The enormously prolific Howe Gelb is behind the Tucson band Giant Sand (from which Calexico became a more commercially successful split-off) and has also recorded a dozen albums under his own name.

Katy B is a fairly unlikely gritty dubstep queen.

The disintegration of American dreams into nightmares is the leitmotiv of this first novel. Its narrative punches you from the first paragraph: "I'm ten years old ... I opened our front door and found my mother hanging from the rafters..."

"Just treat it like it's a game" says the guy who has woken up yet again on a Chicago commuter train in the body of another man.

Like a mongrel mix of Kyuss, Neurosis, and the mighty Godflesh, Beastwars bring together pummelling intensity, beautiful brutality, and sonic paranoia to create a sound all of their own.

A boozy Saturday night crowd wants easy gags. Thankfully Gordon Southern, the host of The Big Show - one of the more glamorous daily events at the festival - was full of them.

There are memoirs that are about a personal life lived, and then there are memoirs about a specific subject on which an author wishes to ruminate at length. Annie Proulx's non-fiction Bird Cloud very much falls into the latter.

Roy Orbison didn't show a lot of emotion, but his songs and voice were brimming with them, writes Graham Reid.