We are all familiar with the overwhelming sense of disappointment when you disembark at Belsize Park for the first time and realise there is no lush green space as the name suggests; that White City is not complete with its eponymous promise is a source of frequent consternation; let's not even discuss Elephant and Castle. Hainault Forest, however, verdant location of this weekend's Offset Festival, lives up to its name, and the fact that......

Sampled the delights of Oxjam yet? If not, why not? The festival's reached the halfway point, and Oxfam's million-pound fundraising goal won't get any nearer with you sitting around on your hands watching Emmerdale when you could be bopping in your Birkenstocks and raising money while you're at it! Highlights for this week: - HatJam - Unsigned acts including The Colours and aDore will be joined by DJs at Shoreditch's Bar Music Hall, for......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

After numerous appearances on the Continent, as well as performances at such legendary festivals as MUTEK and Detroit's Electronic Music Festival, we were beginning to think perhaps we smelled bad. Why else wouldn't Gui Boratto come to visit our lovely island? Thankfully we no longer need to be concerned about our possibly poor hygiene, for the kind souls at Allez-Allez have once again teamed with the Kompakt label, this time to bring the Brazilian......

Shoreditch Park is a relatively unimpressive green space tucked away behind the Regent’s Canal in Hoxton. There’s not a great deal there, bar a mini-BMX track and some grass, but this weekend, it won’t know what’s hit it, when the Shoreditch Festival commandeers it. The theme of the festival is transforming local spaces and the park promises to be a riot of family tropicana, congo and mangoes on Saturday with a grand parade leaving......

What's the skinny? Wolf & Cub are Joel Byrne, Adam Edwards, Thomas Mayhew and Joel Carey, four guys from Adelaide who make a big stompy rock noise. What have they done? Their website says: Wolf & Cub have shared stages with TV On The Radio, The Killers, The Music, Wolfmother, Queens of the Stone Age, Hot Hot Heat, Futureheads, and Death From Above 1979… played blistering sets nationwide on this years Big Day Out…......

All the weeks highlights from our international sister sites. Sometimes you need to clean yourself up, get serious, and move in with daddie for a few months before you head to Latin America for a new gig. The District bid's Jenna Bush adios. D.C.-based television shows have an elderly audience and DCist has some suggestions to fix that. They're also throwing Butterstick the panda bear a birthday bash. Yeah, we may have a few issues......

This day in London’s History 1830: George IV dies. On the face of it, small potatoes as far as London is concerned. This is the George so memorably portrayed as the nitwit regent by Hugh Laurie in Blackadder III. And in real life, George IV was much despised for his extravagance and stubbornness. But he did leave a lasting legacy in the capital. On his death, a memorial statue was erected on a crossroads......

We gave you the schedule for Friday and Saturday yesterday and you shouldn't be either bored or out of pocket by the end of it (just keep an eye on the time and keep going). If you're still thirsting for things to see and do, we've got a few more suggestions and a useful timetable to make sure you fit it all in... Saturday 27 May Though we mentioned lots of things to do......

La Linea, the London Latin Music Festival will be held at the Barbican Centre this year and the line-up which starts today is looking good. For six years the festival has been all about defining and re-defining contemporary Latin music, and considering Latin music can encompass flamenco, classical Spanish guitar, Afro-Cuban hip-hop, Argentinian electronica, samba and bossa nova among other forms that's no small task. Previous festivals have brought Gotan Project, Seu Jorge, Pink......

To paraphrase a pentameter from Poe: "the Proms, the Proms, the Proms, the Proms, the Proms!" They are upon us! It is the greatest classical music festival... in the wo-o-o-orld! It has to be true, because we read it on the side of a bus! Seriously, though, the Proms really are amazing. It is, in fact, too big to write a preview of. Just so we're clear: there are seventy-four regular Proms concerts in......