Editor's Choice - Music

Charlotte Gainsbourg

She's just released her third album: IRM. Renowned as one of rock's more daring and experimental figures, Gainsbourg's latest deals with her recent experiences following a brain haemorrhage and emergency surgery.

Toumani Diabate

Four years after his death, guitar player Ali Farka Toure's collaboration with Toumani Diabate is being released.

The duo first recorded together on their Grammy winning 2005 album In the Heart of the Moon and their latest collaboration is already being hailed as a masterpiece. The record contains the final recordings Toure made before he died. Producer Nick Gold and kora player Toumani Diabate discuss the making of the album.

AfroCubism

In 1996 Nick Gold planned to make a CD bringing together Malian and Cuban musicians, but due to visa problems it never happened.

Instead he began working with just the Cubans and, almost by fortunate accident, created the best-selling world music album of all time, The Buena Vista Social Club. Fourteen years on the original plan has finally come together and the original planned line-up has recorded AfroCubism, a gorgeous mix of African and Caribbean traditions.

Nick talked to Mark Coles about the problems and delights of working with a studio full of virtuosi.