  I review recent analytical and numerical advances in the study of
non-equilibrium quark-gluon plasma physics. I concentrate on studies of the
dynamics of plasmas which are locally anisotropic in momentum space. In
contrast to locally isotropic plasmas such anisotropic plasmas have a spectrum
of soft unstable modes which are characterized by exponential growth of
transverse (chromo)-magnetic fields at short times. Parametrically the
instabilities provide the fastest method for generation of soft background
fields and dominate the short-time dynamics of the system.
