Entertainment

The Penguin Essentials 'are essential reads' that include 'some of the most important books from the last 100 years – with covers designed by contemporary artists so that they feel fresh and unexpected, appealing to a new generation of readers.' (Including the super-stylish Dave Eggers cover above!) Titles range through the Classic canon with Brideshead Revisited, The Great Gatsby and A Passage to India, through to modern meta-revisions of Classics with Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (reimagining Jane Eyre) and J...

Matthew Mole of Scanners has a new album as ARVI and not only is it rather good, he's also given TLE Music a sneak preview of ARVI's debut album The Law - see below, as well as the first video to Anything You Want. The album features many of the accomplished, lush melodies of Scanners' dark transatlantic pop, but in more contemplative, acoustic compositions. "This album is very different to Scanners in that the sound is much more acoustic," Matthew told TLE Music. "It's softer and...

Camden Rocks Festival have confirmed Royal Republic and Leeds’ Pulled Apart By Horses will join the 2017 line up this June 3rd. Camden Rocks Festival 2017 is the biggest multi-venue all-day music event of the UK festival calendar. Progressively expanding each year adding new venues - 2017 will take place across 25 of Camden Town’s legendary music venues, now including Koko - and feature 250 bands, it’s become the annual highlight for many in the London locality. With near 100 more...

There could not be a better time to write a play about revolutionary commitment and individual freedom. Journalist Paul Mason’s piece about working class female communards exiled to New Caledonia on the back of a colonial project for their part in the 1871 Parisian uprising asks hard questions about what happens to personal freedom and culpability when revolutions are defeated. Mason has drawn on three sources for this almost biographical work focused on anarchist, feminist, teacher, ethnographer and revolutionary Louise...

On May 20th and 21st the British Library will be transformed as the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival animates its iconic spaces for the first time in celebration of this cultural partnership. The British Library will present a sumptuous showcase of South Asia's literary heritage, oral and performing arts, music, cinema and illusion, books and ideas, dialogue and debate, Bollywood and politics in the context of this broader view of India and its relationship to the United Kingdon.2017 marks the fourth...

On a personal note, a stored image returns to the forefront of my thoughts as summoned by the reading of Bill Hayes' achingly beautiful memoir Insomniac City. It is a February night in 2010, a Toronto winter considering an early spring, a night four hours' distant from consideration of a whispering dawn. I am stood outside an all-hours McDonald's smoking the fifth cigarette of the first pack after I had given up quitting. My eyes followed the mix of smoke...

Richmond Virginia's Municipal Waste are back with their latest piece of toxic detritus, Slime And Punishment. Their sixth album will be released on June 23rd via Nuclear Blast Records. Ryan Waste states, "We've been getting punished for the last five years by people asking for a new album. Now we're here to return the favour with an aural onslaught of speed metal punk. Enjoy a taste of slime courtesy of the Waste." Slime And Punishment is the first Waste album to be...

Geordie comic Carl Hutchinson has been called "Uniquely stubborn, outright impractical and undeniably hilarious" and we caught up with him for a quick chat... What is your show about? The show is called The Fixer, I get people to tweet in before the show starts with "If you were PM for the day what one law would you introduce?" It's just a fun little way of getting to interact with the crowd without asking the standard, where you from? What do...

Fyre Festival, the Bahamas-bound, Insta-model endorsed music fest is officially a disaster. Touted as  a 'cultural moment created from an alchemic blend of music, art, and food', patrons were greeted by a festival site that wouldn't look out of place in Children of Men. The promised A-list models and boutique tents in reality turned out to be wild dogs and hastily-assembled emergency shelter, all for tasty ticket prices upwards of 10K. Evidently, Twitter has latched onto the catastrophe and run with...