Entertainment

Dignan Porch have put together a stunning new animated video for ‘Golden Beak’. Inspired by the song’s surreal, dreamlike lyrics, the video tells the tale of two brothers who undertake a strange and perilous journey and was directed by the band’s keyboard player Hayley Akins and a few of her animator mates. It's got a Journey / Shadow of the Collusus vibe. Check it out below. Commanding a cult-like following thanks to releases on Faux Discx and the legendary Captured Tracks alongside a long-running...

20 years ago, the infamous Sensation exhibition opened at the Royal Academy of Art in London. Most notorious for showcasing Marcus Harvey’s “Myra” painting—a portrait of Moors Murderer Myra Hindley, rendered in a mosaic of child’s handprints—it collected advertising guru Charles Saatchi’s numerous works by the Young British Artists. The YBAs, as they were known, were a motley collective of artists under 30, whose anarchic approach to conceptual art resonated strongly in the era of Cool Britannia. Originally spearheaded by...

A former squaddie has cemented himself as the world's number two Game of Thrones fan - by transforming his TOILET into an Iron Throne. Chris Fleet, a former sniper, remodelled his bog to look like the iconic Iron Throne from the series, which relaunched for its seventh series on Monday. The toilet is decorated with massive black swords - just like the real thing from the smash hit HBO show. And it's also fully functional, as demonstrated when Chris took a...

Soft Fangs has shared his new single, 'Elephant Girl', taken from forthcoming sophomore album, Fractures out 1st September on Disposable America. Gold Flake Paint premiered 'Elephant Girl' calling it "a gorgeous haze of a track, crafting a half-dream shadowiness that recalls Sparklehorse in his most linear form and balancing just the right amount of light and dark for the whole thing to fully intrigue as well as simply charm." Listen below: Soft Fangs is the musical project of Brooklyn-based songwriter, John Lutkevich. Since...

The family of an artist who created paintings inspired by her terminal skin cancer and the way it made her body feel are hosting a posthumous exhibition of her work. Mother-of-three Lori Murdock began making the colourful and uplifting art after being told she had just months to live. Her family said the paintings were inspired by changes she could feel going on inside her body and the Cat scan images which revealed her cancer. File photo of Lori Murdock...

The Shacklewell Arms continues its run of stonking free gigs with a Thursday-night triple-header. LA experimental duo Wreck and Reference round out the night with their unique blend of introspective metal, sounding raw and intelligent through a caustic mix of samples, synthesisers and drums. Schlocky support comes from the cloak-shrouded, smoke-obscured Blackmoon 1348, who base their set in spectacle and hypnotic chanting. Think the Witches of Eastwick with more melodica and you're halfway there. A proper show for a freebie...

From exotic frogs to a jumping fox, all these pictures are winners and runners up in an international photography competition. British snapper Michelle Howell grabbed the top prize with this pic of a colourful Argentinian Ornate Horned Frog. She fought off more than 530 other snappers to win the Society of International Nature and Wildlife Photographers' Creatures Great and Small competition. Former cop Michelle, from Flockton, Yorkshire said: "After retiring from West Yorkshire Police and entering the sailing business, I...

As much as I truly enjoy reading a good mystery novel – within the broad term of genre fiction mysteries are by far my favourite – they do present a positively infernal problem in writing about them. Most of the major touchstones used by a thoughtful reviewer in assessing a book's worth have to be equivocated. Plot is obvious; nobody will give a moment's worth of deciding whether or not to read a whodunit if they already know whodunit. One...

There's a riddle I like to use to expose everyday sexism in modern society. It goes something like this: A father and his son are in a car crash. The father dies on impact but the son gets rushed to hospital. The doctor comes in but says, "I can't operate on this child, it's my son". Who is the doctor?  It's remarkable how long it takes people to figure it out (it's his mother, silly). But perhaps such warped views...