Ammar Kalia

One of my earliest and most formative clubbing experiences was spent in a church basement in Brixton around 2010. Age 16 and blinded by dry ice, it wasn’t the thrill of gaining entry to a club underage that made the night memorable but rather its overwhelming sound. The bass pumping through the speaker stacks was so intense it became a physical presence: the fact of frequencies passing through my body to make organs quiver and the fillings in my teeth rattle. I had never hear

For British Asian households, mangoes are a matter of territorial pride. My family, who have Indian heritage, are fierce advocates of the country’s Alphonso variety, while Pakistani friends would wax lyrical about their Chaunsa fruit and east Asians would swear by the oblong Thai Nam Dok Mai for dicing into sticky rice. This year, however, mango season hasn’t been a time for celebration. “It’s been a perfect storm,” Satya Morarji, co-founder of British delivery business Alpho

Among the endless videos of cute animals, influencer vlogs and celebrity content, something unusual has been going viral across social media recently: omelettes. A far cry from the usual solid egg slabs served in cafes, these bright yellow omelettes are a fluffy, oval-shaped treat filled with unctuous liquid curds, which are typically sliced open to unfurl across a mound of rice. Called omurice, the Japanese dish has been called “the world’s hardest omelette to make”. London-

On paper, writer Jonathan Caren’s Hit Machine has all the makings of a chart-topping smash. Featuring the London stage debuts of Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother) and Noah Galvin (Dear Evan Hansen), with direction from Daniel Bailey (Red Pitch) and music by Grammy-winning bluesman Ben Harper, the three-hander tackles the topics of masculinity, appropriation and buried family trauma through the prism of the creative process. Set in the louche, soft-furnished home of music mo

The Zarabanda Variations – The Zarabanda Variations Classical music aficionados will be familiar with the stately form of the sarabande – a Spanish dance adopted into a languorous and tender musical style favoured by baroque composers such as Bach and Handel. For American composer Keir GoGwilt, however, the sarabande contains something far more radical. On his collaborative project The Zarabanda Variations, he enlists a 10-piece ensemble that combines free jazz with baroque s

Silence can bring its own terror. In one of the world’s quietest rooms, the concrete-sealed anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratory in Minneapolis, attendees have reported episodes of panic caused by the environment of extreme sensory deprivation, a simmering dread at the sound of the blood thrumming through their ears, while anyone who has watched a slasher movie will be familiar with the eerie quiet that foreshadows a jumpscare – the silence that brings forth the scream. Hal

When I speak to the Colombian Canadian musician Lido Pimienta, it’s in the run-up to Colombia’s presidential election, and she is worried. One of the two remaining candidates, Abelardo de la Espriella, “is so rightwing he wants to open up our beautiful country to fracking and the influence of the US,” she says – and at one point in his campaign, De la Espriella said he wanted to “disembowel” the left. He later waved that away as a mere figure of speech, but Pimienta fears tha

At Sussex’s Love Supreme festival last weekend, Femi Koleoso and James Mollison of British jazz figureheads Ezra Collective joined me for a wide-ranging conversation on their artistry, the power of the dancefloor and hopes for the future of British music. With Koleoso noting that “dancefloors are dancefloors, whether it’s people with instruments or people with turntables, there’s a synergy between all those spaces”, the pair reminisced about some of their own favourite dancef

For a weekend in July each year, a vast warehouse complex in the port city of Rotterdam becomes home to the biggest names in jazz. Under the banner of the North Sea jazz festival, the labyrinthine, windowless space has played host to performances from the likes of Miles Davis, free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman, singer Etta James, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and even Prince. “We’ve had every major figure in jazz play for us over the past five decades,” senior programme manager S

British hospitality is in crisis. In the first quarter of 2026, three hospitality sites closed every day, while one in five remaining businesses fear collapse over the next year owing to rises in tax and employment costs. For those venues struggling to make ends meet in London in particular, there is the added worry of increasingly stringent licensing rules and influential lobby groups making once-thriving areas such as Soho a ghost town after 11pm. And yet one hospitality ni