Guardian Music — There are a growing number of small festivals that offer personal touches and originality over superstar lineups – and excessive ticket prices. Chris Salmon rounds up 10 of the best'It's pretty standard to say that the huge festivals lack character... more info

Guardian Music — (ECC/Proper)When they first appeared at Womad, back in the summer of 2007, the Imagined Village sounded well-intentioned but in need of serious rehearsal. The idea was intriguing - to rework folk songs with global influences and electronica to reflec... more info

Guardian Music — Barbican, LondonTwisted Christmas returns for the second year to strip the festive season of its ribbons and bows. But this year's show unwittingly exposes the real fundamentals of Christmas – boredom, selfishness and disappointment.It's a biz... more info

Guardian Music — Topic is the oldest independent label in Britain, if not the world. Not bad for a Marxist party offshoot that was started in a basementTony Engle is not a man much given to hyperbole, which is unusual in a record label boss. In fact, after 36 years i... more info

Time Out, London — Superlative guitar player and sensitive and highly influential interpreter of traditional tune and song with his fiddling, accordian-playing daughter more info

8/1 — Clashmusic.net | 9/10 ‘The Bachelor’ is part one of Patrick Wolf’s coming-of-age saga. “I want to grow old disgracefully. I want to become more and more unconventional,” he says, touting the first half of what was orig... more info

I Guess I'm Floating — As you've probably heard by now, Patrick Wolf is back this year with a new concept album called The Bachelor (previously The Battle) that I can finally confirm is not made up of 15 tracks named after desperate money-hungry women all competing for the... more info

Guardian Music — Folk is seen as the preserve of the left - but the right is muscling in. Colin Irwin on why this weekend will see a showdown between Boris Johnson and Billy BraggLondon mayor Boris Johnson thinks St George's Day, which falls today, has been ignored f... more info

Guardian Music — He's Britain's most innovative, radical, creative and, yes, ridiculous, pop star, whose overt sexuality, visual flamboyance and unusual lyrics set him apart from all his contemporaries. He tells Miranda Sawyer how, at 16, and after enduring years of ... more info

Altsounds — The first acts announced for the seventh Beautiful Days festival are *The Pogues, Levellers, Hawkwind, The Saw Doctors , Gong, Lamb, Dreadzone, Imagined Village, Dub Pistols, Pendulum DJ’s, Cara Dillon, The King Blues, Eliza Carthy, Imeld... more info