Techno godfather Juan Atkins: ‘There were 5,000 white kids going crazy to my music’

How did a kid from rural Michigan – who lived among cows, haybales and strawberry festivals – change the face of music? As Atkins blazes into the UK, he relives his wild times at early British raves

Hit em: how a dream about raves, graves and slime led Matmos’s Drew Daniel to a new music genre

While Daniel slept, a girl introduced him to ‘super crunched-out sounds’ at a wild tempo. After he shared the details on X, producers are making his fantasies into reality

Womad festival review – wildly entertaining treasure trove for adventurous music fans

Radically inclusive global lineup includes Sampa the Great’s feminist pizzazz, Young Fathers’ twisted genre-splicing and Bixiga 70’s full-tent conga

Mercury prize 2024: Charli xcx, the Last Dinner Party and Beth Gibbons among nominees

The British music industry’s award for outstanding albums features eight debuts, from the likes of Nia Archives and Barry Can’t Swim, as the prize fails to find a sponsor

Watch me work it, I’m perfect! The return of electro-house, pop’s trashiest, brattiest sound

Mutating out of trance and electroclash in the 00s, the subgenre soon topped the charts – and thanks to Charli xcx, Saltburn and more, it’s back for another round of alcopops

VR show takes ravers old and new back to early UK acid house scene

In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is set in the West Midlands and will embark on eight-city tour starting in Birmingham

Low’s Alan Sparhawk on the death of his wife and bandmate Mimi Parker: ‘If you fall in love, you know this could happen’

Sparhawk spent four decades with Parker, three of them as the core of alt-rock legends Low, before she died from cancer aged 55. He discusses finding his new, digitally-altered voice amid grief – and why he’s channelling Cher

‘If the world explodes, the only survivors will be cockroaches and Cubans!’: the Guantánamo musicians defying the island’s crisis

For over 150 years this rural Cuban area has been home to changüí: hyperlocal music holding out against an embattled economy. We join an all-night festival to find out how

‘We knew a banjo house record would annoy the techno bores’: how the Grid made Swamp Thing

‘It was a smash in loads of countries. When we played it at London’s Ministry of Sound club, there was a girl staring at Roger’s banjo like she’d never seen one before’

Kiasmos: II review – will have you crying tears of joy on the dancefloor

The Icelandic-Faroese duo follow their 2014 cult debut with a second album of meticulous, majestic, simply beautiful electronic music

South Asians have been insultingly ignored by most music festivals – so thank you Glastonbury

Despite being a huge part of the British population, South Asian musicians rarely feature on festival lineups. So it was joyous to have an entire area dedicated to our cultural vibrancy

Why Bronski Beat’s anthem of gay culture resonates 40 years on

What it is about the the haunting classic, Smalltown Boy, that still compels teens to join older generations on the dancefloor?

‘We were the bridge between indie and dance’: Glastonbury icons Orbital on 30 years of breaking barriers

In conversation with the Guardian at the festival, Paul and Phil Hartnoll recalled their culture-changing sets of the 90s – and whether they killed off Top of the Pops

The Streets’ Mike Skinner: ‘My mid-20s were utterly traumatic. Everything was upside down’

As he plays Glastonbury and prepares a Fabric mix, Skinner answers your questions on his film debut, dinners with Chris Martin and the secret to true happiness

‘Women have always been sidelined. So we’re radical’: the Zawose Queens go from Tanzania to Glastonbury

The multi-talented musicians were held back in their home country where even certain instruments were off limits – but they’re ready to take centre stage at Worthy Farm