Culture

British indie rockers Primal Scream are best known for Screamadelica, the breakout dance-crossover album that embraced ravers in a sweaty bear hug in 1991 and left them in a state of blissed-out awe.

No Local: Why Small-Scale Alternatives Won’t Change the World Greg Sharzer Zero Books, 2012 Against a backdrop of global climate disasters, financial panics, and inequality, localism — the creation of small-scale local systems of production and distribution — seems to make sense. Start small and stay close to home. Forge community ties, grow your own food locally, and create alternatives that can eventually replace the current system of global capitalism with a sane, sustainable way of life.

West Yorkshire ska band Random Hand blend hardcore, reggae, punk and dub with plenty of politics. Bassist-vocalist Joe Tilston, who is also a critically-acclaimed solo folk artist, talked to Green Left’s Mat Ward about their new live album.

A selection of this week's politically-relevant entertainment news: Snoop Lion Defaces Defenceless Barack Obama With New Snoopify App; Unmanned Drones To Deliver Delicious Beverage Relief To Punters At Music Festival; As I Lay Dying Singer Arrested Under Suspicion Of Hiring Hitman To Kill Wife; Rapper Lauryn Hill Sentenced To 3 Months Jail For Unpaid Taxes; Singer Charli XCX Says Sexism Makes Collaborations Tough.

Lately it seems that we can’t get away from the hard, simple fact that art requires labour — both in the actual creation and in the conditions that make it possible. Where there’s labour there’s normally a lot of hard work and sacrifice. And where there’s hard work and sacrifice, there’s normally some bastard at the top looking to squeeze as much as they can out of those of us who actually work. Much as some of us would love to act like art exists in a separate realm from all of this, it doesn’t.

Hearing the news made me feel like I'd accidentally walked into a wind tunnel. For as long as I had written about this issue and as many times as I had said in recent years that this will happen in a matter of months if not weeks, it still hit me like a triple shot of espresso cut with a teaspoon of Adderall. Thanks to the courage of 34-year-old NBA veteran Jason Collins, we can no longer repeat endlessly that no active male athlete in North America has ever come out of the closet.

Despite the cold I ventured out to La Mama - a small, quirky and iconic theatre in Melbourne to see Tall Man, a new work by the infamous Melbourne theatre posse Real TV – the partnership of writer, Angela Betzien and director Leticia Caceres. Within seconds I was transported into the hot, seething heart of the Australian bush, deep in the Dee Ranges of Central Queensland.

Rapper Caper slams the Native Title Act as a "white bible" on his latest release. The Narungga emcee has worked as a Native Title field officer in South Australia for the past 10 years.

Kings Konekted have just released some of the choicest cuts in Australian hip-hop - and they were inspired by some of the whackest cuts in Australian politics.

A selection of this week's politically-relevant celebrity news... Rebel Diaz Arts Collective finds new home http://bit.ly/11ztAet Cuban video game recreates revolutionary history http://gu.com/p/3enpq/tw Pussy Riot member denied early release from prison: http://gu.com/p/3fedq/tf Hear the new Neon Neon concept album about Italian publisher and leftwing activist Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. http://gu.com/p/3fak2/tw Rapper Danny Brown Gets Oral Sex On Stage, Continues Rapping http://bit.ly/ZUUbEF

Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis & Volcanoes Bill McGuire Oxford University Press, 2012 303 pages, $35.95 (hb) It is easy to forget, says Professor Bill McGuire of University College London in Waking the Giant, that human civilisation has thrived only in the broadly benign climate of the past few thousand years following the end of the last post-glacial era.

The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China John Bellamy Foster & Robert W McChesney Monthly Review Press, 2012 There is growing evidence that the global economic crisis will not end any time too soon. Most mainstream economists have proven time and again to be incompetent when it comes to predicting the course of events in an economic crisis, never mind predicting the crisis itself.