Wednesday 21 April (7pm)

@ ICA, The Mall, SW1 (020.7930.3647) Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly Circus

It seems impossible to classify things anymore. The boundaries of architecture have been dissolved by modern visionaries who bring a whole lot more to their work than just the technical excellence that used to be the hallmark of a fine building. Today's most progressive architects so skilfully merge construction with sculpture, invention and humanity that we can't say for sure whether they are artists, scientists or philosophers. Zaha Hadid's and Jurgen Mayer H's creations seem to be as much experiences as they are edifices -- technology being used to create an interaction that engages physically and mentally as well as visually. As innovation in architecture marches swiftly on, Joseph Rosa, Jurgen Mayer H and Patrik Schumacher come to the ICA to report back from the frontline. Mayer H heads the technological movement, Rosa is the architecture curator of the SFMOMA and author of Next Generation Architecture (Thames & Hudson), while Schumacher is Hadid's main collaborator and principal of Zaha Hadid architects. Better correspondents you couldn't find.

Wednesday 21 April (7:30pm)

@ Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, SE1 (020.7960.4203 or 4242) Tube: Embankment/Rail Waterloo

Carol Ann Duffy reads from her own work and hosts this evening of readings by Liz Lochhead, Nina Cassian and Elaine Feinstein. The title of the evening, Great Women Poets, rankles a bit though. Wouldn't Great Poets have been enough, or maybe Great Women Who Are Much More Than Poets? Most likely though, the participants don't give a toss because they're too busy getting on with the business of being brilliant. Brilliant and touching and funny and incisive, damn them. Budding poets in the audience will be deeply inspired, while struggling poets will be deeply frustrated. Otherwise you can expect to be moved, amused and refreshed by the perceptiveness and honesty in the works of this stellar cast.

Wednesday 21 April (8pm)

@ Jazz Cafe, 5 Parkway, NW1 (020.7916.6060) Tube: Camden Town

New Sector Movements mainman IG Culture has decided to take the plunge and get his band live on stage. Fresh from their latest release Turn It Up, the NSM live experience should prove decidedly interesting as they transfer the futuristic sounds of the album onto the more organic environment of the stage. Turn It Up has divided critics, as it manically slides between genres with flavours of nu-soul, nu-jazz, techy electronica and of course the distinctive broken beats for which IG Culture has become so renowned as a DJ, especially at the fortnightly CO-OP at Plastic People. IG lives for his music to the extent that he doesn't even own a television... fact. The lack of trifling televisual distractions enables 100% concentration on the music, and the listener is rewarded with crisp intricate beats and an urban soulfulness that envelops the album. Inevitably, considering his club background, IG's project never veers too far from dancefloor sensibilities but this is clearly a deep and challenging array of music.

NB: DJ support comes from Dego (4 Hero) and Des Parkes.

Wednesday 21 April (8:30pm)

@ The Spitz, 109 Commercial St., E1 (020.7392.9032) Tube: Aldgate East/Liverpool St.

Jazz has a bad reputation. Of all musical genres it gets a bum public relations deal, mainly because some of the people claiming to play the stuff just aren't good enough, so when you do decide to tentatively dip your toe into the circuit you can feel cheated and used. Take note wannabe jazz musos: you simply have to be brilliant to play jazz well. This, then, is the perfect chance to give that toe a full, confident soaking Fresu is an internationally renowned superstar trumpet blower and been voted Europe's best musician like loadsa times, so if Jamie Cullum and that Amy Winehouse give you the creeps, and you don't wanna hear someone who was born in the late '80s talking about how "crazy" their life is, this is the gig for you. Joined by some top British Best -- Stan Sulzmann (sax), John Parricelli (guitar), Dave Whitford (bass) and Ian Thomas (drums) -- the Sardinian will perform for you innovative, contemporary, sparkling jazz. If you are still a tad nervy, remember this is at The Spitz -- there is comfort food, booze and plenty of lovely smiley people. This time you won't be hurt, disappointed or scorned; Fresu will make you feel special and adored.

Thursday 22 April (7:30pm)

@ Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, SE1 (020.7960.4203 or 4242) Tube: Embankment/Rail Waterloo

Toby Litt is fast living up to his name as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists 2003 with his hip alphabet of contemporary fiction that includes Adventures in Capitalism, Beatniks, Corpsing, Deadkidsongs and Exhibitionism. Now kicking off a new series of talks about literary classics with a celebration of the modern satirist Henry James, Litt will read from James' spine-tingling ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, a novella about a governess seeking to exorcise spirits from a haunted house. After considering the book's enduring ghoulish appeal, Litt will discuss the ways in which it has influenced his latest novel, Finding Myself. A perceptive satire, the story centres on a "chick-lit" novelist who invites eleven close friends to a country house for a summer of sexual shenanigans. This, she hopes, will inspire her new novel, From the Lighthouse, a light-hearted homage to Virginia Woolf's modernist classic. But, a strange sort of fiction emerges when the house, as in James' story, turns out to be haunted. Like his predecessor, Litt is a great satirist who astutely observes the "Big Brother" zeitgeist of our celebrity-obsessed times. The event will be chaired by Philip Horne, editor of Henry James: A Life in Letters.

NB: If you enjoy this, also catch Maggie O'Farrell on Jane Eyre (Thu 29/04) and Gillian Slovo on Anna Karenina (Tue 11/05).

Friday 23 April (Fri 23/04 till Thu 06/05)

@ ICA, The Mall, SW1 (020.7930.3647) Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly Circus

See Hear! is the ICA doing what it does best: working that liminal zone between the arts. Well regarded for its film programme, the ICA's festival of documentary films about music and bands includes biopics of Jimmy Scott (If You Only Knew), Wilco in their crisis year (I Am Trying To Break Your Heart) and Pavement (The Slow Century), though the gem has to be John Coney's 1974 part-sci-fi, part-Blaxploitation, part-political anthem (the man fights NASA, the FBI and some aliens), all cult film about one Herman Sonny Blunt. Both black and gay, Blunt is known to the world as legendary jazzman, Sun Ra. And if Sun Ra: Space is the Place is all too cultish for you, then check out They Might Be Giants film, Gigantic (A Tale Of Two Johns), and find out if you too have a birdhouse in your soul! (See Hear! runs till 06/05.)

NB: John Coney, director of Sun Ra: Space is the Place, will be introducing the film on 28/04 (8:30pm). Doug Pray's Scratch, Penelope Spheeris' latest, The Decline of Western Civilisation, Part III and philosophy graduate Chris Wilcha's The Target Shoots First also feature in this series.

Friday 23 April

@ The End, 16a West Central St., WC1 (020.7419.9199) Tube: Tottenham Court Rd./Holborn

GUNSHOT!!!! A monstrous night of bass mayhem as Eat Your Own Ears and Rephlex introduce the new school. A ruff-neck assemblage of 2-step and sub-bass, "Grime" is what happens when the grotty end of UK Garage and Drum 'n' Bass decide things have got a little too commercial. Leave the squabbling to the purists -- whatever the derivation; it's a top excuse for all kinds of mash-up business on The End's fabulous sound-system. Running things in the "Grime" room is The Bug -- Kevin Martin's mighty electro/ragga/dancehall experiment that has punished bass-bins since 2002's ferocious "Killer" 7-inch. The remainder of the evening is devoted to showcasing the cream of the Grime underground: DJ Markone, DJ Plasticman and the Slaughter Mob. Munted punters, fuc*!? Ataris and bass more wobbly than a foal's first steps? Yes, the Rephlex massive takeover the "Braindance" room, with the highlight being DMX Crew's electro throwdown. Cylob, Aleksi Perala (Astrobotnia) and D'Arcangelo complete a line-up that's filthier than a wanking tramp.

Saturday 24 April (11:30am)

@ Curzon Soho, 93-107 Shaftesbury Ave., W1 (020.7439.4805) Tube: Leicester Sq./Piccadilly

It is a strange collection of directors that Cinema Extreme has on the menu this time around. The day opens with a short by Hal Hartley. As a director, he is meticulous, dark and occasionally in possession of great depth. His films include Simple Men and Henry Fool. Next on the agenda is the best boy of Finland, Aki Kaurismaki. The critically acclaimed director seems, at least to the occasional viewer, to have centred his career mostly on alcohol -- but there may be more to his work. Third up is Jamie Voight. What? Who the hell is he? We're with you. Turns out Angelina Jolie starred in a short her brother directed way back when. Of interest? Possibly. Finally, a half-hour long film by Alan Parker of Midnight Express and Mississippi Burning, who'll be around for serious questioning over his baby steps into cinema construction by BBC London 94.9FM film presenter Jason Solomons.

Saturday 24 April (7 - 11:30pm)

@ state51, 8-10 Rhoda St., E2 (020.7729.4343) Tube: Shoreditch

This [no.signal] event presents Desormais, a progressive and atmospheric arrangement of acoustic audio fragments, similar in style to the output of the project's collaborative parts Joshua Treble and Mitchell Akiyama. The spiky nature of the music is no doubt indicative of Treble, whose solo productions are a sticky digital chop-suey of piano and guitar threads, skilfully woven into ethereal audio patchworks. Akiyama's input provides the therapeutic, minimal ambience with good dynamic use of the stereo plane (we do have two ears, after all). A chance to sample the soothing side of Transatlantic electro, this music is best appreciated if you imagine yourself gently swaying and nodding in a room full of aromatic dry-ice.... Akiyama performs in collaboration with Treble, but also in his solo capacity at this event. There is also support from various incarnations of the Marcia Blaine School For Girls -- Glasgow's more conventionally electronic but appropriate complement for the Desormais mood.

NB: There will also be a special live video interaction and performance by Rob Flint (aka scopac) and soundscapes will be selected by Thorsten Sideb0ard (Highpoint Lowlife), iMax (Slow Sound System) and e/n ([no.signal]).

Giveaway: We have two copies of Desormais' iambrokenandremadeiambroken... to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked Flashers who can tell us in which festival Akiyama appeared last year in London.

Saturday 24 April (7:30pm)

@ Barbican Centre, Barbican Centre, EC2 (020.7638.8891) Tube: Barbican

The screeching killer thrusts of Psycho, the cheeky sax motif in The Odd Couple, the footie stand chant of The Italian Job -- let's face it, a quality soundtrack has secured iconic status for many a film. Italian composer Nino Rota is the Daddy of the game, having delivered hackles on the back of the neck/annoying humming flashbacks for cinema audiences through The Godfather, La Dolce Vita and The Glass Mountain, among many others. This world premier concert plays homage to Rota's collaboration with fellow countryman Federico Fellini, and will focus heavily on the 1981 album Amarcord Nino Rota. You'll be pleased to hear that Rota, who also teamed up with Zeffirelli and Coppola, opted for good tunes over the bloated self-indulgence of many of his peers, penning old-fashioned Italian-influenced scores with the odd dash of smoky jazz.

NB: La Dolce Vita, arguably the finest hour of the Fellini-Rota partnership, plays at the Barbican on Sat 24/04 at 3pm. A load of cool Italians bomb around Rome on Vespas while Anita Ekberg frolics in a fountain. What more do we need? (Both events are part of the Barbican's Only Connect festival).

Sunday 25 April (Sat and Sun 12 - 6pm or by appointment)

@ Hotel, 53A Old Bethnal Green Rd., E2 (020.7729.3122) Tube: Bethnal Green

Like a naive Raymond Pettibon via a Jimmie Durham attitude cut with a healthy dose of Willliam S. Burroughs, Glasgow-based Jonathan Gent's residency at Hotel demonstrates the potency of the venue's remit. Established as a place for artists to come, rest and create, Gent has allowed his residency to create an anti-war diary and bold statements regarding America. With crude and child-like but violent pencil imagery, annotated by statements like "I still want to be an American" or "I had a nervous breakdown in the United States of America", all drawn directly on Hotel's walls, one seems to be left with uneasy questions regarding our Atlantic cousins. Are these personal questions or general ones? Is Gent in character or himself? With that great scrawler Cy Twombly also in town, it seems apt to find another artist working in a parallel mode, but where Twombly's content is more mythic Gent's seems intent on the personal.

NB: Runs till Sun 25/04.

Sunday 25 April (7:30pm)

@ The Old Vic, The Cut Waterloo, SE1 (020.7928.7616) Tube: Waterloo

Signed to quirky, avant-garde label FatCat and from the experimental cultural hot-spot that is Reykjavik, Iceland's eccentric three-piece export Mum (pronounced "Moom") are a highly modern incarnation of their proudly spooky and legend-filled Icelandic heritage, as reflected in their brand new album, and first for 2 years, Summer Make Good. Cinematic, poetic and dark, Mum's moody combination of eerie, atmospheric soundscapes combine intricate layers of instrumentation -- accordions, glockenspiels and Chinese harps -- with dynamic electronic sampling -- creaking wood, dripping water and crackling vinyl filtered through their compositions -- to reflect a vivid sense of the rugged, remote and magical settings of their inspiration (e.g. remote lighthouses, empty weather stations, stormy seas and the isolated coastlines of northwest Iceland). A sonic incarnation of their homeland, Mum's sound is a surprising combination of fairytale-ish nostalgia and experimental modernity, making for a fragile and intimate listening experience that's both eerie and uplifting.

NB: Support from the Animal Collective (Paw Tracks and FatCat).

Giveaway: We have three Mum goodie bags (they include Summer Make Good and a 7" CD and vinyl). They'll go to three randomly picked Flashers who can tell us the name of another lovely band from Iceland.

Sunday 25 April (8pm)

@ The Spitz, 109 Commercial St., E1 (020.7392.9032) Tube: Aldgate East/Liverpool St.

Catch the young American musician Greg Davis in this last minute event. In 1996 Davis started making computer-based music after time spent in jazz combos, free improvisation, and experimental composition. His first LP was the critically acclaimed Arbor and this past February saw the release of his second, Curling Pond Woods (both on Carpark Records). Forthcoming releases include a duo CD with Keith Fullerton Whitman. Despite his age, Davis is a seasoned performer -- he has played with Hrvatski, David Grubbs, :zoviet*france:, Mitchell Akiyama, the Animal Collective, Jan Jelinek, Murcof to cite but a few. Last week he performed in Paris at the amazing Confluences part of the Avril.dot festival, which included Akiyama and 12k's Taylor Deupree in a duo, Italian artist Mou, Lips! and Stephan Mathieu.

Monday 26 April (6:30 - 7:30pm)

@ Geological Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1 (020.7434.9944) Tube: Piccadilly Circus

In 1987, Anne Lacaton founded the office Lacaton Vassal in Bordeaux with fellow architect Jean Philippe Vassal. The pair relocated to Paris and started reinventing their craft, rethinking architecture, rearranging spaces, rebuilding structures -- and receiving prizes for them. Their highest-profile project to date is the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2002), a controversial conversion of a 1937 building on the banks of the Seine into a contemporary art space. Lacaton and Vassal stripped the space down to a rough hulk and refused to paint the walls, creating a compellingly urban interior -- more hip hop party in a Manhattan loft than white wine-sipping vernissage at the Musee d'Art Moderne next door. The project showed some of the central themes of the practice: a love for materials and cost-effectiveness. In their It'll Be Nice Tomorrow exhibition catalogue, Lacaton Vassal spoke of "a certain passion for organizing, setting, calculating, compressing, pricing, starting all over again, reading and re-reading the programme, economizing, simplifying". This is likely to be on the agenda again as Lacaton, currently the guest professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, talks about what we can expect from contemporary spaces for living and work.

Monday 26 April (7:45pm)

@ Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, SE1 (020.7960.4203 or 4242) Tube: Embankment/Rail Waterloo

You will agree that it is difficult enough keeping up with your mates on messenger while looking like you are working; then there's the pop-up's, dealing with the volume control on naughty mailings from you best friends and reading your fave KultureFlash. So these guys deserved an encore simply for hand-to-eye digital co-ordination. Plaid have been asked back after their Ether 2004 sell-out gig. Electronic music is not known for its born performers and many a time your reporters have found themselves stuck in some venue watching some blokes in white boiler suits pressing a synth note for 15 minutes; no smiles, no nonsense, no fun. This, though, is quite simply brilliant -- Bob Jaroc's superb video projections of the strange and benign plus lightening lighting while Plaid play live haunting Warp stylee beating music. It's not quite Vegas fabulous, but it is impressive and awesome in the grand Royal Festival Hall. And, while those boys fiddle with their knobs exploring ideas of the Universe, don't look to them to perform. Let the sounds and the light give you a break from all this digital age, multitasking nonsense.

Giveaway: We have three copies of Plaid's latest album Spokes and two copies of Magic Bus Tracks to give away. They'll go to five randomly picked Flashers who can tell us who Pleix are.

Ends Wednesday 28 April (Mon to Fri 12pm - 6pm)

@ Elms Lesters Gallery, 1-3-5 Flitcroft St., WC2 (020.7836.6747) Tube: Tottenham Court Rd.

Acclaimed NYC graffiti artist Stash has come a long way from tagging subway trains in 1982. Not only has he featured in countless art shows/exhibits, Stash is also a successful graphic artist, creating graffiti-influenced images for Burton Snowboards, as well as an accomplished designer and entrepreneur with his own clothing design studio Subware. He has collaborated with cult clothing labels Maharishi, Project Dragon, is an owner of Recon (shops in NYC and Tokyo), and worked for footwear company Gravis. Here Stash presents his first-ever solo show in the UK, an urban-inspired, graphic show featuring work influenced by his graf past, such as silkscreen prints on metal and digital photography pieces.

NB: Runs till 28/04.

Wednesday 28 April (7pm)

@ Scala, 275-277 Pentonville Rd., N1 (020.7833.2022) Tube: King's Cross

US DJ/producer Danger Mouse is the current subject of a high-profile music industry row, where label Goliath pitches battle against an independent David over issues of copyright and intellectual property. In this case the problem arises from the suitably grey area of sampling -- to most, pretty much the key foundation for hip-hop production, with remixing and pastiche the defining aesthetics of an increasingly digital contemporary music scene. Earlier this year, DM unofficially released The Grey Album, which remixed the vocals from Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album, to triumphant critical acclaim; its ingenuity and innovation were whole-heartedly applauded. But EMI have been on his case and threatening lawsuits ever since, and the album has thus snowballed new arguments about corporate copyright control stifling creative freedom, and seen unprecedented activist protest within a frustrated music community. Alongside his partner in crime and vocalist Jemini, veteran hip-hop producer Prince Paul (of Beastie Boys/De La Soul fame), and a choice selection of other collaborators, including Prince Po (Organized Konfusion) and Rhode Island's Sage Francis/ Non Prophets, DM heads up Lex Records' London date next week -- they're also playing Triptych and Dedbeat festivals -- with his Grey Album defiantly playing out live at every stop.

Giveaway: We have five copies of Ghetto Pop Life to give away. They'll go to five randomly picked Flashers who can tell us which lovely digital media company has designed two sites for the Beatles (hint: Darren Aronofsky).

Thursday 29 April (7pm)

@ London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, WC1 (020.7269.9030) Tube: Holborn

"After Lights Out for The Territory, a man sent me an X ray of his brain tumour. He'd superimposed it over a map of London and was trying to heal himself by walking out its routes through the city." Former book dealer and sometime filmmaker Iain Sinclair is blissfully steeped in the mysticism of the '60s and '70s. Often writing with the temperament of a religious zealot, he might be branded with the psychogeography tag, but London is his God. As demonstrated in London Orbital's circumnavigation of the M25, his walks around the capital make a forensic examination of the city. Sinclair's intensity divides people. That other London literary peculiar, smoke magazine, has amusingly pilloried Sinclair but Will Self (who nicked the "psychogeography" title for his own column in Saturday's Independent) can't get enough of the man. "His recent work represents some of the most important in contemporary English letters," he gushes. This reading is occasioned by a new book, Dining on Stones, which sees Sinclair returning to fiction but still with wandering and pondering aplenty. Listening to Sinclair should be entertaining whether you believe him to be a modern flaneur or simply a rambler with a heavy dictionary.

NB: This is not Iain Sinclair -- the one that designs small torches; it's this one.

Ends Saturday 8 May (Mon to Sat 11am - 6pm)

@ Bloomberg SPACE, 50 Finsbury Sq., EC2 (020.7330.7959) Tube: Moorgate

There would seem to be a nice irony in Bloomberg SPACE hosting this fantastic, sprawling exhibition of over 100 works made using collage techniques. Associated with lo-fi craft, messiness and Blue Peter-style school projects, Collage would seem to be an unlikely tenant in the clinical, corporate, uber-tech environs of Bloomberg's city HQ. But while the show charts the history of collage and its importance in 20th-century art movements -- from Dada (Kurt Schwitters) to Pop (Claes Oldenburg) -- it also seamlessly makes connections between its paper versions and more recent digital cut-'n'-paste techniques in computer-generated graphics, and film (Stan Brakhage) and music video. Collage is here rightly not restricted to its 2-D manifestations; self-evident but nonetheless important links are made with sculpture and installation (Tomoko Takahashi). However, the sheer pleasure of encountering the vast number of wildly varied artworks makes it easy to overlook the omissions. Picasso and Matisse -- too obvious perhaps, too expensive no doubt to include -- must remain an implicit presence, the ghostly godfathers of collage.

NB: Runs till 08/05.

Ends Saturday 15 May (Wed to Fri 11am - 6pm; Sat 1am - 4pm)

@ Thomas Dane Gallery, 11 Duke Street St James's (20.7925.2505) Tube: Green Park

From its title, McQueen's exhibition sets the tone for an exploration of art that transcends video practice and its restrictions... Into this world is also the incipit repeated by the character of Beckett's play Not I, a woman whose mouth is the only spot lit in the stage and whose discourse avoids the first person. Similarly, the artist endeavours to cancel his presence to speak about himself through a variety of circumnavigations. Illuminator features a long shot of the artist watching a French documentary on the war in Afghanistan. The changes of intensity of the TV's light -- the only one illuminating the room -- transforms the failed attempt of the camera to auto focus into an abstract video. McQueen's body functions as the projection screen and as the source of reflected light captured by the camera. In 7th November he locks his viewers up in a dark room where the only light comes from a slide projection portraying a man's head. Its stillness diverts the attention on the sound, the tragic story of the artist's cousin narrated in a syncopate rhythm. Mesmerised by the drama, everyone leaves with the impression of having been subjected to a well-grounded discussion of social and political issues although, like Not I, none of these subjects have been directly mentioned during the highly sensorial experience.

NB: Runs till 15/05.