Aluna Francis and George Reid offer a blend of warmth and innocence which in places recalls trip-hop pioneers Sneaker Pimps as well as more modern comparisons with the voguish pop alienation of Lana Del Rey. Reid's sparse backing tracks, with their blend of brittle, skittish beats, deep synth bass pulses and woozy keyboard chordings, nod to the synthetic variety of contemporary British modes from bashment to dubstep, while Francis employs a distinctive childlike Estuary English delivery that's equal parts Lily Allen and (the younger) Bonnie Langford.
Insects
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'A writhing mass of flesh-eating maggots': Doctors find larvae inside British woman’s ear after she complained of headaches and bizarre scratching sounds inside her head
Wednesday 17 July 2013
27-year-old Rochelle Harris had just returned from a holiday in Peru
Those Sex And The City girls have sent pubic lice to the land of extinction
Friday 05 July 2013
Thanks to hair removal, the world pubic lice population is dwindling fast and the insects are in danger of disappearing forever
Google Doodle celebrates Franz Kafka's 130th birthday with 'The Metamorphosis' tribute
Wednesday 03 July 2013
Doodle is based on Kafka’s 1915 novella ‘The Metamorphosis’
Urgent review launched into bee population decline
Friday 28 June 2013
The Government is launching an “urgent and comprehensive” review of why bees are declining and what is being done to help them.
TV review: Happy Families, ITV
Eye Spy, Channel 4
Friday 28 June 2013
I'm guessing that the title of Happy Families – ITV's panopticon documentary series – is meant to be ironic. Or at least that it understands there may be a little friction between the childlike innocence of those two words and what you see on screen. Because they don't look at all happy – or at least not in any uncomplicated way.
Brighton rot: Refuse collectors’ strike causes stink in Britain’s greenest city
Thursday 20 June 2013
A day trip to Brighton on the hottest day of the year should be a treat. But as the train pulls into the station, the words of the woman who answered the phone at the local Conservative Party office pop back into my head. “Bring a mask with you,” she said chirpily. “It's stinky.”
A third of Britain's bee colonies perish in wettest summer in a century
Thursday 13 June 2013
A third of Britain's honeybee colonies perished in the winter following the wettest summer in 100 years last year, according to a new survey.
Singapore on alert after dengue fever cases rise
Tuesday 11 June 2013
More than 9,000 people have contracted the mosquito-borne disease since January
The five-minute memoir: Rupert Christiansen recalls an intruder in Clapham
Saturday 08 June 2013
First, a sausage was left in his bedroom. Then, says Rupert Christiansen, things got even stranger.
Leading UK scientists sting back over criticism of research into bee deaths
Wednesday 05 June 2013
Leading UK scientists accused the Government of abusing science today after the EU strongly criticised the research it used to justify its position on the nerve agent pesticides widely linked to declining bee populations.
‘Every inch of his skin was stung’: Texan farmer killed by 40,000 Africanized killer bees after accidentally disturbing massive hive
Monday 03 June 2013
A woman who tried to help Larry Goodwin is in a serious condition in hospital after being stung numerous times herself
Short-haired bumblebees to be released on nature reserve in project which could help reverse UK decline
Sunday 02 June 2013
A bumblebee species that had become extinct in Britain will get a second chance on Monday when a new generation of queens is released in the south-east of England.
Born survivors: How cockroaches lost their sweet tooth in battle to evade sugary traps
Friday 24 May 2013
German cockroaches evolved to avoid glucose-based baits in household bug killers
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- 2 Channel 4 to 'provoke' viewers who associate Islam with terrorism with live call to prayer during Ramadan
- 3 US army doctor returns arm to Vietnamese soldier fifty years after he took it as a souvenir
- 4 Police seize possessions of rough sleepers in crackdown on homelessness
- 5 Demand for food banks has nothing to do with benefits squeeze, says Work minister Lord Freud
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