Entertainment

What a lovely heap of little gems, June. The return of Lorde this month may have produced enough glare to blanch the hype around these smaller releases, so it's lucky we're here to gather them all together! Our cover image stars A Giant Dog return after last year's outstanding Pile with more irresistible gyrating on upcoming release Toy, and Vince Staples got Kendrick in for an incendiary verse on Big Fish Theory highlight 'Yeah Right'. Katie Crutchfield is back doing her Waxahatchee thing and...

Mogwai are today streaming new track ‘Party In The Dark’, taken from eagerly awaited forthcoming album Every Country’s Sun, out September 1st via Rock Action. Every Country’s Sun see’s the Scottish band join forces once again with producer Dave Fridmann, for the first time since 2001’s Rock Action. The new record takes two decades of Mogwai's signature, contrasting sounds – towering intensity, pastoral introspection, synth-rock minimalism, DNA-detonating volume – and distills it, beautifully, into 56 concise minutes of gracious elegance, hymnal...

Hailing from Ghent, Belgium Hypochristmutreefuzz are at the forefront of Ghent’s noise-rock scene. Other than a secret weapon for passionate Scrabble-fanatics (their name comes from an avant-garde jazz piece by Misha Mengelberg) the band, formed around Belgian musician Ramses Van den Eede, is a frontal attack to all of the senses, thanks to a crushing groove, the use of a power drill as an instrument and inconveniently lovable bone-shattering and shamanic vocals. Check out their latest video for new single...

The only remaining travelling horse-drawn theatre troupe in the UK may stop touring after losing crucial Arts Council funding. Sabotage Theatre tour original plays to isolated and rural communities in Kent and Sussex, walking up to 14 miles a day, living outside and cooking with fires. The stage and set are pulled in a cart by two Piebald Cobs. There are several in the US, Canada and Europe, but Sabotage is the only horse-drawn theatre troupe left in the United...

When the weather reaches over 30 degrees, all plays should have to incorporate an air conditioning unit into their set by law. Fortunately, HIR has come prepared, and sitting in the auditorium of the Bush Theatre is a sweet, blessed relief after the persistent heat wave raging outside. In the middle of the auditorium is a kitchen, with the audience sitting along each of the two long sides. Both edges of the stage are littered with laundry. Chairs are stacked...

A London bookshop has uncovered a shocking conspiracy about the coveted Griffin Poetry Prize, linking winners of the award to the TV drama Midsomer Murders. The thread, which starts "does anyone want to hear my conspiracy theory", links winners of the poetry prize to elements of the show dating back as far as 2005. Although the latest incidents seem quite normal - Alice Oswald won the Griffin Prize in 2017 for 'Falling Awake' and her brother, Will Keen, played 'Preaching' Pete Kubatski in Midsomer...

On July 14th 2017, almost 10 years after it was originally released, Reuben will reissue their 3rd and final album 'In Nothing We Trust' through Big Scary Monsters (BSM) as a very limited vinyl run, as well as digitally across streaming and purchase platforms (for the very first time). Often cited by fans of the band as a true lost classic, and originally released on the bands own Hideous Records label, it is currently unavailable on vinyl or digitally anywhere, hence this...

Kate Tempest didn't hold back as she launched in Theresa May in an angry and emotional attack on the Tory leader. The crowd and many on social media were deeply touched by her words and her unrelenting delivery. She said: "School kids on the hunt for lunch, cut the apron strings at least it keeps the bastards leaning,” she said. “Murdoch headlines leeches for the letting of our blood lost, blame it on the migrants suffocated in containers, blame it...

Let us speak then of victimless crimes, the pretense that somehow by expunging certain acts from the criminal justice system we are in fact advancing civilization, casting aside the repressions, the myths, the lies our churches told us for centuries upon centuries that those acts were evil when of course we the educated sophisticates know ever so much better that they are not evil merely ... pleasures that do no harm to no one else. If I choose to smoke...