Repetition in art today is almost common fold but step back 40 years and you'd find former cab driver (an occupation ironically shared with Philip Glass) and social worker Steve Reich challenging listeners with his tape works "It's Gonna Rain" and "Come Out", with an early approach to what popular music today takes for granted -- looping voices, fragmentation and reverberation. Writing music for piano, organ, voices, percussion and even hand clapping, Reich has continued to explore ideas focused on rhythmic change and timbre, and at the grand age of 70, Reich is celebrated in this ambitious season.

When The Orb sampled Reich's "Electric Counterpoint" in 1987's "Little Fluffy Clouds" they acknowledged an influence that can heard in Remixing Reich (07/10), a night that introduces Coldcut mixing up "Music For 18 Musicians" and DJ Spooky's collaboration with Kronos Quartet. The following night offers new commissions from Gavin Bryars, The Pop Group's legendary Mark Stewart, Glenn Branca and Philip Jeck's turntable experiments.

In 1993 Reich collaborated with his wife, video artist Beryl Korot, on The Cave (04/10 to 06/10), a work exploring the roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, echoed musically by the ensemble. An epic three-act work, it's more resonant than ever in our current climate and presents a new shape for theatrical performance, employing five gigantic video screens dominating 18 live musicians on stage. The Desert Music (01/10), with visuals from London's own image engineers D-Fuse, continues this fascination between image and sound.

Bored in the afternoon? Then check out the cinema programme of Reich related goodies. Penniless? Then drop in to experience Brian Eno's 77 Million, a generative sound and image installation, and check out the freestage performances by Bang On A Can All-Stars and Konono No 1 (07/10 and 08/10). Repetition doesn't have to be boring!

NB: Phases - The Music Of Steve Reich runs till 08/10.

Raindance returns for its 14th year, offering a broad selection of new, independent films. As always the festival has a strong celluloid / music connection, screening films that profile -- amongst others -- Neil Young (Neil Young Heart Of Gold), Leonard Cohen (Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man), Crass (There Is No Authority But Yourself) and thrash metal; a jury that includes grizzled Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-er Lou Reed and an opening night screening of punk-rock "documentary" Brothers Of The Head. And to continue with the punk theme, an interview and Q&A with co-jury member Marky Ramone will follow a special screening of Too Tough To Die: A Tribute To Johnny Ramone, made to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Ramones. A strong selection of new Japanese cinema, a tribute to Stanley Kubrick and over a dozen programmes of short films will share the screens with a series of alternative documentaries tackling everything from fetishism and BDSM (Liberty In Restraint) to the freedom and conflicts of squatting in London (5 ½ Roofs).

NB: Raindance 2006 runs at Cineworld Shaftesbury Avenue and Cineworld Haymarket from 27/09 till 08/10.

To get your head around the sprawling mass of works cradled within the Tate's nurturing arms is a feat -- anyone who can provide any kind of comprehensible guide deserves a medal (or, in this case, a Whitbread Book of the Year award). So, a round of applause please for Hilary Spurling -- celebrated journo and biographer of writers and artists like Ivy Compton Burnett and Matisse -- who, with the dextrous flare of a trapeze artist, somersaults between the work of Matisse and the artists whose work he was most influenced by (such as JMW Turner) and who he most influenced, in an attempt to navigate the Tate's seemingly unconquerable empire. It's one take, certainly, and whether or not it's entirely successful, it's an admirable stab, and one worth checking out.

Founding editor of cinema journal Film-Philosophy, filmmaker and writer Daniel Frampton has formed a radical new philosophy for approaching the ways of understanding, analysing and writing about cinema. Filmosophy questions the current approach that uses the language of filmmaking to discuss film viewing -- language that ignores the emotional responses to film by using the technical jargon of the filmmaking process. Why is so much writing on film presented in the form of a post-mortem -- slicing up a film into component parts -- rather than as a complete experience of feeling? To mark the release of Filmosophy, Frampton will be joined in a panel discussion by film theorist and former head of BFI Publishing, Professor Geoffrey Nowell-Smith; Guardian, Time Out and Sight & Sound journalist and film critic Jonathan Romney; and writer, cultural commentator and philosopher Jonathan Ree. The event promises to provoke and inspire debate on our understanding of film, and on the ties between cinema and philosophy.

In the year 1969 -- sex, drugs and Woodstock aside -- whilst flower power hit the mainstream Robert Downey Senior bit back with his bold filmic satire Putney Swope which boldly ridiculed the underlying fabric of commercialism. As a black employee suddenly becomes boss of a large advertising firm, the supremacy of the white advertising exec is sent up and replaced by an alternative black militant hierarchy under the aptly renamed "Truth and Soul Inc". The Barbican's screening of this antagonistic classic coincides with the release of the film's soundtrack by Fortune Teller Records, a musical wing of Fortune Teller Press and an anti establishment creative enterprise in its own right. Their front man Graham Bendel, whose most recent success was the 2005 innovative film Billy Childish Is Dead, will introduce the evening. Through the press, Bendel has breathed fresh creativity and innovation into the sedentary publishing process, alongside his work as a journalist and filmmaker. Later, tune in for the musically edgy after party at Charterhouse Bar (EC1), featuring DJ Andrew Weatherhall with PJ from The Dirty Water Club of Tufnell Park fame.

NB: no skipping the screening for the after party, as entrance will only be allowed with your free Putney Swope badge given at the cinema.

Destined to go into legend as a feat of filmmaking severity only matched by Fitzcarraldo or Apolcalypse Now, director Lu Chuan's Mountain Patrol recreates the story of the "Wild Yak Brigade", a short-lived volunteer group of Tibetan mountain patrolmen, formed in the mid-'90s to protect the on-the-road-to-extinction chiru Tibetan antelopes. Decimated at a shocking rate -- whole herds being machine-gunned by poachers after their wool (used for the uber-pashmina known as a shahtoosh) -- the rangers decided to unofficially take matters in their own hands to help retain the delicate ecological balance in the enormous and remote Tibetan Plateau area of Kekexili. The breathtaking scenery (literally breathtaking -- at almost 5,000 metres altitude the oxygen content in the air in Kekexili would only be 1/3 that of London) is balanced by the severity of life in the area, and harshness of the climate. Opening with what at first seems to be a depressingly losing battle, a small item in a Beijing paper leads a journalist to the area, and the subsequent expose of the battle against the poaching leads to Kekexili being declared a nature reserve. Proof that there really are true Eco-Warriors out there making a difference.

NB: Kekexili is released in London on 29/09.

In the mid-'90s, Susan Sontag championed the young German director Fred Kelemen as the great white hope for art-house cinema. Now, Tate Modern is screening a season of Kelemen's films. Sontag based her belief in Kelemen's greatness on his powerful debut, Fate (1994), a journey into a nocturnal urban world of utter desolation, tracking an accordionist who gets drunk and murders his girlfriend's lover. Since exploding onto the cinema-scene in such spectacular fashion, Kelemen has made three other features: Frost (1997), where this time the journey tracks a mother and child across a harsh German landscape in winter; Nightfall (1999), in which a man and his girlfriend undergo a dark night of the soul as they split up and then reunite; and, Fallen (2005), where a lonely archivist fails to help a woman about to commit suicide and then becomes obsessed with her. Essential to Kelemen's work is the question of personal responsibility. His characters' struggles are existential and the spirit of Kafka lurks in the shadows, while his camera doggedly pursues his protagonists in a series of amazingly choreographed long takes. Kelemen will be doing Q&A sessions after Fallen on 29/09 (7pm) at Tate Modern, on 30/10 (8:45pm) at Cine Lumiere and on 01/10 (3pm) before a screening of Fate at Tate Modern.

NB: Fred Kelemen's films screen at Tate Modern from 29/09 till 28/10 (Fallen also screens at Cine Lumiere from 29/09 till 05/10).

For his first solo exhibition in the UK, Idris Khan draws inspiration from photography, literature and music. Comprised of two parts, the exhibition consists of a series of photographs at Victoria Miro Gallery and the film, A Memory...After Bach's Cello Suites, which is on continuous loop at inIVA. Khan's photographs are composed of layers upon layers of photographic imagery. For the work Struggling To Hear...After Ludwig van Beethoven Sonatas (2005) Khan has digitally superimposed sheets of music from Beethoven's piano sonatas on top of one another, creating one composite (albeit barely decipherable) image. Similarly, A Memory...After Bach's Cello Suites is a conglomeration of film footage of a cellist playing excerpts of all six pieces of Bach's suites. Perhaps appropriately, the exhibition is accompanied by an evening of writing, poetry, music and film. This Saturday the artist is joined by author Geoff Dyer, poet Paul Farley and cellist Gabriella Swallow for an event titled 'now' becomes 'then'... The haunting poetic impact of Khan's digital and filmic images will undoubtedly inspire a fruitful meeting of these various disciplines.

NB: the event is free but places must be booked by emailing bryony@victoria-miro.com. Idris Khan's work is on view at Victoria Miro till 30/09 and at inIVA till 22/10.

Tom And Viv is a welcome antidote to our Prozac-dulled climate; questioning the psychology of mental-health treatments with left-of-field bite. Although it superficially explores the relationship (the tumultuous journey from marriage to separation) between the American poet TS Eliot and his colourful first wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood, the impact of Michael Hastings' play relies more on Viv's tragedy -- that of a misdiagnosed, drugged-up-to-the-eye-balls society girl who is unceremoniously hung out to dry. Neither Viv's aristo family, nor her on-the-cusp-of-fame husband (an underused Will Keen as poet Tom) really take the trouble to understand her "madness"; choosing instead to rely on lethal concoctions of drugs and out-of-the way convalescence homes to sort her out and shut her away. Lindsay Posner's production pits empathy with a family unable to understand their beloved girl's maniacal behaviour against sympathy for Viv's abuse at the hands of doctors corroding her mind. Despite a lack of edge in the exploration of the individual characters, the situation is explored with searing pertinence and subtle daring.

NB: runs till 04/11.

Encore is the latest show from the Ballet Boyz. It's the world premiere of four exciting collaborations with choreographers at the cutting edge of contemporary dance, and will be performed by the Boyz and Oxana Panchenko. Liv Lorent's Propellor is a duet danced to music by Ezio Bosso and Vivaldi. Charles Linehan's Jianke draws on folk traditions and features live music by Bratko Bibic. Will Tuckett's On Classicism was originally created in 1987 for William Trevitt and Darcey Bussell; Dame Ninette de Valois said, "I haven't enjoyed anything so much for a long time." In 2006 it will be danced by Trevitt and Panchenko. Rafael Bonachela's Mandox Bandox is a new piece for all three dancers. The former Rambert dancer has worked with MTV, Kylie Minogue, Primal Scream and Hugo Boss. Expect something explosive!

NB: runs from 26/09 till 01/10 (for more dance check out Dance Umbrella 2006).

In July 2005 Disney announced their plans for the closure of the last remaining DisneyToon Studios in Sydney, thus effectively marking the mainstream death of hand-drawn animation. To the overly sentimental among us, this was less a symptom of "growing older together" than it was a direct affront to the creative matrix of our childhood. To this minority sect of digital xenophobes and analogue nostalgics, no amount of megapixels can replace precious Kodachrome crystals, and no "z-buffered cel-shading" can displace the warm idiosyncracies of human-generated imagery. Regardless, digital progress has found a set path and willing audience, and with CG actors ("synthespians") coming ever-closer to Oscar nominations and nearly every ad campaign employing at least one effects house, digitised artifice seems to reek of nothing but rewards. To explore current trends and future projections for digital animation, Supernatural Studios, the London-based creative arts and consultancy firm, has put together this talk at Tate Modern under the title of "A New Renaissance". On Monday, London auteurs Rob Van den Bragt (The Mill), Pete Reilly and Juan-Pablo Brockhaus (both from Glassworks) will come together to address the influence of traditional art practices on their work and the implications of a digital future.

Whether you love or loathe Martin Amis, you can't deny that a new book by him is an "important event" in the world of literature. This latest offering from the enfant terrible already has people in a spin. For Amis it's a return to familiar ground: the Bermuda Triangle of masculinity, sexuality and violence, but with new and highly sensitive subject matter. One story fictionalises the last hours of 9/11 suicide bomber Mohamed Atta, another invents the sexual perversions of a blatantly Saddam-style Middle Eastern tyrant. Daily Telegraph literary editor Sam Leith chairs this discussion / introduction to House Of Meetings and the prickly material it contains. Whatever you think of Amis he hasn't lost his talent for controversy.

NB: on 30/09 (7:45pm) catch William Boyd as he discusses his work with Alex Clark, the The Observer's Deputy Literary Editor.

A chance to catch extremely influential comics writer Alan Moore, whose groundbreaking Watchmen was credited along with Art Spiegelman's Maus and Frank Miller's The Dark Night Returns as bringing maturity and darker, sophisticated storytelling to the '80s comics industry. After distancing himself from recent Hollywood adaptations of his intentionally unfilmable comics V For Vendetta, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell, Moore has created Lost Girls, with his partner Melinda Gebbie, famed for her writing and artistic work on Wimmen's Comix and Tits & Clits. Moore and Gebbie will be in conversation with comedian Stuart Lee about the controversial work which focuses on the sexual awakenings of three famous heroines of children literature: Alice from Alice In Wonderland, Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz and Wendy from Peter Pan. Set in Austria during the build-up to WW1, Moore's work blends historical realism, fictional fantasy, and may be a landmark not just in comics, but with its deliberately explicit bent it also challenges our concepts of the artistic merits of the traditionally vilified medium of pornography.

NB: this event is part of Comica (runs from ??/10 till ??/10)

A local kebab shop that you walk by everyday always brings a smile to your face with its faded orange star in the window stating, "The chicken burger is back". Where did it go, we wonder? Shop local or these shops -- and their signs will be a thing of the past. Before billboards, guerrilla marketing and building wraps, we were informed of the produce we could procure from local shops by hand painted signs. Reminiscent of late 19th century advertisements, Bob and Roberta Smith's Shop Local consists of five large painted adverts for local Hoxton Street stores, installed, or painted directly onto, walls around the Hoxton Street area and an accompanying exhibition at Peer of new text pieces and video works. Painted onto pieces of found wood and furniture, the works have a wonderful aesthetic that reminds us of seaside ice-cream signs and fun-fair signs. The witty stories they tell and the proclamations they make ensure, however, that the exhibition steers clear of trite romanticism. After you see this show, we highly recommend a walk up Hoxton Street, past Percy Ingle's and Gregg's, to Linda Anderson's family bakery for a doughnut. Keepin' it local.

NB: runs till 15/10.

Don't be put off by the dreary minimalist title of Cris Brodahl's solo show at the Approach. Brodahl's palette may be monochromatic, but his slick paintings are thrillingly seductive, as dangerously mysterious and elegantly erotic as film noir. The scenes he constructs seem predominantly to take place in a cloyingly bourgeois domestic interior, his subject is overwhelmingly the idealised female nude; the atmosphere is heavy with the titillating combination of repression and sexuality. This is an entirely male fantasy scene, complete with knowing lesbian cliches. Brodahl unapologetically fetishises the female form, using the familiar yet still disquietingly uncanny techniques of Surrealism: doubling, fragmentation, collage. The addition of mirrors and wood panels to some of the works add a sculptural element, giving them a further level of authority and fetishised objecthood. Brodahl has, then, revisited the dark side of Surrealism and, for an art world that often claims to have run out of taboos, succeeds in leaving the viewer deeply unsettled.

NB: runs till 22/10.

It has been a while since we have seen something absolutely exhilarating in the art world. Challenging, thought-provoking and utterly beautiful. An almost religious experience presented by a romantic who indulges not in a retreat from the world but rather the awakening of an exploratory rationality too often dulled by the demands of contemporary spectacle and proliferation. Yes, this does involve the removal of a wall from the ICA, amongst other objects and interventions. Daring by any standard, this act of provocation is pulled off with an intelligence that forthrightly engages all the cries of "is this art?" it inevitably will stir. But lest those of you well versed in recent art histories dismiss this as a gimmick aimed at philistines, know that it is and it isn't. Because what is being dealt with here is the nature of the art institution and a public one at that -- institutional self-reflection done by a very very good artist. For seasoned art professionals this could inspire a renewal of faith. Best to see it in the sun but must be seen full stop.

NB: runs till 29/10.

Warp's Chris Clark made his name on the dance music scene with two full-length albums -- Empty The Bones Of You and Clarence Park -- which married, rather uniquely, electronic groans and scintillations with the deep electro funk more closely associated with Jackson or Radioactive Man. Body Riddle is yet another triumph of juddering PC music, even from the opening moments, with the coruscating feedback washes and toy synths of opener "Herr Bar" underpinned by the kind of hip-shaking, primally bassy beats which keep lesser producers up at night by remaining just out of reach. Standout tracks elsewhere include "Roulette Thrift Run" -- experimental and semi-tonality nailed to a pounding electro break -- the spacey synth funk of "Ted", and the epic gloom of "Vengeance Drools", where a haunting melody is perforated by bolts of hard percussion. El-P-alike melancholy suffuses the off-beat "Matthew Unburdened" and the climactic final track "The Automated Crush" switches from furious drumming to a prolonged and soothing ambient wash of noise and echo, calming the listener down after a rocky ride. A thoroughly accomplished piece of work.

To buy Body Riddle online click here.

About to become a septuagenarian (an anniversary which will be duly celebrated by an extensive Barbican retrospective that kicks off this week), Steve Reich is now a pillar of the international classical music establishment. It wasn't always thus. Until the late '70s, his repetitious compositional signature -- music as a gradual process as his own '60s manifesto labels it -- was shunned by the academy and Reich was forced to perform in downtown New York lofts and art gallery spaces. However, that streetwise art sensibility helped endear him to rock's leftfield aristocracy (Eno and Bowie notably) whose endorsement, coupled with the music's urgent motorik pulse and beguilingly patterned overlays, helped clinch Reich (and other like-minded "minimalists") a young audience for whom classical composition would normally be an arid no-go area.

Reich's interest in "phases" began with tape experiments in the mid-'60s. Nonesuch's timely, five CD omnibus includes one such seminal piece -- 1966's "Come Out" -- whose musicality is the result of two tape recorders simultaneously unspooling an identical piece of dialogue, progressively slipping "out of phase" with one another. From that, Reich extrapolated an entire musical idiom (incorporating elements of West African polyrhythm and gamelan percussion along the way) in which lattices of melody and rhythm exist in flux, building and deconstructing themselves as they go. In "Music For Mallet Instruments, Voices And Organ" this process achieves sublime results, though the mighty, self-explanatory "Music For 18 Musicians" remains Reich's meisterwerk -- a perfect, synergistic collision of contrapuntal lines, melodic clusters and overt harmonic beauty. From there Reich expanded into more emotional territory ("The Desert Music"), vocal sampling ("Different Trains"), text based works ("Tehillim") and philosophical meditations ("You Are"), interspersed with delicate studies like "Electric Counterpoint" that return him to first principles. Taking in all five CDs in one sitting is a marathon exercise, but a rewarding one and, if nothing else, this extremely affordable box set is testament to the rampant fertility of the simple idea.

NB: Phases - The Music Of Steve Reich runs at the Barbican from 28/09 till 08/10.

To buy Steve Reich Phases - A Nonesuch Retrospective online click here.

Electronic musician and sound artist Stephen Vitiello transforms incidental atmospheric noises into mesmerising soundscapes that alter our perception of the surrounding environment. He has composed music for independent films, experimental video projects and art installations, and collaborated with a host of artists: Nam June Paik, Tony Oursler, Julie Mehretu and Dara Birnbaum. His SoundSurface (2004) commission with Scanner was Tate Modern's first audio art commission. In 1999 he was awarded a studio for six months on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center's Tower One, where he recorded the cracking noises of the building swaying under the stress of the winds following Hurricane Floyd. Night Chatter his first UK solo show is currently on view at Museum 52 (till 01/10).

To read the interview click here.

KultureFlash is a free, weekly newsletter covering contemporary culture in and around London. Each week we track down some of the more unusual and interesting events taking place in the capital and deliver them straight to your inbox. Featuring art, gigs, films, talks, clubs and more -- we are committed to bringing you an eclectic mix of the most stimulating events in London.

If you want to tell us about an upcoming event please do so by sending an email to: events@kultureflash.net. We receive many emails and thus please realise that sadly we cannot reply to all of them. Every single email receives attention and we will contact you if we need anything further. Please note that KultureFlash is not a listings ezine and we do not receive any payment from venues, artists, managers or promoters.

Please send all press releases, invites, books and CDs to:

KultureFlash Ltd.
52 Cranmer Court
Whitehead's Grove
London SW3 3HW