Entertainment

After releasing their debut album, a monstrous slab of dark experimental rock Yours Sincerely Dr. Hardcore in 2012 and at the peak of their sci-fi powers Wrexham’s Gallops soon announced they were no more and broke up in 2013. In 2016, almost three years to the day, they announced their return. “We missed it too much, basically having some time away from the band gave us a fresh perspective and made us realise that Gallops still has life in it....

The Beslan School Massacre in Russia began on September 1st 2004 and lasted for three days before special forces brought it to an end. Of the 1,100 hostages held by the Chechen rebels, around 385 were killed, 186 of them children. Us/Them is a physical theatre response by playwright Carly Wijs and features two protagonists, a boy and girl, who interweave around the audience a web of their very different imaginary accounts of what it was and may have been...

There's a healthy mix of material for our first playlist of the year. We're still reeling from Run The Jewels' surprise Christmas Day release of their third LP. With the Presidential Inauguration and the civil unrest in Washington that accompanied it fresh in our minds, Killer Mike and El P's stylised sermonising feels like vital listening. Elsewhere we have the first hints of new material in ages from Arcade Fire and Japandroids and atmospheric loveliness from Bonobo and SOHN. If...

This production directed by Helena Kaut-Howson and translated by Jeremy Brooks and Kitty Hunter-Blair really is in the anguished lows as it opens the Arcola’s commemorative Russian Revolution season. It’s Maxim Gorky’s best known play, heralds the birth of theatrical social realism, made his name in 1902 but was lambasted by the critics then for its rather despairing and unredemptive avant-garde portrait of those who occupy the “lower depths” of society. Akira Kurosawa made a Japanese version of the play...

Overwhelming problems face Tamsin in Katherine Soper’s debut Bruntwood Prize winning 2015 play. Her younger brother Dean has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and cannot leave the house. Even so his benefits are being disputed and are at risk. The only place Tamsin, lacking in qualifications, can find much needed work, is in a post industrial “fulfilment centre” aka a packing warehouse on a zero hours contract. The stresses are many: Tamsin must meet her “targets” in order to be asked back...

Director Phil Wilmott’s Three Sisters in a version by Tracey Letts (August: Osage County) is full of micro aggression. In a small space such as the Union Theatre’s new venue, nothing can be bigged up too much: subsequently this production is full of nuances sometimes so macro you’d miss them if you blinked. For this reason there is a distinct lack of the sense of the epic and more a feel of claustrophobia. It’s as if the three sisters (yearning...

While we're waiting for Allentown's Pissed Jeans to release their disgusting new record Why Love Now (out on the 24th Feb), the band have decided to treat us to a new track. It's crushing, it's scathing, and it's about degradation and wanking. Business as usual, then. Check it out below. ‘Ignorecam’ twists the idea of fetish cam shows—”where the woman just ignores you and watches TV or eats macaroni and cheese or talks on the phone”—into a showcase for Matt...

Bristol’s finest post-punk polemics IDLES will head off on the massive 25 date ‘Brutalism UK Tour’ in March/April 2017 in support of their debut album. Politically charged, refreshingly confrontational and infectiously volatile, IDLES bring the unsettling reality of the world we live in into their frantic assault on the senses. The October release of single “Well Done” has seen the band rise to no.1 on Spotify’s Viral Charts, and paired with intensive radio support from Huw Stephens, Annie Mac, Steve Lamacq and...

Alan Partridge meeting a super-fan has been voted the best ever British comedy scene by over 100 professional comedians and actors including David Baddiel, Jenny Eclair, Reece Shearsmith and Alexei Sayle. In addition to containing the best comedy scene, I’m Alan Partridge was named the second most popular sitcom among comedians - with Blackadder in third, The Office in fourth and Father Ted in fifth. Alan Partridge also overcame competition from Basil Fawlty, David Brent, Del Boy and The Young...