With a rich, 27-year history to tap into, NetherRealm Studios has plenty to play around with for Mortal Kombat 11, the latest title in one of gaming’s most time-honoured fighting franchises. And they most certainly do not hold back, making clear efforts to best 2015’s Mortal Kombat X, which following release was considered one of…

“Lynwood” is the latest track from British electro-pop artist Son of Cabe, and it’s a cracker. Packed with ambient synths and drums straight from 90s hip-hop, it blends melancholy musings on guilt and regret with beats that’ll stick in your head long after listening. Of the track, Son of Cabe says: “Lynwood’s about trying to say…

Sydney singer-songwriter, musician and producer Holiday Sidewinder is officially back in Australia following a long London stint, opening the action at the tenth anniversary edition of Bad Friday Festival, which took place in Marrickville at the start of the Easter Long Weekend. We caught up with the indie-pop artist on the day to chat about…

Practice. Journalism, Essays and Criticism collects and distills the writings of journalist Guy Rundle. An intricate, clever yet funny, and mostly convincing take on all the big politicians, and some sordid Americans along the way, Practice is compiled from his work for Crikey, and various magazines and newspapers, over the years. Opinions on topics ranging…

In the country for a string of sold out shows, Jungle played their second Sydney show of the tour and brought the Enmore Theatre crowd to life with their own brand of downbeat dance music. Playing their second Sydney show of the tour (after a headlining slot at last week’s Bad Friday Festival), the seven-piece lords…

It doesn’t seem like enough to just say this next, third, episode of Game of Thrones Season 8 will be ambitious. Plenty of things in this day and age are ambitious: jazz-rap concept albums from chiselled Compton emcees; some absolutely fucked mutant food hybrid, likely involving Nutella and doughnuts; millennial media start-ups that are so…

Ahead of a big interstate tour, Fremantle-based bluesman Dan Howls has offered up a taster of his forthcoming album in the form of the swaggering new single, “King Si”.  Over the last few years Howls has been making steady inroads in the already bustling WA music scene, culminating in the release of his debut album…

Thunder Road opens with one of the more profound opening scenes in recent memory. Police officer Jim is giving a eulogy at his mother’s funeral somewhere in the American heartland. He’s completely unprepared and grief-stricken and – in one 12-minute shot – flips from humourous nostalgia to all out hysterics, finishing the awkward performance with…

Sometime in the last five years, the Big Dogs of the phone industry decided that it should be normal, good and acceptable to pay upwards of $1000 for a phone. We’ve somehow gone back to the ridiculous phone prices of the late 90s when mobiles were an emerging technology. Once a king of the mobile…

All Misfortune Ramirez Hernandez wants is to be happy. With an abusive father and an alcoholic mother, her life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows – but perhaps a bit of glitter will solve her problems. Little Misfortune is the newest game from Swedish studio Killmonday Games, developer of one of our favourite creepy point-and-click adventures,…

Last month, I sat down with Mirek Stiles, the head of Audio Products at Abbey Road, and Karim Fanous, Innovation Manager at Abbey Road Red, to learn more about the way the iconic British studio is embracing and helping develop the next generation of technologies, from spatial audio – which aims or the audio experience better…

Nintendo Switch has had a brilliant run of ports to date, with most of them thoughtfully refined to fit onto the docked/portable hybrid system; Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is no exception. Though Capcom’s action-RPG has been re-released several times in the past, it’s position in the world of action-RPGs remains firmly as an underdog –…

First things first: World War Z wasn’t that bad of a movie. Released in a time when the undead genre had reached peak saturation, resurrecting the license with a worthy yet flawed video game adaptation a full six years later seems a strange move to say the least. That this IP resurrection is hitting shelves…

People are going to die in Game of Thrones next week. There’s absolutely no question about it. Hyped as the longest battle sequence ever committed to film/tv, the third episode – probably titled “The Long Night” – will undoubtedly be a milestone in television history as it deals with the direct result of the fearsome…

It’s all been leading up to this, 11 years and more than 21 movies and it’s time for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to provide a conclusion to the Avengers saga and some of its Phase One heroes. The ones who ushered in a renaissance and resurgence of comic book superhero movies. Whodathunk that back in…

The Barunga Festival is one of Australia’s most important cultural events celebrating the best of First Nations art, sport, cultural activities, and contemporary and traditional music from remote locations. Held over 3 days, from Friday June 7 to Sunday June 9, 80 kilometers south-east of Katherine, it brings together 4000 people from the Northern Territory…

Already the newly released Huawei P30 Pro has begun racking up awards, a pile which will no doubt stack high come end of year, starting with “Best Photo Smartphone” from the Technical Image Press Association. The Chinese company’s highly anticipated new flagship builds upon a steady legacy of “rewriting the rules” – as so their…

Good Pash are a riotous indie-punk band based in Sydney. Formed in late 2016, they have been making a name for themselves on the Sydney scene since. Good Pash is Anna Free (guitar/vox), Madeleine Mallis (guitar/vox), Julia Goyen (bass) and Courtney Cunningham (drums), all members of well-regarded Sydney bands in their own rights.  They created the…

It was a full house tonight at the Entertainment Quarter as celebrities and guests lined up to walk the purple carpet for the Sydney premiere of Avengers: Endgame. Here are some photos from the night.

Fresh off the release of the first part of their two part record Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost, UK quartet Foals are on a world tour that tonight saw them play Toronto venue Rebel supported by Canada’s Preoccupations and Atlanta outfit Omni. First up, three piece Omni were singing songs with entertaining lyrics like…

**Updated 27/4/19** Due to an error with our form keeping folks from entering the competition, we’ll be running the Moto G7 competition for the next week! Entries now close on Friday, 3 May at 6pm AEST. Get your entries in now! How’s your mobile doing? Feels like you’ve been running with that cracked screen for…

As a travel journalist, sometimes you get into the habit of saying yes to things before you know what you’re getting yourself in for. In 2011, this was taken to the literal extreme when I took part in a Destination NSW campaign where I would be led on a surprise itinerary designed by Danny Clayton…

Huawei’s follow up to last November’s MateBook X Pro (which sold out during pre-order) is here: the MateBook 13. Unlike the MateBook X Pro, where Australians had to wait 6 months after international release before it arrived on Australian shores, today’s surprise release of the MateBook 13 comes just two months after the MateBook 13…

The tenth anniversary edition of Bad Friday went off with a bang in Marrickville on Friday, with a lineup tailor made for lovers of Sydney’s local music scene, with some added international flair mixed through. Photographer Danny Hanssen was there to capture all of the highlights from the day.

This morning we’re excited to bring you an exclusive first look at music video for “You’re Never Alone”, the latest single from Melbourne-based Miles Recommends. Given that the band was conceived whilst guitarist/vocalist Des Atkinson was living through a military coup in Bangkok in 2014, it perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that, “You’re Never…

Season 8’s premiere, “Winterfell”, was a surprisingly disappointing and robotic brush of box-ticking. Reunions and moments of levity took up the most of it, appealing to the masses with schlocky CGI dragon-riding and destined-for-meme Bran stare-downs. The only thing remotely impressive about the episode was John Bradley’s acting. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” was…

The Omega Ensemble are Sydney’s Chamber music all-stars. In July, the group will feature in a world premiere. Young composer, Nico Muhly has composed, American Masters, especially for this troupe. The work looks poised to draw heavily on his inspirations like Philip Glass and Steve Reich. The Ensemble held a fundraiser for this new work…

I’m really upset that I’ve slept on the Anno series for so long. Developed by The Settlers team Blue Byte, Anno 1800 is a charming, clever, complex civ builder that recalls classics of the genre like Caesar or Pharaoh. There’s an adherence to the concept of balance in Anno, a core tenet of its design that…

Marrickville was turned into a grungy experimental boombox as Bad Friday Festival rolled in. The annual event held each Easter Good Friday was celebrating its 10th anniversary with a killer line-up featuring The Avalanches, DMA’s, Jungle, DZ Deathrays and more. But, importantly in a time where the political climate of live music festivals is souring,…

Meg Keneally may have a literary giant for a father, but her career speaks for itself.  Beginning her working life as Junior Public Affairs Officer at the Australian Consulate-General in New York, she has worked as a sub-editor and freelance features writer in Dublin, as a journalist at the Daily Telegraph in Australia, as a talkback…