In the final episode of the series Inside Culture turns out to be very queer. In Dundee, Shahidha visits the new V&A Dundee exhibition on nightclub design with Jon Pleased Wimmin R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe talks to Shahidha from Athens, Georgia about his latest photography book and asks how expressing himself through visual art differs from music. Shahidha debates all this and more with journalist Zing Tsjeng, writer @Amrou Al-Kadhi and Skunk Anansie lead singer Skin https://www.bbc.co.uk/.../inside-culture-series-3-episode-5

 UEFA refuses Munich Stadium rainbow illumination for Euro 2020  UEFA said the decision has been made because of "political" motives behind the request, UEFA has proposed new dates for the stadium to be lit up. I t recommended instead that Munich authorities illuminate the stadium on Christopher Street Day on 28 June, or during Pride Week in Munich between 3 and 9 July. Reiter rejected the suggestion as a “ridiculous counterproposal”. The mayor of Munich, Dieter Reiter, was reported on Tuesday afternoon to be planning instead to illuminate a wind turbine opposite the stadium in rainbow colours. Football stadiums elsewhere in  Germany , including in Cologne and Frankfurt, pledged to “fill the void” and light up instead. Munich’s city council said it had wanted to illuminate the stadium in order to “send a signal of support for inclusivity and diversity”. But Uefa said in a statement it had no choice than to reject the action on the grounds that it “contravened its regulati...

  The best books you get to read are those where the characters are true to life. They are readily identifiable. The characteristics displayed from the book's players are the same ones you can say, "Hey, I know so-and-so who is just like that !" I think that is one of the magical talents really talented authors use when webbing their stories together. They allow us to relate to the people in their stories. Warren has achieved this in the first book of "The Tales of the Circle" series, True . Alec, our main character, is a columnist for a major newspaper and has a successful career. He's got a huge heart, a forgiving nature, and a tendency to try and fix the broken people around him. I think we all know someone just like this. The good hearted man who makes all the wrong love choices. After Alec catches his current boyfriend - who's a real piece of work - cheating on him, he decides to make his life, and dream of writing a book about music his main priori...

  St. Vincent - Daddy’s Home 4/5 Jerky cut up sophisticated electro-perv-pop ahoy! St. Vincent has produced the goods again. With every release she just gets that little bit sexier and ‘Daddy’s Home’ heats the libido up further. Title track ‘Daddy’s Home’ has a gloriously sleazy, speakeasy feel to it, everything she’s worked up to this point has now been energized with a self-knowing sexuality that’s been cleverly draped over the music. It suits her. In other depots, we have slow ballads of building beauty such as ‘Live In The Dream’ which owe a debt of gratitude to 70’s Pink Floyd albeit with much sexier pants on. Also the soulful aspects of her craft has been embraced, the 70’s inspired ‘The Melting of the Sun’ feels custom built for an AM radio on a blissful sticky day, listless limbs and cheap white wine but with a burning intelligence that belies the easy going nature of the song.  ‘The Laughing Man’ extends this soulful lounge, it's as summery as a lazy swish of the foot...

  Paul Weller - Fat Pop (Volume One)   4/5 Weller has always been prolific, not one for resting on his laurels, ‘Fat Pop’ is his sixteenth solo album! If you factor in his work with The Jam and the Style Council then it is his 27th album so you’d think that maybe he’s just putting out any old crap (we’re all looking at you Van Morrison) but alas this new album is a real blast of inventiveness. The title gives an insight to the content, it's all big pop songs here and probably Weller’s catchiest body of work since the mid-nineties peak of ‘Wild Wood’ and ‘Stanley Road’. Opening track ‘Cosmic Fringes’ sounds like Bowie recording with the Human League. There’s a drive to this album that we’ve not heard in a while. In fact I’d go as far as to say that Paul sounds like he’s having fun. Pleasingly, the music sounds massive, chunky basslines propel the songs along while Weller’s guitar is sounding fresh particularly on tracks like ‘Failed’ or the acoustic ‘Cobwebs/Connections’. Withi...

    It's been almost a week since I finished reading this book. I wanted time for it to settle in my head before I wrote the review, mainly because I cannot seem to find a good genre to slide it into - and that can make reviewing it a difficult task. Why? Certain genres have elements that we come to expect, and we tend to judge a book on how well they have adhered to those creative styles inherent in particular tropes. This just broke the mould. Xander and Alex are two young curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who stumble upon an object of great curiosity. Through investigation and research, they discover the hidden meaning behind the museum piece, its connection to both of them, and learn about their own family history in the process. From this aspect alone I could classify this as a Cozy Mystery. The way this book has been written is deliciously elegant, masterfully detailed, and had me immersed in the world of museum antiquities - a world, I assure you, ...

  Jan the Man - Long Player 4/5 Jan the Man is Jan Burnett, an accomplished musician of 35 years plus and this is his first solo album of instrumentals, thus we delve in. As instrumental albums go, it's a very electronic and  VERY eclectic affair,and like the best instrumental collections it feels like it's waiting for a movie to illuminate, and these movies are futuristic, nervy pictures with plenty of colourful characters lurking in each frame. Tracks like ‘It’s Not About You’ feel alarming and critical of your ears, whilst ‘Smear’ is the very sound of confused isolation and ‘Dirty Little Fuckers’ is essentially the Devil laughing into your ears for four minutes whilst Jan’s sonic-smithery manipulates your equilibrium, in equal doses amazing and terrifying. Long Player is absolutely full of sounds that play with your head, sometimes it's almost friendly (‘Raw’) often it's a headfuck (The frankly amazingly titled ‘Kinky Kunt’) but it is never bland nor coasting, there’...

  The definitive introduction to the work of 'the bravest of us . . . the universal poet' (Alice Walker) For the poet and activist June Jordan, neither poetry nor activism could easily be disentangled from the other. Her storied career came to chronicle a living, breathing history of the struggles that defined the USA in the latter half of the twentieth century; and her poetry, accordingly, put its dazzling stylistic range to use in exploring issues of gender, race, immigration, representation and much else besides. Here, above all, are sinuous, lashing and passionate lines, virtuosic in their musicality and always bearing the stamp of Jordan's irrepressible personality. Here are poems of suffusing light and profound anger: poems moved as much by political animus as by a deep love for the observation of human life in all its foibles, eccentricities, strengths and weaknesses. With a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown, The Essential June Jordan allows new readers...

                                                                   Click on link below                            https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bOJBGzELa_AQh5_9Hk4jR6pk4s_xdpgi/view