Seasick Steve - who makes his own guitars, counted Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain as friends and had Grinderman, Ruby Turner and K.T. Tunstall on his raw 2008 album Started Out With Nothing And I Still Got Most of It Left.

Sauntering sleepily straight out of London, via Coventry, and with roots in Nigeria and Dominica, comes 24-year-old MC Ghostpoet (real name Obara Ejimiwe).

Despite the glowing book-jacket recommendations from writers much loftier than me, I started out disliking Elizabeth Day's début novel, Scissors Paper Stone.

Liam Finn's 2008 album I'll Be Lightning not only proved the prodigal son was an iconic solo muso in his own right, it was also jolly likeable.

Here's the thing. The first Hangover was funny because everybody was trying to remember what happened.

It's something of an irony that this portrait of our most accessible poet should be at times quite hard to watch.

For all the 21st century special effects which brings them to life on screen, most of the comic book superheroes still selling Happy Meals and movie tickets today started off many decades ago.

The trial from the protracted case resulting from the "anti-terror" raids of October 2007 was to have started this week. But yet another legal hurdle has meant the arrested 18's day in court is still to come.

One of the most interesting things about reading a historical novel is working out what period detailing preoccupies the novelist and is used as a means of anchoring it to its era.

One of Miles Davis' best-selling albums has been reissued 25 years later. Graham Reid looks at its contentious back-story.

Yes, it's a record by that actor chap Hugh Laurie. And no, it's not House music.

The latest collection of late-night vibes is curated by Dane Anders Trentemoller - and what a (mostly, anyway) spooky come-down after a night out it would be.

This is the Sonic Youth guitarist's third solo album and there's not a screeching riff in earshot.

Best known in the wider world as part of Leonard Cohen's touring band - the backing vocalists, multi-instrumentalists and cartwheelers - Charley and Hattie from Kent have at the studio desk here uber-producer, Peter Asher.

As a musician, DJ, and owner of record label Hyperdub, Kode 9 (real name Steve Goodman) from Glasgow was one of the pioneers of the dubstep scene in the early 2000s.

The title character of the last novel by Canadian comic novelist Mordecai Richler is the ultimate unreliable narrator.

To release two albums at the same time is nothing for prolific Japanese experimental noise rock trio Boris, whose sound moves from thrashy punk through to psychedelia and ambient drones.

Commonplace books are literary scrapbooks - "salads of many herbs" as one compiler put it. They are eclectic, idiosyncratic repositories of bits and pieces that have taken a person's fancy.

Edna O'Brien turned 80 last year. The energy and immediacy of these 11 stories makes that hard to believe.

The Cure played their first show in the Sydney Opera House on Tuesday night as the centre-piece of Vivid Live

Silo Theatre's ambitious season opening is an all-too-rare opportunity to see the work of an African-American playwright on the Auckland stage.

Monica Ali's new novel is unconvincing but entertaining. Where would Princess Diana be now if she faked her death?

The opening of Jane Harris' second novel gives little indication of how dark it will become.

It's always been her defence. She was born this way. Born as an egg flanked by male strippers. A raw piece of meat.