Indie-electro stars Hadouken are set to visit Exeter Phoenix this spring as part of a new UK tour.

Following an extensive run of summer festival performances, as well as a handful of September shows last year, Hadouken are embarking on the new tour to showcase their third studio album due for release within the next few months.

Hadouken have earned a reputation as a stonking live act after an intense run of major festival appearances last summer, including Radio 1′s Big Weekend, Carling Reading and Leeds, Underage and Relentless NASS.

Hadouken are a indie-electro band formed in 2006 at the University of Leeds by vocalist James Smith and guitarist Daniel ‘Pilau’ Rice.

Named after a special attack in the Street Fighter video game series, Hadouken found fame when their debut album, Music for an Accelerated Culture, hit number 12 in the UK Album Chart back in 2008.

In mid-2009, the band recorded their second studio album, For The Masses, in Holland with drum and bass producers Noisia.

Last year, the guys signed to independent label Ministry of Sound with whom they will release their forthcoming third album.

Hadouken are ready to destroy the UK once more and, with exciting new material to showcase, their latest run of shows look set to exceed all expectations.

Hadouken hit Exeter Phoenix on April 11, 2012. Tickets go on sale at 9am on February 3, 2012, from the Phoenix website.

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Electro-pop pioneers The Human League are set to visit Colston Hall Bristol this autumn to support the release of their ninth studio album, Credo.

Formed in the late Seventies by Sheffield-based computer programmers Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware, The Human League grew into one of the most popular and successful Eighties electro-pop bands.

Fronted by Philip Oakey – and featuring dancers Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall – the band went on to record some of the most influential songs of the decade, including Love Action, Mirror Man and, of course, Don’t You Want Me.

Don’t You Want Me is the band’s best-known and most commercially successful recording to date, and was the Christmas number one in 1981, where it sold over 1,400,000 copies, making it the 25th most successful single in UK Singles Chart history. It later topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the US in 1982 where it stayed for three weeks.

The Human League have continued to record and perform with moderate commercial success for the last 20 years.

Credo is the group’s first studio album since Secrets in 2001. Gay Times hailed it as an ‘incredible pop offering’ while Mixmag praised the album for being ‘crisp, dynamic and upbeat, with contemporary electronic pop sheen’.

The Human League hit Colston Hall Bristol on November 28, 2012. Tickets go on sale at 9am on February 3, 2012, from the Colston Hall website.

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Tales From The Wilderness, an exhibition featuring work by Rachel Jennings, Ewan Walton, and Maggie Smith, is at Harbour House in Kingsbridge this spring.

Exploring areas of wilderness in the landscape, the show sees three Devon artists respond to their environment in paint, print, paper and stitch.

Drawing inspiration from the diverse landscapes of the county, from moorland to woodland, river to coast, this exhibition also weaves in the richness of the wildlife, myths, stories and folksongs of the countryside around us.

Rachel Jennings has produced a varied body of work incorporating textiles, papermaking and mixed media techniques, all inspired by the myths, songs and wildlife associated with the Dartmoor landscape, pictured below.

Before settling in Devon, Rachel exhibited widely and ran workshops in Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire. She is a member of the Somerset Guild of Craftsmen.

Ewan Walton, main picture, has been painting in oils since 2005 and, having spent a year painting full time at Seale Hayne, has exhibited in Ashburton, Teignmouth and Kingsbridge.

A keen walker and runner, he takes every opportunity to explore the landscapes he loves.

Maggie Smith is constantly drawn to the sea, and her current works explore the coastline in winter, pictured below.

In contrast, Maggie also shows a body of work produced following a visit to Botswana and inspired by her son’s experience of spending a year working on a game reserve.

The Okavango Delta provided a rich source of creative inspiration, the word’s largest wetland, ‘a wildlife paradise, silent and slow’.

Maggie works in paint, print and mixed media, and exhibits with Press Gang Printmakers and at regular Open Studios Events.

Tales From The Wilderness is at Harbour House in Kingsbridge from February 21 to 26, 2012. Admission is free. There will be an opportunity to meet all of the artists on February 21, 2012 – see the Harbour House website for more details.

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Comedian and QI star Alan Davies is bringing his new show, Life Is Pain, to Colston Hall Bristol this autumn.

Following a hugely successful tour of Australia in 2011, Alan Davies, the much-loved star of iconic television shows such as Jonathan Creek and QI, makes a long-awaited return to live standup in the UK this year.

He told Graham Norton on his BBC One show: “I haven’t done a standup tour for 12 years. We went out to Australia and we did QI Live, and while I was there I did a standup tour. It was great, I really loved it.

“I used to tire of touring and all the hotels but actually now I’ve got small children and I’m always exhausted I like being on my own. Plus they provide half the material for this show!”

Alan Davies began his career in stand-up comedy in 1988 and was runner-up in the City Limits New Act of the Year contest 1989.

Named as Time Out Best Young Comic in 1991, the award-winning comedian and actor has gone on to appear in numerous stage and TV shows, taking the eponymous role of one of his best-loved characters in Jonathan Creek, written by David Renwick, in 1996. The show ran for 14 years and has been seen by audiences worldwide.

Now, more than a decade since his last stand-up tour, Alan will be taking his unique brand of observational storytelling back on the road in his new show Life Is Pain, calling at venues across the UK this autumn following a season at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Alan Davies hits Colston Hall Bristol on November 25, 2012. Tickets cost £25 from the Colston Hall website.

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Legendary singer Lorelei McBroom is set to appear with the Australian Pink Floyd when they bring their new show, Exposed In The Light, to Plymouth Pavilions this spring.

Lorelei’s credentials are staggering. She toured with Pink Floyd on the Momentary Lapse of Reason and Delicate Sound of Thunder tours; appeared in the videos for The Dogs of War, On The Turning Away and the Pink Floyd Live In Venice TV broadcast; and  also performed The Great Gig In The Sky with Pink Floyd – a song she will now perform with the Australian Pink Floyd.

Following the sold-out dates last year, and taking its title from the lyrics of the Floyd classic Shine On You Crazy Diamond, the 2012 Exposed In The Light tour will be a true Pink Floyd ‘immersion’.

New for this year is a state-of-the-art surround sound system – controlled by Floyd’s own front of house engineer Colin Norfield.

This incredible audio output will be bolstered by new lasers, new lights and even more jaw-dropping video effects. The 2012 tour is going to be a truly multimedia sensory experience.

Emerging back in 1988, the original and credible Floyd tribute act has been getting bigger and better ever since.

The band were described by Floyd drummer Nick Mason as ‘very good – probably better than we are’, and were even engaged by David Gilmour to perform at his 50th birthday party.

The Sunday Times called them ‘the best tribute band in the world’ while The Mirror described them as ‘the kings of the genre’.

The Australian Pink Floyd are known for pushing the boundaries and taking the concert experience to a new level but the 2012 show puts the bar even higher. Set the controls for the heart of the sun…

Australian Pink Floyd brings Exposed In The Light to Plymouth Pavilions on March 27, 2012. Tickets cost £29.50  from the Pavilions website.

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Omid Djalili is one of Britain’s finest stand-ups. He is a rare comedian capable of provoking huge laughter and profound thought at the same time. And yet he has not toured for three-and-a-half years.

But all that is now about to change. Omid is hitting the road with a new show, Tour Of Duty, stopping off at Hall For Cornwall Truro, Queens Theatre Barnstaple, and Princess Theatre Torquay this spring.

Omid, who has won Time Out, South Bank Show and Emma Awards for his comedy as well as being a Perrier Nominee, promises to wow audiences up and down the land.

He is a dazzling live act, fizzing with energy, fantastic character comedy, killer lines, razor-sharp wit and expertly-crafted cultural observations.

Omid is equally entertaining in person. Responsible for two highly acclaimed DVDs, No Agenda and Live in London and two sell-out tours, he is a comedian who is just as hilarious off stage as on it.

So what gave this brilliant British-Iranian comic the urge to hit the road once again?

He said: “Last Christmas, I did a corporate gig, which can be notoriously difficult and I was so nervous I couldn’t go on.

“I hadn’t done a gig in about a year. The event organisers were getting nervous that I wouldn’t go on so they cited all kinds of legality at me if I failed to perform.

“As I took to the stage my mind was telling me, ‘You’re going to die. You’re just a fat, needy man pleading for attention. You have no integrity and the act has no artistic merit. That’s why I’m here, for the money, not because I care or they care. They don’t even like me’.

“Then the opening joke got more laughs than I’d expected. I started thinking ‘They’re laughing coz you’re famous, not because you’re funny’. It was at that moment I thought ‘Wow. They’re laughing and I’m not even funny. I’m going on tour’.”

Omid has not been idle in the interim – he has made two highly successful seasons of his own comedy show for BBC One, as well as starring as Fagin in the West End production of Oliver!, a US sitcom for NBC The Paul Reiser Show, Howard Marks’ film, Mr Nice, and David Baddiel’s movie, The Infidel.

So why is the new show titled Call Of Duty? He said: “I put out a not-so-serious message on Twitter about what to call the show and I got about 200 responses, many of them very clever.

“It hadn’t jumped out at me straight away but I saw the very first response back was Tour Of Duty and I liked it. Reminded me of peace keeping forces and fact someone once said I was a bridge between East and West and I thought ‘Yes, I’m a bridge, and it’s about time I started charging a toll. £1 for cars, £2 for lorries and £17 for Smart cars. See how smart they feel now!’”

As always, Omid, a deep thinker about comedy, has worked hard on the structure of the show. According to the comedian, “It’s based on an Eleanor Roosevelt quote about the different levels of thinking. She said, ‘Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds only talk about other people’.

“In stand-up, you do all those things – you talk about other people, you make sense of events and you elevate lofty ideas. Once you have set up the concept that great minds think about ideas, then you can say things like, ‘Doesn’t Ed Milliband look like Wallace from Wallace and Grommit?’”

The comedian has equally wise things to say about the Middle East. In the wake of the seismic changes that have gripped the region during the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, Omid says, “There’s an awful lot to talk about.”

Making an audience think is one thing, but the Iranian comedian feels the natural  showman in him feels duty bound to send his audiences home with a warm glow. “I think it’s always important to ask yourself ‘what should the audience feel at the end?’. That’s the showbiz in me talking.

“Look. Everyone has problems: but for 90 minutes it’s good to have a laugh and forget it for a while – or put it into a context. That context being I’m struggling a little less than you are and collectively you should all come together and be happy for me. I’d like the audience to come and give thanks at the altar of the fat one.”

Omid Djalili brings Tour Of Duty to Hall For Cornwall Truro on January 30, 2012; Queens Theatre Barnstaple on January 31, 2012; and Princess Theatre Torquay on February 3, 2012.

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Leslie Ash and Brooke Kinsella will join Tara Flynn in the hilarious new comedy All The Single Ladies at Exeter Corn Exchange this spring.

Best known as good looking next door neighbour Debs in the ever popular Men Behaving Badly, Leslie Ash brings her comic timing to the stage for her first national tour in 17 years with a show designed to explore the love lives of three modern women.

After being awarded an MBE in 2011, Brooke Kinsella returns to her first love, the stage. The actress, author and anti-knife campaigner first found fame as Kelly Taylor  in EastEnders between 2001 and 2004.

Completing the star trio is Tara Flynn, an up-and-coming comedienne who has starred with Stewart Lee and Omid Djalili on tour.

The course of true love never did run smooth. All The Single Ladies features three women, three stories, three lives and one problem. Lies, deceit, red faces, regrets, hangovers and revenge.

Liz is a veteran in the art of romance – if love is a battleground this woman calls the shots. Orla has waited so long for Mr Right she hasn’t noticed her Prince has turned into a frog. Alison is just too young to have been left on her own.

One has been married seven times. One would settle for being introduced to his friends; the other has just lost the love of her life.

It seems these woman have little in common but when was a woman all that she seems?

The play has been written by another new name to the comedy circuit – Abigail Burdess, wife of Peep Show’s Robert Webb. Expect a hilarious, feel good evening with a marathon punch!

All The Single Ladies is at Exeter Corn Exchange on April 4, 2012. Tickets are available from the Corn Exchange website.

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Indie rockers Blood Red Shoes are set to visit Trinity Centre Bristol this spring to support their new album In Time To Voices.

Blood Red Shoes deal with themes of frustration, anger, alienation, boredom, doubt, psychosis, confusion, escape and ultimately the hope of freedom or change, in their songs.

Featuring Laura-Mary Carter on vocals/guitar and Steven Ansell on drums/vocals, the Brighton band draws inspiration from the likes of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Duke Spirit, The Slits and Huggy Bear.

Ansell, who performed with Cat On Form, and Carter, a former member of Lady Muck, came together in late 2004 upon the demise of their previous bands. With one song in tow, the angsty duo landed a gig and Blood Red Shoes was born!

The band’s name is apparently taken from a film musical, in which Ginger Rogers had turned a pair of white dancing shoes red with blood due to the amount of dancing she had done practising for the role.

In 2010, the guys’ song It’s Getting Boring By The Sea featured in the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The tune was included because the director of the film, Edgar Wright, is a fan of the band.

Blood Red Shoes will release their third studio album, In Time To Voices, on March 26. You can pre-order the album on iTunes now. The first single from the record, titled Cold, is out a week earlier.

Blood Red Shoes hit Trinity Centre Bristol on May 1, 2012. Tickets are available from the See Tickets website.

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Comedian Jack Dee is to perform two special ‘work in progress’ shows at Princess Pavilion Falmouth this spring in preparation for a 2012 tour.

After a six-year absence from standup, Jack Dee is back, agonizing over the slightest annoyance and misdemeanor. Why is he touring again? He wants to spend less time with his family!

Dee’s first public act was an open-mike gig in 1988. He toiled away on the circuit with little success, while holding down menial kitchen jobs.

Disillusioned with his lack of progress, he was ready to quit when he took to the stage with a grumpy, ‘couldn’t care less attiude’ which, to his surprised, won over the audience. In that moment he found his voice – and a career.

Things really took off in 1991, when he won the British Comedy Award for best stage newcomer as well as a Perrier Award nomination. The following year he landed his own series on Channel 4, setting him on the road to fame.

Since then he’s appeared on shows like QI, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, 8 out of 10 Cats and Have I Got News For You; hosted Radio 4’s legendary I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue; co-written and starred in four series of BBC Two’s hit sitcom Lead Balloon; and penned his memoirs, Thanks For Nothing, which he modestly dedicated to himself – ‘without whom none of this would have been possible.’

Jack Dee is at Princess Pavilion Falmouth on April 25 and 26, 2012. Tickets cost £15 from the Princess Pavilion website.

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Flight of the Conchords star Rhys Darby is bringing his first ever UK tour, titled This Way To Spaceship, to Plymouth Pavilions this summer.

Some say the world could end in 2012 but Rhys Darby has a plan. He’s fairly sure the superpowers each have a spaceship ready to launch on the eve of Armageddon. The trick is to get onboard!

Rhys takes us on an autobiographical journey from meek geek to king of cool. This show is a handy guide to living your life like you’re the champion no one’s heard of. In the end, you might just find you’ve been invited to recolonise another planet.

This new standup show accompanies Rhys’ first novel, This Way To Spaceship, described as ‘a handy autobiographical end of world companion’.

New Zealand’s biggest comedian, Rhys uses a myriad of characters, physical theatre, sound effects and side-splitting standup in his shows.

He first gained attention outside of NZ as Murray in HBO’s Flight of the Conchords. He’s since appeared in the films Yes Man and The Boat That Rocked.

This Way To Spaceship promises to combine everything Rhys is known for – surreal musings, hilarious stories from his life and a healthy dollop of nonsense and fantasy.

Rhys Darby hits Plymouth Pavilions on July 7, 2012. Tickets cost £20 and go on sale at 10am on January 27, 2012, from the Pavilions website.

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