Here is an opportunity to see the award-wining company Inspector Sands at work on their new show -- interweaving marriage and murder with props and popcorn. After the success of their first show, Hysteria, which has taken them all round the world, the company return to London to preview the development of their next production. Watching scenes being playfully transformed in front of us, the audience is also engaged in the company's process of trying out these scenes, as the various narratives become entangled with the furniture and the costumes. Amongst the short-circuiting collection of electric fans, market research questioning the characters' "quality of life" and film spoofs, there is also the lurking presence of a large knife. Part of the intrigue for the audience is wondering what might stay and what might go as the work progresses -- indeed, the company invites the audience to share their impressions and further the development of what might itself become a new world-touring hit, as Peggy Lee accompanies the final scene, singing the eponymous "Is That All There Is?"

NB: runs till 16/05.

The BAC's BURST 2009 festival is probably the most exciting collection of events they've ever programmed, and really signals a quality shift for the venue. Too much to mention at once (though don't miss Ann Liv Young's Solo and The Bagwell In Me), we're focusing here on five events that employ audio in skilful and inventive ways. Two are installations: Graeme Miller's Conjunction (free) claims to capture thought at the moment it emerges (on the strength of his past miracles, we believe him), while Amsterdam's Dries Verhoeven uses a telephone to connect you with remote performers. Rotozaza premieres Silvia Mercuriali's promising new piece, Wondermart: their "autotheatre" device leads you around a functioning supermarket while other shoppers remain oblivious to the immersive and structured phenomena that begin to fall into place around you. We're really looking forward to new work by Lundhal&Seitl, a multidisciplinary, Swedish artist-couple whose work is characterised by touch, immersion, curiosity and Martina Seitl's strangely comforting, alien-toy voice. Finally, and perhaps the most keenly anticipated, Melanie Wilson tries out (or "scratches" as the BAC like to put it) her new audio-guide / documentary Mari Me Archie. Many of these are programmed in slots throughout the day, but some have limited spaces so be sure to get booking.

NB: BURST runs from 15/05 till 30/05.

Few venues, in London at least, come close to Plastic People for providing a space in which to get well and truly lost in the music. With its near legendary soundsystem and no nonsense black hole of a dance floor the tiny basement beneath Curtain Road regularly attracts some of the biggest names around from electronica to dubstep and techno. This week it's the turn of the disco crowd and Italy's Daniele Baldelli, whose residencies as resident at seminal Italian clubs Baia Degli Angeli and Cosmic back in the early '80s defined the original "cosmic" sound, whose descendant is currently the toast of clubland. With over 40 years experience behind the decks and an estimated 60,000 records to choose from, expect a genre defying selection and a masterclass in the art of DJaying. If that isn't enough Horse Meat Disco's excellent residents Jim Stanton and James Hillard will also be on hand taking time out from their Fabric residency to rock this small but perfectly formed basement club.

Nathan Fake's Drowning In A Sea Of Love was awash with cascading synths and effervescent soundscapes and the follow-up Hard Islands promises to be an even more robust monolith, building numerous layers that turn on a techno heartbeat. He's generally resisted playing the DJ game, and as such this show will rely on constructing all those sounds live -- and with visuals, we're told. Fake's sound was given its first lease of life on beat uber-brain James Holden's Border Community and like the label boss' creations, manages to scale some pretty complex musical heights while remaining effortlessly danceable. Appropriately, support comes from Holden himself, whose remix of "The Sky Was Pink" landed Fake in more than a few record bags. Meanwhile lurking in the second room is Caribou's Dan Snaith, a seldom-seen DJ himself (although he has two more dates in the next few weeks). For some peculiar reason he's much more beloved on the other side of the Atlantic, but it more than bears imagining what strange bits and pieces he's racking up in the Canadian wilderness.

This promises to be a unique event showcasing the work of several Touch artists in this glorious London venue. It opens with Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir, accompanied by Touch stalwart BJNilsen, who will perform works from his new album Without Sinking. Together they paint mysterious landscapes with an almost mystical purity (cello and electronics). Norwegian ambient artist Biosphere follows (accompanied by Jon Wozencroft's photography), also with a new live album released for the event, Wireless -- Live At The Arnolfini, Bristol. Combining field recordings, electronics and voice samples, he has developed a unique genre which has been called "cold ambient", but we prefer to call it great music! After the interval, the hour-long Sinking Of The Titanic will be performed by Philip Jeck and the Gavin Bryars Ensemble. Accompanied by a string section, this rare live performance of this magnificent, haunting piece is highly recommended. All-in-all, a fantastic event, and kudos to the Roundhouse for bringing these three stunning acts together for the first time.

NB: this event is part of the Roundhouse's Short Circuit festival that runs from 15/05 till 17/05. Also of note is the special Radiophonic Workshop concert on 17/05 (7pm).

With an uncharacteristic, yet killer 12" scheduled for release later this month, Claude VonStroke (aka Barclay Crenshaw) flies into town this weekend as Fabric's headline act. His forthcoming single may be steeped in the sort of deep-set refinement that you'd expect to hear at a dinner party hosted by Jazzanova for the Bukem camp. However, if the American's recent mix for the club's eponymous CD series is an indicator of what he's currently got stashed in his record box, then expect three courses of off-kilter techno and funked-up electro from the outset. Those who firmly believe far less is far more will find minimal techno heavyweights Magda and Mike Shannon joining resident Craig Richards in Room 2. While disco-fiends G-Ha and Olanksii host another of their Sunkissed takeover parties in Room 3, with help from fellow Norwegian's Prins Thomas and Per Martinsens (aka Mental Overdrive). All in all, a varied selection well worth checking out.

Founded by the BBC in 1958 to supply sound effects and scores for the broadcaster's radio stations, The Radiophonic Workshop swiftly established itself as a foundry of sonic invention, featuring the likes of Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram and Brian Hodgson. Oram and Hodgson were both at the forefront of musical experimentation, avid adopters of musique concrete and the earliest synthesizers, and responsible for some of the most well known TV theme songs in the world. No mention of the Workshop is complete without referencing their seminal work on the original Doctor Who series, from Derbyshire's now legendary work on Ron Grainer's soundtrack through to the show's iconic sound effects. With the influence of the Workshop on today's musicians stronger than ever (check the new Emperor Machine album for evidence), this Sunday offers a very rare opportunity to catch the unit, disbanded by the Beeb in 1998, together again performing music from shows such as The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Sea Trek and of course Doctor Who.

NB: this event is part of the Roundhouse's Short Circuit festival that runs from 15/05 till 17/05. Also of note is the special Touch evening on 16/05 (7pm) with Philip Jeck, Gavin Bryars Ensemble, Biosphere, Hildur Gudnadottir and BJNilsen.

Monsters describes itself as a play about the killing of James Bulger, the child who was murdered by two children in 1993. It's predictably generated the odd outraged headline, but there is nothing exploitative in writer Niklas Radstrom's treatment or Christopher Haydon's intelligent production. It's rather a discourse on how we talk about and respond to this kind of horror, how we look to cast responsibility and create monsters. Radstrom scripts what feel like authentic transcripts of interviews with the two killers and their families, but in casting these chorally it avoids the clunkiness of verbatim representation and allows the killers' presence without either sympathy or judgement. Its studied neutrality -- placed in a mediated space of screens and cameras like the unseeing eyes of the CCTV that first caught the abduction -- accumulates a moral unease, helped by exceptional, sensitive performances from an ensemble of Sandy Grierson, Lucy Ellinson, Jeremy Killick and Victoria Pratt. You must ignore an extraordinarily clumsy introduction, interrogating the presence of the audience and seeking too eagerly to cast us as equivalent to the witnesses to the abduction, without appreciating the humane reasons for both attendance and non-intervention. But this is ultimately outweighed by some acute insight and otherwise impeccably rigorous treatment in a recommended piece.

NB: runs till 30/05.

Veteran London poet Gavin Selerie 's Le Fanu's Ghost (Five Seasons Press , 2006), has been described as an exploration of Anglo-Irish Gothic. A historical palimpsest of incredible virtuosity, its tricky, erudite turns can leave the reader mystified, though never less than fascinated and sometimes astounded. Now he follows that monumental book-length poem with a 36-year, 300-pages+ career retrospective, Music's Duel: New And Selected Poems (Shearsman Books) that is bound to show the full range of his formal invention and wide-ranging curiosity. He's launching it with a reading in the ongoing Blue Bus series at the Lamb, along with KF's own Barry Schwabsky, who also has a new collection to read from: Book Left Open In The Rain (Black Square Editions / The Brooklyn Rail) in which, according to fellow poet Rodney Koeneke, "adept and thoughtful lyrics twin the vagaries of love with the complexities of art, treating both as part of the same tangled interplay of surface, perspective, self-portrayal, and the erotically charged balance of power between observer and observed."

If you hooked up an amp to a drug-addled brain, poked it until it sang, and recorded the result on an eight-track tape machine, you might incite a sound a bit like Ariel Pink. This experimental bedroom music-maker from Southern California has amassed quite a cult following, including Animal Collective's label, who heard The Doldrums and signed him up pronto. Pink knots recycled melodies and biting refrains ("Sensitive Man", "Young Pilot Astray", "Haunted Graffiti") into multifarious warped pop, sometimes eerie, or familiar, or dark and funny. Yes his super lo-fi techniques make for an inaccessible sound, but he's singing your story -- the voices in your head are having a party, and it's in the flat next door. Natty '70s tunes filter through the muffled production, lifted from Brian Eno, the Beegees, even the The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt, or some '60s cereal commercial, but Pink's pained delivery attaches a hefty ball and chain. When you spend this long alone, making music, it becomes you -- and Pink digs deep for it. Since he's all about the painstaking process then, what of the live show? Well, Pink exorcising his demon songs, depending on his current frame of mind, could be car-crash theatre or real-time epiphany. We'll take our chances.

NB: this gig is likely to sell out so buy your tickets in advance.

Why do we buy so much stuff? How do we feel about the objects we own? And who makes them so damn irresistible? These are some of the questions addressed by Gary Hustwit in Objectified, his latest feature-length documentary, and the follow-up to Helvetica -- the much acclaimed ode to a typeface. With a pared-down slickness to rival any contemporary design, and no narrative voiceover, Objectified seeks out the stories behind the objects that drive our day to day lives, from the toothbrush to the Apple Mac, and the big-name designers that create them. And we're talking big names: Apple's Jonathan Ive, Dieter Rams of Braun, Marc Newson and IDEO, to name a few. It's an understated tribute to the geniuses who make these dreamy objects a reality -- the word "objectified" itself means "something abstract expressed in concrete form"-- but also a subversive indicator of our obsession with owning (sleek, new, sexy) things. The amount of energy, materials, and time wasted on manufacturing products purposefully designed, not for longevity, but to be made obsolete sooner or later by a newer more expensive model, is laughable. Except it isn't, is it? Luckily though, Hustwit's not into scaremongering. Just as good design means as little design as possible, here less is, objectively, more.

NB: Gary Hustwit will be present for a Q&A on both 27/05 (6:30pm) and 28/05 (8:30pm) post screening. Objectified screens at the Barbican from 22/05 till 28/05.

Seventy-two and counting: with most people his age coming to terms with the freedom and virtues of a TFL buss pass, Paolo Conte is 35 years into a long-standing love affair with music that has relocated him from the professional confinement of a life in law to impulse and idealism -- an Italian Jacques Brel with a trademark sound that is effortlessly, elegantly amorous. Back at the Barbican for a one-off performance to mark the release of his latest album, Psiche, first-timers should expect a night that tastes of whisky and jazz, heightened by orchestra, and rounded off with poetry readings. Conversely nonchalant and fervent, his post-cigar voice has been showered over films including Francois Ozon's 5x2. The evening marks a rare return to London -- his last appearance a success was in 2005, and his next, as yet, is unplanned. With an unpredictable summer ahead, this night gives Londoners the opportunity for a little Mediterranean warmth and romance, the equivalent of a drive in a cabriolet down the Amalfi, without the hassle of a holiday.

Three and-a-half decades ago he was merely the doyen of downtown Manhattan's artily abstruse loft scene; these days (the now septuagenarian) Philip Glass is among the world's most famous and popular living composers, renowned not only for his epochal work as a New York minimalist and composer of colossal, cyclical, modern operas, but also for dalliances with all manner of musical mavericks -- from Moondog to David Bowie -- as well as with more orthodox pop and rock singers. Tonight's show offers another slant on Glass' protean compositional portfolio, centering on Songs And Poems, a new work specially composed for cellist Wendy Sutter. Sutter and percussionist Mick Rossi will also join Glass to essay pieces from Glassworks and the soundtrack to Naqoyqatsi, the final film in the Godfrey Reggio trilogy that began with Koyaanisqatsi. Selections from Glass' immense solo piano cycles Metamorphosis and Etudes also feature. Much of the evening's repertoire has rarely (in some cases never) been heard on a UK concert stage before, so don't dawdle over the ticket buying.

Blood and oil: using these two elemental materials, Russian artist Andrei Molodkin's Liquid Modernity at Oriel Art meditates on the interplay of energy, greed, consumption and corruption in the modern world, critiquing oil and culture industries alike. The show is dominated by the first installation; two cages, one made of white neon tubing, the other of tubes filled with viscous, treacly oil, which sit amidst a mess of power cables, pumps and oil barrels. The gauges controlling the oil levels let off pressure ever few seconds with small explosions that ricochet around the gallery space, which, combined with the crackling hum of the neon bars, makes for an increasingly oppressive atmosphere as you move through the rest of the show. Grids filled with oil and blood encourage connections between chemical reactions, power grids and human cells. Accompanying a set of perspex blocks in which Das Kapital, the title of Marx's critique of capitalism, have been hollowed and filled with oil, is Marx's description of modernity as "all that is solid melts into air" -- a quote that provides an apt summation of the show, concerned as it is with the destabilising effects that the combustion of fossil fuels is having on our planet.

NB: runs till 12/06.

A palate of silvery greys with dashes of colour, the first floor of this exhibition houses several abstract oil paintings and a sculpture titled Drei Raume Grau. The title of this work (translation: Three Grey Rooms) hints at a space or potential space but instead a folded pattern cutting is placed casually on a table -- suggesting an unmade architectural idea, neatly folded away for safekeeping. Despite the fast-paced nature of the paintings there is an air of melancholy, heightened by the sound of the traffic outside. In stark contrast, upstairs is an installation comprised of deconstructed flat-pack storage boxes slotted together and painted a yellow so bright it almost stings your eyes. Formed on three sides, it is compressed into a curve by the force of string tendons, the ends of which dangle limply to the floor in an interesting contrast to the rigid materiality of the structure. Reminiscent of a Bridget Riley painting, Olaf Holzapfel takes it one step further by allowing the viewer to enter into the space, straddling two and three dimensions. Although aesthetically different, both spaces are dealing with similar concerns to create a tension that echoes the changing faces of the urban environment.

NB: runs till 17/06.

This is the first major survey of Louise Nevelson's work in London, and consists of pieces produced from the time she started working with Pace Wildenstein Gallery in 1964. Most of the sculpture is painted a heavy satin black, the concentration on monochrome suggesting an approach to formal abstraction at one with her artistic piers Ad Reinhardt and Barnet Newman. Nevelson shares with that generation a sense of universal spirituality, adding a very particular use of the domestic and found object to make her own version of the American Abstract Sublime. Pieces such as End Of Day Nightscape of 1973 present a velvet black stepped-out facade, made of wooden boxes divided in to tiny sections of the sort that printers use to keep lead typefaces. Here, the monumentality of the work, the obsessive detail of the small objects glued into the divisions of each box, and the way that the piece sits rooted to the floor as much as against the wall, give a sense of gravity and heft, playing grandeur off against the miniature. The installation is elegant, and does justice to a significant body of work that has for too long been overlooked in the UK.

NB: runs till 14/06.

Seven years of bad luck? Obviously Gwenael Belanger doesn't care. In his six minute video loop a camera circumnavigates the artists' studio and simultaneously a series of mirrors fall and crash to the ground; the reflections of the space shatter and distort the viewers' perceptions. Mirroring the choreography of bombs dropping out of an airplane in a WWII documentary, the shattering becomes the backdrop for The Hidden Land and in particular enhances the movement in Ori Gersht's photographs, that are inspired by classical painting and depict a bird falling slowly into a dark viscous liquid. Lori Hersberger's bright experimental multi-media collages offer an interesting contrast and the dripping day-glow colours play on artificiality, construction and destruction. Grey Matters by Daniel Firman stands central in the main exhibition space: a hybrid grey hooded figure has become over-grown by a mass of grey objects ranging from cuddly toys to wastepaper baskets, the work reminds us of an episode from Round The Twist where the protagonist becomes a magnet for rubbish. The result is quite humourous and very disturbing at the same time. The works in this show bounce off each other, leading to a tight group show with an air of uncertainty and, as Firman's neon light highlights, a feeling that "something strange happened here".

NB: runs till 14/06.

Tim Crouch is one of the smartest artists making theatre in Britain now. There's a deceptive simplicity to his work, effortlessly straightforward at first encounter but artfully sculpted for endless resonance. His texts are brilliantly performative rather than reductively naturalistic, alert to the site and the space between audience members. He chooses excellent collaborators -- performer Hannah Ringham of Shunt has a startling capacity for the most eloquent presence; Dan Jones scores an unsettling and enveloping soundscape; co-directors a smith (aka Andy Smith) and Karl James are both brilliant brains. England arrives at the Whitechapel Gallery after an explosion of awards in Edinburgh 2007. We are an audience touring the gallery, with Ringham and Crouch as our guides, but also co-inhabiting someone suffering a heart condition whose only hope is through an art-dealer boyfriend using his connections and wealth to secure a transplant. We then take our seats to witness a meeting via interpreter with the widow of the heart's first owner. England acutely reflects a world where meaning and life can be reduced to transactions, and the inevitable consequences. It teases infinitely more thought than a well-made play could dream. It's witty, pungently poetic and mesmerising. Don't miss.

NB: runs till 16/06.

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