In my past experience, acne three-step systems and I haven’t always gotten along. (I won’t name names, but let’s just say that benzoyl peroxide and I are still on rocky footing.) And I get it: Skin care, especially acne, can be intimidating and frustrating to figure out, so I understand the appeal of a structured routine that breaks it down into neat steps. But as with any product, cool branding or fancy packaging matters very little if the stuff doesn’t plain work — which is why I was excited to put Phyla to the test.

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BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing has been “fantastic” for disability representation, says Jonnie Peacock MBE – the show’s first amputee contestant. The sprinter and paralympian, who was partnered with professional dancer Oti Mabuse in 2017, helped pave the way for celebrities with disabilities, including presenters Rose Ayling-Ellis and JJ Chalmers. The new 2023 series sees cyclist and swimmer Jody Cundy – who, like Peacock, had his right leg amputated just below the knee – compete with Jowita PrzystaÅ‚, who lifted the glitterball trophy last year with Hamza Yassin. “For me, going on Strictly was important to attempt to break people’s perceptions and make them realise the reason that I would be a bad dancer would absolutely not be my leg,” says the 30-year-old. “My leg is actually one of my strong suits! “Rhythm,” he laughs, “That was more the problem.” Peacock – who became a household name after smashing the world record and claiming gold in the 100m T44 final at London 2012 Paralympic Games – said by appearing on the popular dancing show, he was “trying to get people to understand that we look at someone and we instantly judge what they’re able to do, and put them in a box”. The World Health Organisation estimates that 16% of the world’s population is disabled. “But when you look at your TV – especially 20 years ago – it [looked like] 0.1%, and the same with race and gender,” notes Peacock. “Now people are starting to realise that we want our world to be reality, and we want our [TV] world to encompass what it actually looks like. “It’s not just Strictly, pretty much all of the reality TV shows have disabled contestants in [now]. It’s so important. It’s a way to show that we are an individual, and that we have something to give.” Peacock was recently made an ASICS ambassador (“It’s really cool to be working with a brand who actually care about a lot of the things I care about – that it’s so much more than sport,” he says). And after a difficult summer on the track, he’s looking ahead to the indoor winter para season and the Paris Paralympics next summer. “I felt the worst I’ve felt in years, as soon as I got past 50 or 60 metres [during Paris Para Athletics World Championships in July],” says the sprinter, who later discovered he had hamstring tendinopathy. “I’d kind of lost the love of the event. Even though I love training, I didn’t enjoy competing too much. Even though I love doing it, it was bringing me a lot of misery.” As well as injury niggles, he’s been having issues with the alignment of his prosthetic blade. For para athletes, this technical side of the sport adds additional complication. “I used to love that, but there was a couple of years where I just felt off balance and didn’t realise why,” he says. “We had to play with so many different settings… that was the moment where I was constantly [thinking], ‘I wish I had a foot there where it should be, I wish I didn’t have to worry about setting this up and could just go for it’.” Peacock was five when he almost died from meningitis and his right leg had to be amputated – a time he has few memories of (“I have one flashback in the back of the car being rushed to hospital, with my Power Rangers duvet wrapped around me”). Growing up, he had several bone revision surgeries – “because once you’ve had an amputation, the bone will carry on growing,” explains Peacock. Now though, he’s showing no signs of slowing down, even though sprinter careers are notoriously short. For the next Paralympics, “It’s gold or nothing – Felix [Streng of Germany] has got it now [after Tokyo 2020], but my plan is to hopefully make him the shortest Paraylmpian champion ever.” After being so dominant in the 100m for so long (he’s a two-time Paralympic gold medalist, two-time world champion, and two-time European Championship gold medalist), what keeps him motivated to win? “It’s probably greed,” he laughs, “It’s just never enough, you just want more, it’s an addictive feeling. It’s like you’re just constantly chasing to try be a better athlete – a better version of you.” And with age has come a better understanding of how his own happiness and mental health is tied to his physical health. “I don’t exercise for a period of time, I can get a little bit almost, not depressed, but edging on that, just not happy, very lethargic,” he reveals. Youth comes with a blissful naivety about health, he says. Before, “I never really realised that every time I exercised, I felt better afterwards. Now [my body] is more sensitive. I don’t feel fantastic 24/7, creaks and aches start to appear, grogginess, fatigue…” These days, when he’s not feeling his best, he’ll start a day with a 15-minute indoor bike session at home, where he lives with para athlete girlfriend Sally Brown. “I hate it, I literally hate it!” he laughs. “I want to sit on the sofa and watch TV [instead]. I feel atrocious for 10 minutes afterwards, but then I bounce up so high for the rest of the day, I’m so happy. “The closest thing that affects my mental health is my [physical] health. If I eat like crap, if I sleep like crap, if I don’t exercise, I will be in a bad mental health space. If I exercise, even just a little bit, if I eat well, if I sleep well, I don’t feel like that. It’s understanding there’s a cause and effect relationship to a lot of things.” He swears by the feel-good endorphins of a freezing cold shower everyday. “My friend told me about Wim Hof [the Dutch endurance athlete known as The Iceman] six or seven years ago. I hate hot showers now, to the point where I was in a hotel once and had to get the engineer to come up because the shower didn’t go cold [enough].” Peacock says he tries to remember that “life is a game” and “a gift”. He continues: “We waste it because we take it too seriously. And we’ve been forced to take it too seriously by the outside world – we’ve been given pressures, we’ve been given expectation, and you end up allowing the stress to enclose you and take you away from that childhood mentality of just going out and having fun. “When you’re dead, you’re not going to be sitting there going, ‘Oh, I wish I’d kept my boss a bit happier’.” Jonnie Peacock is sponsored by ASICS. To find out more visit asics.com. 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Drax Project is making waves Down Under as one of the biggest bands to ever come out of New Zealand. The four-piece has received 24 Platinum certifications to date, surpassing over half a billion streams with their music, collaborating with Hailee Steinfeld and performing as the opening act on tour with big names such as Ed Sheeran, Christina Aguilera, Camila Cabello and Lorde – it’s been quite the journey for the group who first began with busking on the streets of Wellington back in 2014. After reaching number two on the Official New Zealand Music Charts with their 2019 self-titled album, the band has followed up this success with their sophomore album ‘Upside,’ released last Friday (November 24). The 10-track album promises an infectious blend of Pop and RnB, not forgetting their signature jazz-inspired roots too – with the band’s name being a portmanteau of 'drums' and 'sax'. Double bassist Sam Thomson and guitarist Ben O’Leary spoke exclusively to Indy100 about the recording process behind their new album, their special headline show at London’s Jazz Café next year on July 19, as well as their career highlights so far. Almost a decade ago, lead singer and saxophone player Shaan Singh and drummer Matt Beachen were studying jazz performance at Massey University when they began busking, before recruiting fellow classmate Thomson to form their band. O’Leary a music student at nearby Whitireia joined a year later after meeting through mutual friends to make the final line-up for Drax Project. “We started writing our own songs and playing high school balls, corporate events and everything in between, we kind of just worked our way up from there,” Sam told indy100. Given the band’s jazz origins, it was no surprise to hear this genre alongside “old school funk,” are sources of musical inspiration. “We have we all have quite different musical tastes personally, but our common ones are people like D'Angelo. Justin Timberlake is probably our biggest common inspiration as a band but we honestly love all types of music,” Ben said. “That’s always changing as well,” Sam added. “I think that we are all people constantly wanting to learn that's part of our collective motivation, listening to new music is part of learning.” Five years on from their first album release, Ben noted the process for ‘Upside’ has taken a “fair few years,” with their jubilant opening track ‘Atmosphere’ being written during their first LA trip back in 2018. “That song and a few other ones were made through that period 2018-2019 before COVID and we were just living in the States, writing heaps of music with a bunch of writers,” namely Rogét Chahayed (Drake, Travis Scott, SZA), Imad Royal (Doja Cat, Chainsmokers), Ferras (Katy Perry, Dua Lipa), and Marlon Gerbes (Six60). While Sam recalled they had “a short list of about 40 different ideas” for the record that they had to cut it down from. Then the Covid pandemic hit and like all of us, the quartet were stuck at home which is where the final touches of the album came together. “We were in New Zealand and bunkered down and couldn't go anywhere like the rest of the world and we would kind of just locked away in the studio where we finished all the songs over the last year or two, and pieced the album together that way which was cool,” Ben added. However, this resulted in an opportunity to become hands-on with the production side of things as the band produced five songs from the album themselves. “I'd say that in comparison to the first record, we've taken a lot of the processes on board ourselves and it's kind of cool because it means that it's not us trying all the time to express something that's in our heads to somebody else,” Sam said. Ben agreed with this and added how the experience forced them to step back and “become a lot more self-sufficient as a band.” It is always interesting to learn about an artist’s creative process and for Drax Project who are all “primarily instrumentalists,” the instrumentation tends to formulate first for the former music students. “We all come from an instrumental background and I think that that is the thing that comes most naturally to us,” Sam explained, giving Singh as an example who has been playing the saxophone since the age of eight. “But sometimes it might be you just have a flow of something and there's lyrics and melody that come out.” ‘Luxury,’ the third (and lead) track on the album is all about living in the moment and with this, Sam says the guitar riff came first while “the lyrics and melody came pretty quickly after that.” Making music is always a collaborative effort between the four as Ben described how “Everyone gets involved,” so that by the end they have created a “product everyone’s happy with.” “Sometimes it takes a long time for us to get a song done because we kind of have this rule that we just try everyone's ideas no matter how other people might feel about it. So sometimes it takes a while for everyone to land on the same page.” Often we see bands who break up after so many years, so perhaps this is one of the keys to the band’s longevity, with almost a decade under their belt. “We're all we're all really, really good friends,” Ben said, and noted that their time as music students has helped them to develop honest relationships with each other to voice their opinions on their sound. “We don't really beat around the bush and I think that's kind of a culture from like coming from music school where if you're rehearsing and you're playing a song and something's not sound sounding right, there's no egos in the room or anything.” Sam believes the success of this long-term collaborative relationship is also down to choosing a “good collection of personalities to work together.” “I think the way that we write, the fact that we work together on every part of the music creates this culture of everybody being on the same level.” Although it was 10.30 pm with the 13-hour time difference for Sam and Ben in New Zealand when chatting via Zoom, the pair were excited to share some of their favourite songs from ‘Upside.’ For Ben, “Luxury,” is a particular highlight to listen to and writing the song was also “super fun,” while “Oh My,” the last song to make the album is also a favourite of his as it’s “a glimpse into how we play live,” with the saxophone going off. “We wanted something that kind of was a bit of a nod to how we play live like our live sets are quite energetic and higher,” explaining the song’s sound. Sam’s pick is “Good Life,” which is the fifth song on the album and has a catchy bass line hook. “I believe we hadn't played ‘Good Life’ live before and we played it last night at the album release party and it was like so fun to play.” He added: “I really also love the song Supernova. I really like it lyrically and it's kind of a different sound for us.” Following the release of 'Upside,' Drax Project have upcoming shows around New Zealand in December and January and is flying across the world to the UK in July to perform a special headline show at the Jazz Café. It’s not the first time the group has performed here, having previously been the opening act on tour for Christina Aguilera and Camila Cabello as well as playing a headline show at the O2 Academy Islington back in 2019. We had such a good time when we were there, and we spent quite a bit of time like when we were like, going back and forth from the States to London for promo and other stuff. So yeah, we really cannot wait to get back it's really one of our favourite spots,” Ben said. Sam also added: “We have a bunch of friends as well who have either moved there recently or have been there for a while but we haven't seen especially some in music who are absolutely killing it over there. So I'm pretty excited to see them.” For New Zealand, Lorde is no doubt the biggest Kiwi musical export but the country has a thriving music scene and “amazing music culture,” according to Sam and Ben. “New Zealand's tiny and then the musician circle was even smaller,” Ben explained. “So it's like everyone knows everyone,” and commented on how artists are “for the most part really supportive as well, which is good and we're really lucky.” “This new wave after the world has opened up [post-Covid] and this new scene is maybe coming through in New Zealand there's a bunch of really cool artists,” Sam said. Some honourable mentions include Che Fu, Fat Freddy's Drop, Dave Dobbyn who the band grew up listening to as well as emerging talent such as Wet Denim, Aacacia, Balu Brigada, and Neil McLeod. With the release of their second album, the pair reflected on some of their career highlights so far which include travelling to different countries, opening for some of the biggest artists as mentioned earlier and performing for their album release party on a boat sailing around Sydney Harbour. “Coming to London is right at the top of the list and just below that, I would say probably opening for Ed Sheeran or New Zealand that was massive,” Ben recalled. “It was by far the most people we had ever seen in one spot when we did that and we just kind of had our first song we're really well on radio. “So 40,000 people were singing our song back to us which was a pretty crazy feeling.” “We played our album release show last night, and it was on a boat going around the Sydney Harbour so there was like the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House while we were playing, which was a really good feeling." He continued: “It kind of just hit me it was like, ‘Oh, this is our second album now cool, this is this is what we're celebrating. This is a nice feeling.’” After the pandemic, Sam thinks releasing the second album “getting past the first album stages is going to be nice,” and playing this new material live. “I think one of the most fun shows that we've played was at this venue called Broadcast in Glasgow,” which he describes as a basement that has 200 capacity and the crowd were “really up for it,” as which lived up to Scotland’s reputation as a country known for having some of the best crowds. “It was just a good time. I'm really, really excited to go back to Glasgow as well.” Now that the album has been released, Drax Project is looking forward to the year ahead of them and shared their aspirations for 2024. “We just want to play heaps of live shows and to tour lots we've really missed doing which we will be and then get working on the next album.” Drax Project’s sophomore album 'Upside' is available to listen to on streaming platforms now and tickets for their show at London's Jazz Cafe on July 19 are available to buy here. How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

This weekend, Tyson Fury and Francis Ngannou will meet in one of the biggest but most controversial fights of the year. Fury has not fought since December, when he retained his WBC heavyweight title, and there is still no date for his planned clash with unified champion Oleksandr Usyk – although it is finally signed. In the meantime, the Briton will face Ngannou, a former UFC champion who is making his boxing debut here. Ngannou left the UFC in January, relinquishing the promotion’s heavyweight title in the process, and he will make his debut with the Professional Fighters League in 2024. First, though, the Cameroonian crosses into boxing for the biggest payday of his career. Here’s all you need to know. We may earn commission from some of the links in this article, but we never allow this to influence our content. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent. When is the fight? The fight will take place on Saturday 28 October in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The main card is expected to start at 6pm BST (10am PT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET). Ring walks for the main event are then expected at around 10.45pm BST (2.45pm PT, 4.45pm CT, 5.45pm ET). How can I watch it? In the UK, the event will air live on TNT Sports Box Office at a cost of £21.95 for viewers in the UK. In Ireland, the event will cost €29.99 if purchased in advance or €34.99 on the day of the fights. Viewers do not need to have a TNT subscription in order to purchase the event. In the US, the event will stream live on ESPN+ pay-per-view, and outside of the afore-mentioned countries and Canada the card will be purchasable on Dazn PPV. If you’re travelling abroad and want to watch the event, you might need a VPN to unblock your streaming app. Our VPN round-up is here to help and includes deals on VPNs in the market. Viewers using a VPN need to make sure that they comply with any local regulations where they are and also with the terms of their service provider. Odds Fury – 1/14 Ngannou – 15/2 Draw – 28/1 Via Betway. • Get all the latest boxing betting sites’ offers What are the rules? This will be a heavyweight boxing match, with no MMA rules involved. The fight is scheduled for 10 three-minute rounds, with a victor being decided on points or via knockout/TKO. The result is expected to count towards Fury’s professional boxing record – which is 33-0-1, and Ngannou’s, which is 0-0 – but the Briton’s WBC title will not be on the line. What is the prize money? Fury has said, via the Mirror, that Ngannou will be earning $10m for the fight. Meanwhile, Derek Chisora has claimed, via The Sun, that Fury will be making $50m. That is not believed to factor in sponsorships. Full card (subject to change) Fabio Wardley vs David Adeleye (heavyweight) Joseph Parker vs Simon Kean (heavyweight) Martin Bakole vs Carlos Takam (heavyweight) Arslanbek Makhmudov vs Junior Anthony Wright (heavyweight) Moses Itauma vs Istvan Bernath (heavyweight) Jack McGann vs Alcibiade Duran (super-welterweight) Read More Tyson Fury reveals December date for Oleksandr Usyk heavyweight title fight Deontay Wilder calls out Anthony Joshua with update over superfight Francis Ngannou drops hint over Tyson Fury rematch and Anthony Joshua fight How much money are Fury and Ngannou earning for fight this weekend? How many rounds is Fury vs Ngannou and do knockouts count? Who is fighting on the Fury vs Ngannou undercard this weekend?