This is the cinema premiere of Crackers, David Austen's striking and austere 38-minute film -- a stylish, provocative and intriguing voyage into territory perhaps unfamiliar to the casual observer of his work to date. Tin and Head, two well-dressed though shifty men, tentatively enter a strange, apparently derelict room and proceed to sit, stand, talk, smoke (or not) and generally kill time until they are to leave -- why they are there, what they might have done and what will happen to them if or when they leave, are all questions raised and confronted -- or confounded -- by the constant interplay of the dialogue and the shifting power structures between the two protagonists. The film -- think in terms of Waiting For Godot cut with a generous dose of A Clockwork Orange -- is written and directed by Austen (who introduces the screening on the night).

NB: this event has been programmed in conjunction with David Austen's current solo exhibition at Anthony Reynolds Gallery (runs till 16/06).

Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, chronicles the life and times of The Clash front man as he transforms himself from a self confessed "mouthy little git" to legendary "punk rock warlord" who, towards the end of his life, could comfortably declare "I want to be a hippy". Julien Temple's film, by chopping and splicing together unseen interviews with Strummer, unearthed live footage and testimony from those who knew him best together with animated Strummer doodles, news clips and TV ads, probes beneath the myth to provide a poignant and perceptive picture of a complex, charismatic and essentially paradoxical man. As much a study of a man torn by the need to do the right thing and an examination of life under the spotlight it is an immensely funny and insightful film that is all the more pertinent today as we are swamped by this overwhelming need to be famous and the all encompassing desire to possess. Strummer was a one-off and testament to the fact that there was life before Blair and Thatcher and yes we were naive, and yes we were idealistic but times were far purer and a damn sight more honest. This is one of the best documentaries about a musician that we have ever seen.

NB: director Julien Temple will give a Q&A after the screening. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten is released in London on 18/05. Also of note released on the same day is David Fincher's Zodiac.

Dreck Records' Discombabulate parties have been a highlight of the past year, small but perfectly formed slices of cutting edge electronic music in one of London's best venues. They kicked off the night back in March of last year with a set from Berliner Soundhack and this month they welcome him back under his Soundstream guise for some heavily filtered, cut up disco ably assisted by local boy and Dreck boss Radovan Scasascia aka Secondo. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record (or indeed a cut up, re-edited one) we have to say Plastic People has one of the best sound-systems in the capital and the Discombabulate crew know how to tweak it to perfection. They only throw these parties every few months so they're always a special event. Book Friday off work and get ready for some serious partying.

Summer's coming and, like clockwork, here's a serial killer flick to kick off the season. Named for the Californian killer responsible for at least five and potentially dozens of murders over three counties in the '60s and '70s, Zodiac is director David Fincher's (Fight Club, Se7en) story of an enigmatic slayer whose random killings, cryptic messages and media profile has made him the template for fictional psychos and real-life copycat killers in the decades since. Despite being a little heavy on the Hollywood, and with barely a trace of Fincher's gimmicky witticism, Zodiac is beautifully shot, the plot is engaging, and Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo all put in sincere performances as the people most intimately involved in this particular media cyclone. For anyone who is chronically disappointed in the endings of movies, Zodiac manages to circumvent the usual psycho-thriller denouement in that it remains an unsolved crime -- hence, the overall effect is not so much a "whodunit" as "we think this guy did it and here's why". Bring a date, stock up on chocolate covered espresso beans (you're in for nearly a three hour ride), and definitely catch this one on the big screen.

NB: Zodiac is released in London on 18/05. Another film of note released on the same day is Joe Strummer.

Dance music subculture's penchant for cringe worthy genre names has stepped up a gear of late. Last year "new rave" was the term that caused most consternation, but no sooner had the brouhaha over that died down, then some bright spark coined the new phrase "blog house". Such is the way with these genre classifications: the name doesn't do the music justice, lumping together the low end house sound of British labels such as Dubsided and On The Brink with the Gallic cut up disco noise of Ed Banger Records and Institubes and giving MP3 blogs far too much props for writing silliness about them. Magic Circle this Saturday at Kings Cross venue Egg is as good a chance as ever to witness some of the blog house glitterati with headline sets from the in demand Sinden (currently being referred to as the British Diplo), DJ Orgasmic from TTC and Durrr regulars Skull Juice. Most excitingly, Crookers are flying in from Milan for only their second appearance on English soil. Recent productions from the Italian duo show them intent on out Switching Dave Taylor and much more will be written and heard of them very soon.

Cinema visualises sound whilst radio projects images into our imagination. Our world is saturated by image, light, colour, shape, smell and sonic data, and we navigate it by uniting our senses in one microcosmic moment. Bats use "echo location" to steer a course through the dark, bouncing sound off surfaces and walls, measuring the distances. But how have artists used sound to explore our relationship to space? This day long series of presentations offers up a shopping list of exploratory works by writer and sonic gold digger David Toop; Jem Finer of The Pogues fame, whose Longplayer will play for 1,000 years; and performance artist Hayley Newman, who addresses the mythology of fictional action, amongst other guests. Close your eyes now and listen beneath the surface... what can you hear?

A final chance to see the pioneering work of composer Gyorgy Ligeti in the second of two tribute concerts by the London Sinfonietta. This concert showcases the more colourful and provocative side of Ligeti, whose mischievous sense of humour weaves its way through the textures of Self-Portrait With Reich And Riley (And Chopin In The Background) and rears its head occasionally in the magnificent Chamber Concerto. The Reich piece in the middle of the programme is presumably there to create the greatest contrast possible to the Machiavellian tour de force embodied in the two vocal works Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures that follow in its wake. These works prefigure Ligeti's opera Le Grand Macabre and as such remain unencumbered by any of the pomp that often renders circumspect contemporary operatic projects. Arranged for three singers and small ensemble they remain without a doubt one of the pinnacles of 20th-century vocal music. If you have hated (as we have) the grandiose, affected mannerism that is so often part of most vocal writing, these two pieces will single-handedly transform the barren landscape into a circus of unapologetic wonder.

When Pink Martini play The Roundhouse this Sunday, make it your mission to swing by -- and take your dancing shoes with you, for the 12-piece orchestral band are literally the buzziest, funkiest troupe of polyglot eccentrics. And, by god if you're not dancing like there's no tomorrow by the end of the night, you need a frontal lobotomy. Vivacious chanteuse China Forbes has the most mellifluous voice known to mankind and the way she wraps her tongue round her songs is irresistibly seductive. The music itself is exotically diverse. A myriad of languages make for linguistic gymnastics -- you may know the hit "Sympathique" ("Je ne veux pas travailler..."), but elsewhere it's Spanish, Italian, German... Stylistically the tracks take their lead, by turns, from Brazilian sambas, the French cabaret scene and big band music hall orchestral pieces while mixing in a few exotic twangs from the orient, a little operatic pomp and circumstance, and a sprinkling of Hollywood glamour. If it all sounds wildly erratic, it is, but does it work? Hell yeah!

This acutely observed documentary film about the late, great American portrait painter Alice Neel follows a brave, though sometimes technically awkward, path through archive and family footage. Arranged and shot by grandson Andrew, it is peppered with many insightful musings on art as a means of creative production and a way of life -- by the extraordinary Neel herself and academic luminaries such as the dean of the Yale School Of Art (and director of this year's Venice Biennale) Robert Storr. Presented with the harsh biographical facts that shaped Neel's virtually penniless reality and her diverse, impressive body of work, it is hard to discern how you feel about this emotionally damaged woman, incredibly able artist, powerful feminist and rather selfish mother. Despite a one-woman show at New York's Whitney Museum 10 years before her death in 1984, Neel's very important contribution to 20th-century art history remains overshadowed by the abstract offerings of her male contemporaries. But beyond the gender debate, this profound video portrait will leave you staring down the barrel of your own personal gun of mediocrity and, strangely, inspired. Andrew and his father Hartley Neel will introduce the film.

NB: this event has been programmed in conjunction with the Alice Neel exhibition at Victoria Miro Gallery (23/05 till 21/07).

Tuesdays, not the most exciting of nights, you're probably still tired from the last weekend and the next one is days away -- all in all a good reason to stay in with the telly. Anglo-Italian record label Midfinger have other ideas, though, and are taking over venerable East End filthbox the 333 for a night showcasing the finest in new electro and indie rock. Headlining the night are Berlin trio Warren Suicide whose filthy noir-rave, one part electroclash, one part krautrock, was shown off to fine effect on last year's acclaimed debut album The Hello. Joining them are London based four-piece Nemo, who draw inspiration from the likes of The Cure and Depeche Mode; indie rockers We Yes You No; intriguingly named laptop and surf guitar duo Agaskodo Teliverek; and Italian synth rockers Drink To Me. Not too shabby for a Tuesday night; looks like that TV licence fee is going to be wasted again.

It's strange to think that only a few years ago Modest Mouse were practically unknown in this country and now they are playing the Royal Albert Hall. The recruitment of Johnny Marr (formerly of The Smiths) has undoubtedly raised their profile in this country, but their increased popularity is a testament to the consistency of their songwriting and steady rise since their conception in 1993. Along with bands such as Pavement and Built To Spill (who incidently play Scala next week on 25/05) they contributed to the invention of the genre of indie-rock -- angular guitars, irreverent humour, subtle melodies, sporadic post-punk groove and a tangible sense of ironic detachment. The fact that their latest album, We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, debuted at #1 in the US Billboard Chart with sales in excess of 130,000 illustrates their iconic status. Fresh from headlining ATP vs The Fans this eagerly awaited show is essential for old fans and recent converts alike; Modest Mouse have become highly proficient in playing shows of this size and in many ways this venue is the ideal setting for their uniquely distinctive sideways anthems. Bohemian poly-math Billy Childish will open proceedings with his latest band, The Musicians of the British Empire.

Hanne Hukkelberg comes to London on the European tour of her new sophomore album Rykestrasse 68, her first release on Nettwerk. Produced after six months of living in Berlin, the music reveals a delicate maturity that grows out of the playroom dreams of Little Things. Hukkelberg's quivering voice recalls Vashti Bunyan and Linda Perhacs, while the assorted multitude of vibes, glockenspiel and theremin with wheezing brass and sonorous strings, gives the album a wonderfully creaky ambience akin to the garden shed antics of Tom Waits' Bone Machine. The album won the Norwegian Grammy Award Spellemannsprisen and has received rave reviews throughout Europe from across the jazz, folk and leftfield electronic scenes. Her all too rare live shows in the UK are eagerly anticipated events so be sure to book early. Expect the same beautiful surging wide-eyed wonderment of Little Things, but be prepared for a trip into a darker, more complex forest of emotions.

NB: she is supported by fellow Norwegians In The Country, a superb jazz trio led by composer Morten Qvenild (Jaga Jazzist).

Nora Schultz's work surprises. Strong formal components are coupled with brazen attitude and ad hoc construction. These contradictions are played out in the gallery's split site, a short walk between spaces shifting one set of formal concerns into a playful and schematic doppelganger of itself in the other. In the first space a series of photographs show the artist, or perhaps an assistant, wrestling with a single sheet of aluminium, transforming it into a different number between zero and nine in each photograph, counting upwards or downwards depending on where you are standing. Architecturally informed photographs located close by are equally inventive with misaligned and angled edges. Echoes of performance resonate in the second space through a series of large scale drawings and a floor to ceiling extendable column. Schultz lives and works in Berlin and this show neatly brings a piece of the city's accredited contemporary art scene to London's East End.

NB: runs till 24/05.

Pushing CCTV into the third dimension, writer, multitalented architect, teacher and filmmaker Alex Haw's LightHive exhibition at the AA is a rhizomatic system of devices detecting the movements of bodies throughout the school's five addresses and 160 rooms. 1,027 meticulously mounted custom-rhinoscripted LEDs turn the Front Members' Room into a three-dimensional map of the institution's activity, a "luminous architectural surveillance" network celebrating the perpetual pinning up of new drawings, new forms, new ideas in Britain's oldest and most vital school of architecture. Haw, who runs the experimental collaborative practice Atmos and has worked in a range of famous offices including those of Diller + Scofidio, Richard Rogers and Nicholas Grimshaw, describes the project as an architecture that is "millimetres thick and kilometres long". The patterns of movement are logged and played back into the exhibition space at magnifications of six (the number six being the underlying unit of the project), with the grande finale beginning at 7pm on 25/05, when the lights will play back all that they have seen during the course of the show. Witnessing that, you will see yourself transmuted into light -- and architecture.

NB: runs till 25/05.

Following their considerable rebuilding programme, the BFI Southbank has launched a gallery space to exhibit works that explore the resonance of the moving image, the cinematic flow of the visual medium. Inaugurating this space is the microworld of New York artists Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, whose work employs minute cameras mounted around shrunken stage sets and scenes from cinema, producing a reflective, fragmentary view of film. The Constant World focuses on Jean-Luc Godard's dystopian vision of the future, Alphaville, a place where love and poetry is outlawed. Employing 36 live video cameras around this Tom Thumb scale detailed diorama, the works uses the apparatus of filmmaking to present a playful reading of the idea of cinema. Scale is manipulated, fact and fiction blur, and with Tiny, Funny, Big And Sad, the pictures become scrappy moments in our memory. Play the role of Gulliver and travel through the history of cinema in just a few footsteps in the gallery.

NB: runs till 03/06. On 17/05 (6:30pm) catch Dr Sam Lackey from the University of Manchester as he gives a talk on the artists.

London missed out on John Russell's 2005 solo exhibitions at Transmission and the Norwich Gallery but this is now rectified with his first London solo show, the at once thrilling, grotesque, alienating, and awesome Ocean Pose. Super-saturated colour emanates from four 10 x 35 foot backlit vinyl banners depicting a post-apocalyptic world of Man confronting the Infinite. A motley crew of computer-generated characters emerge from the glassy ocean surface -- naked Aryan men, a black baby, a young guy in a wheelchair, a unicorn, an octopus. Are they the remnants of London's futurist global metropolis or nihilistically random? Russell borrows the form of religious allegory, and transmutates it into something bewildering which both evokes and seems on the crest of a new wave of thought. Whilst the philosophical utterings accompanying these tableaux verge on fanatical nonsense, Ocean Pose invokes a dizzying array of references tempered by the occasional masturbatory turn that overall demonstrates a wilful opposition to the communicative openness dominating much contemporary art of the last decade. It would seem merely illustrative if the results weren't so mind-scramblingly inconceivable, confusing, distressing, spectacular, prophetic and provocational.

NB: runs till 03/06.

Adapting multi-award-winning novel DBC (Dirty But Clean) Pierre's Vernon God Little for the stage was never going to be a walk in the park and, on some level, it's easy to see why critics have rather universally given it a two or three star rating as it is undeniably a mixed dramatic experience, but we think it is worth seeing. The story of a boy who unwittingly becomes a suspect in the investigation into a high-school massacre (in a twist of fate that comes down to his irregular bowel movements) is essentially a wild farce, but one that builds on this inappropriate platform by being laced with dark humour and shaken up with polemical hyperbole. Clocking in at three hours, it avoids being a matchstick-holding- the-eyes-open bore-athon by maintaining a frenetic pace throughout, while the cast each play multiple characters (bar the rather-too-attractive-for-the-part-but-brilliant-nonetheless Vernon), and incorporating rather bizarre songs, and using cheap costumes and sets. All this brilliantly contributes to the poignant cheapening of the tragedy as it descends into a media circus -- little more than a news story that parasitic opportunists can make a dime from.

NB: runs till 09/06.

Inside a screen of dark wood and painted glass, snaking around the gallery, David Thorpe has created his own environment in which to showcase new botanical discoveries. Encased within these dark walls are Thorpe's futuristic star shaped sculptures and delicate paintings: carefully observed sketches of bizarrely configured leaves, flowers and familiar red berries. Combining the thrill of natural discovery with the awesome power of the unknown wilderness, Thorpe recalls the pioneering spirit of American colonists and romantic visions of turn-of-the-century England. In contrast to such forays into the impossible natural world, Matthew Buckingham's films offer insights into the possible thoughts and lives of visionary individuals that history has overlooked. Buckingham's installations don't allow the viewer to slide into the film and forget themselves in another reality; rather they intersect the gallery space at an angle that catches the audience somewhere between speculation and experience of the projected subject. In The Spirit And The Letter, Buckingham represents social reformer Mary Wollstonecraft, considered by many to be a pioneering feminist ahead of her time, as a ghost walking around on the ceiling of a gloomy 18th-century room. As she retells her story from the ceiling, stuck in this in between world, Buckingham asks us to reconsider her unsettled legacy.

NB: both shows run till 01/07. On 30/05 (7pm) catch David Thorpe as he chats to Sam Basu about texts that have inspired and informed his work.

Battles' most recent single, "Atlas", set the music blogsphere alight a couple of months ago when it emerged in anticipation of this album. It went well beyond the dance-oriented math rock that had characterised their earlier EPs and revealed an almost entirely new sound -- fresh and organic, layered with electronics and infectious melodies. The question is whether the highly anticipated Mirrored, the band's first full-length release, could build upon this and fulfil their potential to make a truly great album. In practically every way they have succeeded. It's possible to throw in a variety of compound descriptions and it still wouldn't do their sound justice: poly-rhythmic guitar assault, prog-inspired, dense glitch-electronics, jazz-tinged; ultimately, this is music that provokes both meticulous dissection, yet can also be enjoyed as purely dance music.

Highlights include the aforementioned "Atlas", the groove ridden "Tonto" and the epic "Rainbow". Ultimately though it's an album that coalesces perfectly and exists as a profound piece of work -- demarcating it within separate songs seems almost unnecessary. This is an album that could potentially be cited for years to come as a groundbreaking and genre defining piece of work; it's as intelligent and fresh as any music currently being produced. Intoxicating, unforgettable, incredibly rewarding and highly original, believe the hype, this album is close to a masterpiece (which only time can confirm either way) and ultimately what music should be all about.

To buy Mirrored online 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.

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