasingly cross-cultural pop market

On 31 December 2016, a curious thing happened on YouTube. The platform’s most-watched music video on New Year’s Eve wasn’t a hoary old seasonal favourite, a longstanding party anthem or one of the year’s biggest hits. It was Chantaje, a Spanish-language reggaeton-influenced track by Shakira, featuring a guest appearance from her fellow Colombian singer-songwriter Maluma. Chantaje is a great song – tense, infectious, and with an accompanying video that is diverting, featuring as it does Shakira walking a small pig on a leash and twerking in front of the urinals in a gents’ lavatory. But still: more popular as 2016 drew to an end than any of the year’s inescapable hit singles? Bigger than Drake’s One Dance or Sia’s Cheap Thrills or Justin Bieber’s Sorry? Apparently so: 15.3 million people watched it in just 24 hours.

As it turned out, Chantaje’s popularity wasn’t an aberration so much as a hint of things to come. Latin pop has been one of 2017’s biggest success stories. By common consent, Despacito by Puerto Rico’s Luis Fonsi, featuring Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber, was the song of the summer: 16 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, making it the joint longest-running No 1 in US history; a chart-topper everywhere from the Philippines to the Czech Republic; both the second and third most-streamed song of the year on Spotify (the remix featuring Bieber just pipping the original version); the first YouTube video in history to reach 4bn views. It was followed by Cuban-American singer Camila Cabello’s transatlantic No 1 Havana; Mi Gente, a single by Columbian reggaeton star J Balvin and French singer and producer Willy William remixed to include a guest appearance by Beyoncé; and Reggaeton Lento, which began life as a single by CNCO – a boyband put together on Simon Cowell’s Latin American version of The X Factor, La Banda – before another Cowell-boosted pop band, Little Mix, were brought on board.

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Nelly sued for alleged sexual assault and defamation

Following the collapse of the criminal case against the rapper last week, his accuser has filed a lawsuit against him

The rapper Nelly has been sued for sexual assault and for defamation against the alleged victim, after he publicly denied the accusations.

He was arrested and briefly jailed in October in Auburn, Washington, after being accused of raping the 22-year-old University of Washington student on his tour bus. He denied the allegations via his attorney. The criminal case against him collapsed last week, after prosecutors said they couldn’t “proceed or fully assess the merits of the case” without the cooperation of the victim, who said she wanted to stop the investigation.

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Lady Gaga hits jackpot with 74-date Las Vegas residency

The pop star, who has battled a chronic pain condition during her current world tour, said the Park concert series – which will reportedly earn her $1m a show – ‘has been a lifelong dream’

Lady Gaga has announced a Las Vegas concert residency beginning in December 2018, that will reportedly net her $75m (£56m) over two years.

The residency will feature 74 shows at MGM’s Park theater. Gaga said in a statement: “It has been a lifelong dream of mine to play Las Vegas ... I’ll leave my heart on the stage every single night.” The deal is worth $100m in all, according to an unnamed source speaking to Variety.

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Eminem attacks Donald Trump: 'He's got people brainwashed'

The rapper continues his stream of invective against the president in a new interview, saying ‘his election was such a disappointment to me about the state of the country’

Eminem has attacked President Trump in a new interview, saying: “I get almost flustered thinking about him – that’s how angry he makes me.”

Related: The woke Slim Shady – understanding Eminem in the age of Trump

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Jonghyun, lead singer of K-pop band SHINee, dies at 27 – video obituary

Kim Jong-hyun, better known as Jonghyun, joined SHINee in 2008 and they have had hit albums in South Korea and Japan. He also had a successful solo career, releasing three albums and hosting his own radio show

• Lead singer of South Korean boy band Shinee dies 

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The Prodigy review – teeth rattled in dystopian breakbeat pantomime

Glasgow Academy
Twenty years on from their multimillion-selling album The Fat of the Land, the Prodigy refuse to get nostalgic, nor reduce the energy levels below total pandemonium

In an era when memories can be monetised, most bands – active or otherwise – might hungrily eye the 20th anniversary of their most successful album as an opportunity to mount a special tour to shore up their legacy and top up their Isas. Not so the Prodigy, Liam Howlett’s tetchy but tireless road warriors.

As Britpop shrivelled, their third album, 1997’s The Fat of the Land, took Howlett’s uncouth youthquake of evil techno and hot-wired breakbeats to the world; an astonishingly successful incursion into the US arguably laid the groundwork for the recent EDM explosion. Two decades on, you could forgive these Essex boys a backward-looking victory lap to fatten the brand.

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Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino review – pizzica masters stomp into rapture

Rich Mix, London
Hailing from Puglia and smoothly updating the region’s folk traditions, the seven-piece band expertly blended trance-inducing dance with exhilarating rhythms

They began with an eerie display of musical theatre. Six musicians dressed in black surrounded a tall, barefoot dancer, also in black, who had her back to the audience. A brooding wash of synth effects suddenly gave way to an attacking, precise and edgy onslaught of harmony singing that sounded like the soundtrack to some ancient ceremony. Then they were away, switching from the spooky (and so far unreleased) Luce Noa to Taranta, with Silvia Perrone’s frantic but elegant dance now spurred on by the furious beat of tamburello frame drums, backed by bouzouki, violin, accordion and zampogna bagpipes. It’s rare to see Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino in a small venue, but they played as if they were at a major festival.

CGS have becoming a global success by updating the pizzica musical tradition from their home region of Puglia in the heel of Italy. The cover of their latest album, Canzoniere, shows a Coca-Cola bottle filled with locally made tomato purée – and that sums up their approach. This is a band rooted in tradition who still include folk songs, but much of the material here was co-written by singer and multi-instrumentalist Mauro Durante, who has combined traditional rhythms and instruments with new sounds, influences and subtlety.

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Kim Jong-hyun: Shinee star dies amid an unforgiving K-pop industry

The 27-year-old singer was one of the beautiful, well-drilled entertainers who make K-pop so thrilling – and who are often treated miserably by their management companies

The death of Kim Jong-hyun of South Korean boyband Shinee marks, if not definitely the end, then a crushing blow to one of the country’s most enduring pop outfits. With their earnest, keeningly romantic songs, paired with immaculate choreography, Shinee marked the apotheosis of their country’s boyband craft.

While in the west there have only been a handful of successful boybands in recent years, in Korea and Japan – where Shinee also had a huge following, leading to a string of Japanese-language albums – the appetite for ultra-emotional ballads and energetic dance tracks, performed by impossibly beautiful and well-drilled young men, is apparently insatiable.

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A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie review – new-school rap star taps up old-school stagecraft

Electric Brixton, London
The 21-year-old Bronx rapper incites moshpits and stage diving with a battery of earworm hooks – and gets a cameo from Stefflon Don

At 21 years old, rising Bronx rapper A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie draws his influences less from the NYC hip-hop pioneers working with two turntables and a microphone, and far more from the megastar MCs of the noughties. Over the course of a self-released mixtape (2016’s Artist) and a major label album (this year’s A Bigger Artist), he has skilfully referenced contemporary icons, taking in the Auto-Tuned self-reflection of Future, the sing-song humblebrags of Drake, and Kanye’s penchant for electronic experimentation. But tonight in Brixton, it becomes apparent that at least one familiar, welcome remnant of Bronx boom-bap culture remains: he knows how to put on a proper live show.

Bounding on stage with a huge grin as his DJ scratches up current club hip-hop hits, A Boogie is a spindly, hyperactive performer, springing from one speaker stack to the other as the DJ gamely runs through rap shoutout 101 (“put your hands in the air London”, etc). A Boogie is dressed unobtrusively in a beanie hat, sports sweater, ripped jeans and – by hip-hop standards – an extremely modest gold chain, looking more like the rap scene’s latest art director than its breakout star. All of this adds to his likability, a good-times everyman who’s there to enjoy himself, as he swiftly kicks into a party-starting rendition of Wild Thots – a mischievous remix of Rihanna’s Wild Thoughts.

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Lead singer of South Korean boy band Shinee dies

News reports say Kim Jong-hyun was unconscious when taken to hospital and suggest cause of death was suicide

The lead singer of the South Korean boy band Shinee has died after being taken to hospital in an unconscious state, the Yonhap news agency has reported without giving any source for the information.

Kim Jong-hyun – better known as Jonghyun – was found unconscious at his home in Seoul, Yonhap said.

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Johnny Hallyday remembered by Carla Bruni

15 June 1943 – 6 December 2017

The singer and former model recalls the French rock star, a complex figure who started young, lived to perform and was loved by an entire nation

• Fats Domino remembered by Joe Lauro

I met Johnny Hallyday for the first time as a teenager – I was at school with his son David and sometimes I would see him at David’s parties. I met him a few times over the years but didn’t get to know him properly until I got married. He was a good friend of my husband [former French president Nicolas Sarkozy], who knew him for years – he went to his first Johnny Hallyday concert when he was 13, at the Olympia in Paris, with Jimi Hendrix as the opening act.

When we got married, I got to see Johnny quite a lot. He was a very simple, kind man with a lot of charisma – he was big, strong, tall and very handsome. On stage he was really amazing. He was one of these artists who burns, like Elvis or Edith Piaf. He would sing like he was going to die the very next minute. He was a good actor too – the only problem was that his presence was so strong, it was hard to forget it was him.

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Anita Pallenberg remembered by Marianne Faithfull

6 April 1942 – 13 June 2017
The musician recalls her friend and fellow 60s survivor, who styled the Stones, made her own art and was afraid of nobody

• John Hurt remembered by John Boorman

Talking about Anita is something I have to do. I don’t want who she really was to be forgotten. People think of her in one way – a 60s muse, all that shit – but she was so much more than that. A really talented artist, a great actor, intelligent, funny, thoughtful, fearless… she truly didn’t give a fuck what anybody thought of her. I was desolate when she died. Until she got very ill, we spoke on the phone most days. I don’t want to sound sentimental or sappy, she’s worth more than that. She was so important to me.

To be Keith's moll was not necessarily her destiny at all. She was a really talented artist

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