Lent 2026

Where Suicide sought to reduce, compress, focus and minimise music in order to maximise its emotional charge, Ryuichi Sakamoto goes in completely the opposite direction in his remarkable debut album Thousand Knives. Two aspects of it are particularly striking. First is its diversity, an absolute panoply of polystylism that nonetheless …

When i conceived this year’s Lent Series, it didn’t take long to realise which album had to come first. US duo Suicide, comprising vocalist Alan Vega and Martin Rev on electronics, brought out their eponymous debut album at the very end of 1977.

Last year, while i was interviewing the composer Märt-Matis Lill, he related an idea – expressed by his father – that we feel most comfortable during the period of time when we were born. Lill was born in November, and feels particularly at ease at that time of the year, …