Interview: Arts Fishing Club – “Gary Busey” - chorus.fm

flash forest plants for life after wildfiresAcross the blackened forests of northern Quebec, drones fly above the remains of burned trees, launching small, seed-filled capsules into the earth. Each carries the beginnings of a new tree, packed with ingredients intended to help it grow in damaged soil. The system is developed by Canadian company Flash Forest, which is using aerial technology to replant landscapes devastated by wildfire, including remote areas that are difficult to reach on foot. The work follows Quebec’s devastating 2023 wildfire season, when around 4.5 million hectares of forest burned across the province. Flash Forest has since expanded its planting operations across Canada. According to its latest impact report, the company planted 686,147 trees across five sites in 2025, covering 429 hectares of burned forest. The technology allows large areas to be seeded quickly while keeping heavy planting equipment off the forest floor.

If you were on the internet in 2015, you likely followed the twisty tale of the Wu-Tang Clan‘s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The Staten Island hip-hop titans conceived of the album as a conceptual artwork, a protest against the cheapening of music in the age of widespread piracy. Rather than release the music to the general public, the work was sold at auction for a reported $2 million to a then-anonymous American buyer, seemingly proving that music could sell at the level of Picasso and Warhol. It proved a Pyrrhic victory when the buyer was revealed to be the hated “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli. The episode was a bitter lesson for the group, resulting in resentment and division. Even Clan member Method Man said, “Fuck that album. … When music can’t be music and y’all turning it into something else, fuck that. Give it to the people, if they want to hear the shit, let them have it. Give it away free.” (He somewhat softened his stance recently, on finally hearing the album.)

In September 1991, I had just been thrown into the meat-grinder of a Midlands boarding school. In this bear pit, there were predators and there was prey. You were either the swaggering rugby alpha, whipping a wet towel at pale bodies in the eight-boy dormitory; or the homesick ghost, keeping your guard up, endlessly braced for your toilet cubicle to be kicked open or your washbag chucked off the fire escape. My mind had always been loud, racing with opinions, stories, jokes. But by the time I adequately considered a thought, the conversation had raced on without me. Suddenly, under 24/7 social scrutiny in a world where bullhorn confidence is king, I felt dismissed. Up to that point, music hadn’t helped. Every rock star I had ever seen – Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Mick Jagger – was a showboating peacock, all hips, handclaps and absurd glasses, seeming to whisper in my ear: “This isn’t for you, bookworm.” But that September, I stumbled across the Stone Roses’ self-titled 1989 debut album. I must have seen John Squire’s genius before I heard it, on his paint-splashed, lemon-drizzled sleeve art.

The latest on the student protests in France, the art world’s AI problem, one-on-one with Rosana Paulino, and Beer With a Painter featuring Melissa Brown. The subway car rattles, shakes, and screeches as it tunnels us from Brooklyn to Manhattan underneath the East River. I hold on tight to a pole, while my eyes are fixed on an ad for the Broadway musical Les Misérables. My social media feed shows me only looting and vandalism in France, painting a violent picture of the largely peaceful student protests. Panicking, the art world’s blue-chip class shuts down Art Basel Paris early and flees the city. The Louvre also closes to protect its treasures. Loot a little and they throw you in jail; loot a lot and they let you open a museum. I get to a benefit dinner for an art residency held in a former bank. A peppy auctioneer asks the who’s who to open their hearts and wallets. Paddles go up and down, and a donation ticker on a big screen climbs to astronomical numbers while I admire the building’s huge stained-glass skylight.

Vertical dramas – that is, short-form content made specifically for phones – are big business in 2026. They are particularly popular in countries such as China and India, and the global market is expected to be worth $26bn by 2030. It makes sense: much has been made of the double-screening epidemic, and of people scrolling so much that Netflix has to remind them what is going on on their TV screens every few seconds. Why not just cut out the middleman and ditch the telly bit altogether? Enter Channel 4, which has released its first vertical drama on social media in the UK. It’s described as “a bold, character-led series” that explores “the friendship, ambition and lives of a diverse group of intelligent young women”. The Guest List is made in partnership with the skincare brand Sol de Janeiro, and episodes are around 90 seconds to two minutes in length. The microdramas that have gripped Asia are camp and cliffhanger-heavy – one producer described them as “soap operas on cocaine”. The Guest List is less cocaine, more Coke Zero: sweet, syrupy, probably not bad for you but not especially good either. Anodyne.

The Irish traditional musician Dónal Lunny has died at the age of 79 from cancer. Lunny rose to prominence in the trio Rakes of Kildare alongside his brother Frank and Christy Moore. He went on to play in bands such as Planxty, Moving Hearts, the Bothy Band and Coolfin among others and toured the world. A post on his Facebook page confirmed that Lunny died in St James’s hospital in Dublin on Friday morning. “We are heartbroken to confirm that our beloved Dónal passed away peacefully this morning in Dublin following a short stay in St James’s hospital,” the post said. “Thank you for helping us to remember and celebrate his immense contribution to music, to culture and to so many people’s lives all over the world.”Catherine Connolly said Lunny was ‘central to so many of the most influential moments of the last 60 years of Irish music’. Photograph: Niall Carson/PAThe Irish president, Catherine Connolly, expressed her “deepest condolences to the family, friends and many musical collaborators of Dónal Lunny”.