Manon announced in February she was taking a break from the group, who play Coachella this weekend.
All Right Reserved. Designed and Developed by Martyn Jones.
The move means owners of Kindles released before 2013 will be unable to download new e-books.
Astronauts in space have been jamming to Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club, but how does it all happen?
HOLLY HUMBERSTONE
Cruel World (Polydor)
Holly Humberstone contemplates the pendulum swing of falling in love on her sophomore studio album, an impressive endeavour in artistic refinement for the singer-songwriter. What manifests is 10 songs brimming with catchy melodies and an unexpected playful attitude.
Ironic, given the album’s title, that for the most part of Cruel World, Humberstone seems to be enjoying herself. The glitchy and disorientating drum’n’bass break in Make It All Better and the shimmering country-pop of White Noise, attest to this. Even the title track seems to embody the breezy lightness of Sabrina Carpenter at times.
However, that’s not to say Humberstone loses her knack for confessional songwriting amidst all the fun. In fact, it’s the opposite, with the shameless pop music moments highlighting the darker edges of Humberstone’s lyricism. Drunk Dialling is both cheeky, horny, and exposing, while Peachy strips things back into a tender piano ballad exploring avoidant attachment. Humberstone’s ability to storytell, to balance these contrasting moments, paint an actualised modern portrait of falling in love in today’s world – no matter how cruel it may be.
words RHYS JAMES
The Bronx born rapper’s global hit Planet Rock is credited with shaping hip-hop in the 1980s.
An insight into the lives of a community, Camau Bach is the latest Welsh-language novel from author Luned Aaron. A Welsh border town, whose name we don’t learn, proves to be the central character of the novel as the exploits of its inhabitants and their distinctive lives are explored throughout the narrative.
In linked chapters, we meet a host of characters from the town, beginning with Siriol Haf – who is expecting an unwelcome visit from her old school friend and her family, with excruciating consequences. Later, the inner thoughts of two brothers who drifted apart and lead polar-opposite lives are reunited at the farm where they grew up. With strong connections between character and place, there’s much to read between the lines within each chapter and a lot going on behind the scenes.
Having launched into adult fiction with her previous short story collection Porth, this is a strong followup by Aaron, featuring a consistent style of prose that enables complete absorption and escapism. It’s also worth noting that the inspiring cover artwork was created by the author, proving herself a multi-skilled talent. It’s difficult to convey the spectacular prose and the different nuances in this superbly visceral and compelling work of fiction.
The band were perhaps the biggest on the planet in the 1970s.
The Irish singer apologised after organisers for the event rescheduled due to issues with Victoria Park.
The K-Pop band are battered by the elements as they launch their marathon world tour in Goyang.
The dark is rising. Just as Dan Richards’ book Overnight shone a spotlight on what happens when most of us are asleep, Robert Petit’s film Underland – loosely based on the Robert Macfarlane book of the same name – illuminates what goes on beneath our feet. Our attention is too frequently focused on the yang, Richards, Petit and Macfarlane seem to suggest; it’s time we dwelled on the yin.
This visually stunning documentary, boasting a beautifully worded narration by Sandra Hüller and an intense complementary score by Hannah Peel, follows three intrepid denizens of the subterranean realm – speleologist/cave archaeologist Fátima Tec Pool, urban explorer Bradley Garrett and theoretical particle physicist Mariangela Lisanti – united by their pursuit of knowledge and revelation.
Lisanti recalls being naturally inquisitive from a very young age, but unlike Tec Pool and Garrett, is not seeking to learn more about the underworld itself. Instead, her mission is to detect dark matter, a substance that has hitherto only been hypothesised due to its apparent effects. Such is the sensitivity of the scientific equipment, Lisanti’s lab has been built two kilometres beneath the earth’s surface and can be contaminated by no more than a teaspoon of dust every year. She is, by her own admission, “hunting for a ghost” – sat in brightly lit rooms, but metaphorically floundering in the dark.
Garrett argues that most of those who indulge in underground exploration do so in the hope of finding something special. That might be true of Lisanti and Tec Pool, but his motivation is somewhat different: to unearth and draw attention to things that end up forgotten and buried, out of sight and too often out of mind – whether that’s wrecked cars flytipped in a cave or evidence of uranium extraction in an abandoned mine. Sometimes, those things can be people, such as those who fall through the cracks in society and wind up living in the storm drains beneath Las Vegas. The rich rise to the top, Garrett observes, and the opposite is true too: “poverty sinks”.
Heavy rainfall can turn these drains into underwater tombs – a horrific manmade equivalent of the flooded caves that Tec Pool and her archaeologist colleagues investigate. Underland tracks Tec Pool’s party as they venture further and further into the depths of the earth with the aid of state-of-the-art scanning tools, squeezing through tiny gaps and at one point stringing up hammocks for a rest. Finally, they reach the end of the cave – only to make the extraordinary discovery that the walls are decorated with handprints made using the charcoal from torches.
While Lisanti harbours ambitions of being a pioneer, for Tec Pool this moment is a humbling reminder that she has been following in the footsteps of her Mayan ancestors all along. Those handprints encapsulate Underland’s underlying message: that we are all connected across time, compelled by shared desires to find out more and to make our own mark on the world.
Dir: Robert Petit (12A, 79 mins)
words BEN WOOLHEAD