Stressed out: Twenty One Pilots and teenage lives today

Teenager Tazmin Aldis looks at the important issues behind Twenty One Pilots’ songs which have been watched a billion of times on Youtube.  Twenty One Pilots are the latest young American male duo to burst onto the music scene. Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun are perhaps unlikely suspects on today’s music charts which are typically flooded with the […]

rs21 Readers and Writers recommend 2016, part 2

In the second part of our readers and writers’ reviews of art which has moved them in 2016 we present theatre, film, music and two very different novels. Railing against corporate greed and individualism: Train to Busan Mike Thompson Horror films are at their best when they look at how people deal with being in […]

TV Review: The Aliens

The Aliens is E4’s new drama with direct parallels to the situation for migrants and refugees today says Tazmin Aldis. Aliens creator Fintan Ryan uses the premise of a future where Aliens arrived on Earth nearly 40 years ago and, despite their uncanny resemblance to the human kind, they are ruthlessly discriminated against – banished […]

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

With accusations of racism at the Oscars, the play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom about black experience in the entertainment industry is having a timely revival. Tazmin Aldis reviews. Reportedly one of August Wilson’s finest works, the play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in 1927’s Chicago. Fundamentally the plot centres itself around a black singer, […]