Hannigan/Chamayou (Alpha) The superb projection of Hannigan’s voice and the rainbow of colours in Chamayou’s piano lay bare the sexual desire and religious fervour prevalent in Messiaen’s early worksOlivier Messiaen wrote just three large-scale works for voice and piano. The most substantial, Harawi, composed in 1945 as the first part of a trilogy of...

Cannes film festival Nyoni uses unsettlingly playful surrealism in this account of a malign uncle and the family mythmaking that effaces his crimesRungano Nyoni is the Zambian-Welsh film-maker who in 2017 had an arthouse smash with her debut, the witty and distinctive misogyny fable I Am Not a Witch. Her new film is an oblique, intensely self-aware...

The Generation X punk turned arena rocker answers your questions on near-misses in Hollywood, his overlooked electronic period and how Marc Bolan helped launch his careerIs it true that you stole the master tapes to the Rebel Yell album during a spat with the record label? VerulamiumParkRanger It was because of the cover. I was saying: “There’s a flaw...

A mega egg in Paris, a hovering hotel in Machu Picchu, an hourglass tower in New York, a pleasure island in Baghdad … we reveal the architectural visions that were just too costly – or too weirdDid you know that, if things had gone differently, the Pompidou Centre could have been an egg? In the 1969 competition for the Paris art centre – ultimately...

The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon Four students in Iran are under pressure to pass their foreign language exams in Sanaz Toossi’s gentle comedy that puts discussion above drama and ideas above emotionThe instruction to speak “English only” is underlined on a board in a classroom in Karaj, Iran. The stricture pushes an immersive version of language...

(Darkroom/Interscope Records) On this deeply involving third album, Eilish once again breaks the rules for arena-filling artists: it’s subtle and understated, yet jars the listener with eerie show tunes and explosive noiseBillie Eilish’s third album opens with a track called Skinny. It features a hushed electric guitar figure supporting a lyric filled...