I’ve never thought of myself as a political artist. I write about love. The tender bits, the messy bits, the heartbreak that rearranges a life. That’s where songwriting usually finds me. “TIEF”, from my forthcoming album Sunshine Music, arrived differently. It’s built around an interpolation of “Slave” by the legendary calypsonian singer Mighty Sparrow. Calypso, a music that has lived in my bones for as long as I can remember. “Slave” proposed a question I sought to answer.

I was born Tamara Lee Neilson. I had an Uncle Kenny and an Aunt Dolly (who played guitar and banjo, respectively). I mean, did I really have a choice to become anything but a Country singer?

Michael Gira (born 19/2/54) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, author and artist. He founded Swans, a band in which he sings and plays guitar, in New York during the late 1970s. Since that time, Gira and Swans have been a major influence in the experimental rock scene and in the 1980s were lorded as the “loudest band on the planet”. Not ones to sit still, however, they evolved continuously, taking on new sounds and influences until grinding to a halt in the late 1990s.

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”, the ineffable progressive rock epic that occupies side two of 1971’s Meddle, is having a moment. Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets released a sensational one-sided 12-inch vinyl version of the track on Record Store Day, April 12. Recorded at the Centennial Hall in Frankfurt last August, the 23.04-minutes single – which plays from the centre outwards – reached number six in the vinyl chart, dropped, and is rising again.

“Sandra” is one of my favourite tracks from my album Between The Moon and the Milkman which was released last year.  While living in Paris a few years ago I shared a flat with an older French lady. We loved to chat every night when I came home from work, but one time she told me a story that stayed with me about her late husband, who was an abusive alcoholic. When he died, his only final wishes were to be buried. So of course, she had him cremated.

Occasionally, when I pass my own reflection, out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of the likeness of my father, shining out through the bones in my face. In this way his ghost walks with me. 

Sometimes the making process can feel like that, a matter of training our peripheral vision to retrieve the images and ideas that are flickering at the edge of our field of view, existing in the same dimly lit space as dreams, primal impulses and hazy memories. 

The first K-Music festival landed in London for than a decade ago, and has brought an eclectic range of bands and musicians from Korea to the stages of the capital, whether that’s the sorrowful storytelling tradition of Pansori, the sonic attack of bands like Jambinai or Black String, who return this year to King’s Place on 30 October, with the extraordinary sound of the gayageum – part harp, part oud, part theramin – under the hands of band leader Youn Jeong Heo.

Lighters at the ready, because here comes the flood. Drawn from 16-track tape, 1/4in reels and lo-fi sound board cassettes that are now a half century old, the 27 CDs of 431 performances, 417 of them previously unreleased, of Dylan and The Band’s 1974 arena tour of the US, is a set that challenges the listeners’ staying power perhaps more than it celebrates an epochal tour.

We’re in deepest Dorset, on the edge of the village of Cranborne. The sun has just set. A cluster of thatched rooves, ancient looking barns and outhouses.

The British folk artist and singer songwriter Olivia Chaney released her third solo album this week, as we break out into springtime, and she’ll be touring sporadically around the UK over the next few months, with a showcase at London’s Union Chapel in June.