Ash are to mark their 20th year as a band with a party at The Garage in London. Taking place on 17 Jun, the night will feature comedienne Josie Long as compere, plus a list of special still to be announced guest performers, one of whom may or may not be former Ash guitarist Charlotte Hatherley, who briefly re-joined the band on tour last October to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their ‘Free All Angels’ album.

Tickets for the show are divided into various price bands, with premium VIP passes (pitched at a mere £80) granting extras like early entry, after show access and an additional set of Ash rarities.

Further details at www.ash-official.com

Tom Jones has been announced for one of the free shows due to take place in Hyde Park this summer as part of the London 2012 entertainment programme, which will run across the Olympic fortnight.

Feeder, Dodgy, Levellers, Cast, Amy Macdonald, Paul Carrack, Kenny Thomas, and the cast of West End Queen-fest ‘We Will Rock You’ will all also do free stints in the park parallel to the Games, while Duran Duran, Stereophonics, Paolo Nutini and Snow Patrol will soundtrack an opening ceremony event as part of the festival on 27 Jul.

You may as well go to the BT London Live website and see if you can work out who’s playing when. I couldn’t.

TV journalist Louis Theroux has been named as a co-curator of the cinema stage at ATP’s I’ll Be Your Mirror, which takes place in London later this month, directing the festival’s Friday film programme while Mogwai and the Prince Charles Cinema team will direct Saturday and Sunday proceedings respectively.

Amongst Theroux’s selections is a preview of director Mark Cousins’ ‘What Is This Film Called Love?’, which features new music by PJ Harvey and Soundescape.

As well as looking after one day of movies, Mogwai are curating the whole music programme for the event (with the ATP team), and on that side of things have scheduled performances from the likes of Slayer, Sleep, Melvins, Dirty Three, Codeine, Mudhoney and The Afghan Whigs.

It takes place from 25-27 May at Alexandra Palace. And you can download a free two-hour mixtape including tracks by all of the above, and more besides, here.

In addition to preparing for the debut of his forthcoming single ‘Jupiter’, electronic producer Kieran Hebden – aka Four Tet – has also shared details of a live date taking place at South London’s Brixton Academy.

Tickets for the show, which will run throughout the night and feature marathon DJ sets by Four Tet, Caribou and tbc extra guests, are priced at £5 each (plus £1.60 booking fee) in fond memory of the time Hebden says he “saw Fugazi at Brixton in the 1990s… £5 ticket, no light show, no bullshit… one of the best things I’ve ever seen”. Snap them up right here.

The aforementioned ‘Jupiter’ will be released with its B-side ‘Ocaras’ via Hebden’s own Text Records on an as-yet unspecified date.

As you speculate on exactly what that date might be, listen to the former track here:

Proceedings at this year’s London-located Bloc Weekend will now feature a DJ set by Arpanet, aka Drexciya/Dopplereffekt man Gerald Donal. He aligns with the superlative and already confirmed likes of Snoop Dogg, James Blake, Orbital, Flying Lotus, Nicolas Jaar and Battles at the electronic-centric event, whose extra attractions will now include the MS Stubnitz, once a deep sea fishing trawler and now a “moving platform for the sonic and visual arts”. Basically a vast, industrial party boat.

You can see Swiss sonic artist Urs Blaser discussing the ship below, and read up on its illustrious past on this page.

‘Crystalised’ three-piece The xx have announced a three-date, London-exclusive micro tour, which will serve as a live primer for the band’s busy festival season. Given that demand for the shows is anticipated to be high, spaces at each date are available via an online lottery closing on 8 May. Successful applicants will be contacted with a code, and can then purchase tickets for their chosen event. This isn’t a free-for-all sort of lottery, mind, passes are priced at £19.50 plus a booking fee.

And said dates are:

14 May: Islington, Electrowerkz
15 May Hackney, Chats Palace
18 May Battersea, Battersea Arts Centre

The Independent Label Market will hit East London’s Spitalfields market for a second time next month, this time joined by four new labels: Because, Phantasy Sound, Transgressive and Warp. Many of last year’s shopkeepers, not least Ninja Tune, Wichita, Fire Records, Critical Heights, Lanark Records, Full Time Hobby and XL, will also host stalls.

Speaking about last year’s event, held in December, Stephen Bass – boss of 2011 ILM participants Moshi Moshi – told ThisWeek: “This turned out to be the surprise most fun and satisfying event of the year so far. With the atmosphere of the best festival and a real sense of heart and purpose this simple but effective idea seemed to hit the nail on the head when it came to ideas about how the music industry might actually be able to start re-igniting the imaginations of the British buying public again”.

The market will take place on 19 May. More information from the ILM Tumblr.

Festifeel is a non-profit live music event, which was first staged last year, and  is hosted by the Boob Team at breast cancer charity CoppaFeel!

With Fearne Cotton appointed as its curator (no, really), Festifeel 2012 – which takes place at The Queen Of Hoxton on 4 Jun – will feature artists including Slow Club, The View, Newton Faulkner, The Milk, Jamie N Commons and Chew Lips across its all-day roster. You can preview tracks by the booked acts via this Spotify sampler.

All proceeds from ticket sales will go towards  CoppaFeel!, of which Cotton is a patron (see, now it makes sense).

Full Festifeel details here.

By now you may know that musician/visual artistAntony Hegarty (he of melancholic piano-pop act Anthony & The Johnsons) has been enlisted to curate this year’s Meltdown festival. Well, Hegarty has just announced an initial list of acts set to perform at the event, which is staged at the Southbank Centre between 1-12 Aug under the banner ‘Future Feminism’.

Alongside the diverse likes of Planningtorock, CocoRosie and Buffy Sainte Marie, the line-up thus far also features Soft Cell new-waver Marc Almond and cult singer-songwriters Diamanda Galas and Laurie Anderson, who represent the 1990s-era New York  scene in which Antony earned his own alt stripes.

These artists share the Meltdown roster with ex-Coil twosome, Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown, who as Cyclobe will co-score four Derek Jarman shorts with David Tibet of experimental band Current 93′s new venture, Myninerest.

The festival will also feature a rare sighting of Elizabeth Fraser, who’ll play her first proper dates since her 1998 departure from the Cocteau Twins at the Royal Festival Hall on 6 and 7 Aug.

Says Antony of his choices: “I dreamed of assembling a constellation of courageous artists, all of whom have used their platforms as cultural producers to challenge us. They have exhibited a ferocity in their pursuit of beauty, and, falling like a guillotine behind it, justice”.

Further updates and ticketing info at meltdown.southbankcentre.co.uk

Dionne Warwick and a glittering musical horde are to perform as part of a gala evening hosted by The Hunger Project, a charity combating international famine and poverty.

Also appearing at the event, which will mark World Hunger Day, is a diverse cast covering the classic (Sir Cliff Richard, Boy George, Tony Hadley), and the contemporary (Alexandra Burke, Joe McElderry, Katie Melua), with special accompaniment courtesy of the Southbank Sinfonia orchestra and London Community Gospel Choir.

You can buy tickets for the concert, which takes place at the Royal Albert Hall on 28 May, here.

Shoegazing youths SCUM are to take up a one-night residency at The Bishopsgate Institute in East London, playing live and curating a range of music, poetry and film by their artistic associates.

With the band’s debut album ‘Again Into Eyes’ set for a reissue later in the year, the event – which is titled ‘The Reading Of The Truth’ – will take place on 26 May.

And here are SCUM being very nonchalant/blurry in their video for ‘Amber Hands’:

As the above headline all but reveals, Cypress Hill are destined to play a stand-alone date at The Forum in Kentish Town.

The veteran hip hop group, who will visit the London venue on 5 Jun, are at the moment promoting ‘Cypress x Rusko’, their collaborative racket with the dubstep producer.

Cypress rapper Sen Dog says this of the EP (which, despite being billed for release this month, doesn’t seem to be out yet): “I think dubstep is a natural progression of hip hop. Especially the way that we formulated it with Rusko, there’s definitely some roughness to it”.

If you like, you can hear that rough-cut dub hop hybrid demonstrated in the below clip for ‘Cypress x Rusko’ track, ‘Roll In, Light It’:

A quip-tastic comedy line-up comprising Dylan Moran, Alan Davies, Milton Jones and radio DJ Greg Burns has just been confirmed for the opening gala of the Scipmylo Festival, an east London comedy/theatre/music/arts extravaganza taking place from 27 Jul – 12 Aug.

Scipmylo’s second ever edition will this year happen at Hackney Marshes, thus boasting a strong vantage point from which to view the Stratford Olympic park. Ever the good sport, star stand-up Alan Davies discusses his preparations for the gala: “I’m up at 4am every today being funny in training for this show. The drug-testing is intrusive but it’s part of the life of a top athlete”.

The full 2012 programme is as yet unannounced, but to give you an idea of the calibre of the acts, the main attractions of last year’s event included Ed Byrne, Stephen K Amos, Andrew Maxwell and Tom Allen.

It’s reasonable to anticipate similar great things from Scipmylo 2012, so watch this space for updates.

Camden’s sprawling Crawl music festival has sketched the outline of its first ever Crawlternative Media Expo (or CAME, if you like), which will run parallel to the main event on 5-7 May.

Co-hosted by arts collectives Alternative Press, Poster Roast and Lexington Record Fair, the exhibition will feature instructional workshops and talks on zine-making, poster design and screen printing techniques by leading experts in the underground arts.

Due to be staged at Camden’s St Michaels Church from 1-8pm each day, the fair will also feature live musical interludes from Toy, Dutch Uncles, Sauna Youth and Evi Vine.

More details here.

Pianist and stand-up (or should that be ‘sit-down’?) comi-cabaret character Tim Minchin will grace Somerset House’s grand courtyard stage this year as top-billed headliner of its Summer Series of live music. Katy B, The Temper Trap, M83, Paloma Faith, The Enemy, Tindersticks and Jill Scott will also take charge of their own individual dates, with Ms Scott playing for two nights on 9 and 10 Jul.

The events will also include a one-off Afrobeat spectacular on 14 Jul, featuring Fela Kuti disciples Olu Maintain, Cappo Snoop and Atumpan.

A number of supporting acts are still to be announced, but you can find the full listings as they look so far here.

Singer-songwriter José González is to appear alongside Saharan band Tiniarwen at a joint concert, collaborating live at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire on 3 May.

The two rarely-seen acts will share a double bill coordinated by promoter SoundCrash Music, who are, incidentally, also hosting a three hour DJ set by Ninja Tune signing Bonobo on the other side of London just under a month later.

Taking place on 1 Jun at the 2932 East warehouse in Hackney, the latter line-up also co-stars Raffertie and Throwing Snow. Without wishing to steal José’s thunder, or anything.

Refer to the SoundCrash site for further details: www.soundcrashmusic.com

The Other Cinema are to stage twin London screenings of Mathieu Kassovitz’s brutal cult stalwart, ‘La Haine’, as a pertinent means of marking the capital’s forthcoming Mayoral elections.

In fact, the film will play on the very eve of said civic vote, with electronica collective Asian Dub Fundation playing their acclaimed soundtrack live as the picture plays. With the aim of engaging the community at the heart of the ‘La Haine’-esque urban violence that broke out during last Summer’s riot’s, the organisers’ chosen site for a free locals-only screening on 2 May is the Broadwater Farm Centre in Tottenham.

Londoners at large will have a second viewing opportunity at the Troxy in Limehouse on 4 May, while residents of the film’s on-screen setting will have their chance at the live-scored version’s Parisian premiere on 5 May. Find details/ticket links here.

The film’s writer and creator Kassowitz, who earned a Best Director award at Cannes upon its first release in 1995, adds: “I’m honored that ‘La Haine’ still represents 17 years later that much needed rebellious energy against a machine we don’t agree with. Burning and looting are not expressions of violence, but a scream for help and respect. No justice. No peace”.

Now see this:

Active Child is to play live at London’s Village Underground on 5 Jul, the show being staged in sustained support of his debut full-length, ‘You Are All I See’.

The electronic artist, aka Pat Grossi, takes the topmost quarter of a billing also featuring The Invisible, Hospitality and NZCA/Lines.

Tickets for the show, which is rather delightfully entitled ‘Sunsets: A Mid-Summer party’, are available here.

And if you’d like an Active Child memento that costs less (in fact, it’s costless), why not download this CFCF remix of Grossi’s sublime ‘High Priestess’:

A new documentary called ‘Mission To Lars’ is to receive a limited release through Picturehouse cinemas in the UK this June, the first of which is a charity screening on 8 May at Notting Hill’s The Gate.

The film follows journalist Kate Spicer as she tries to help her brother Tom, who is diagnosed with Fragile X Syndrome, a form of autism, to achieve his lifelong goal of meeting Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. The film sees the pair travel from the care home in Exmouth, Devon where Tom lives on a road trip through America in search of the musician.

Says Kate: “We had this fantasy of hitting the road with Tom and recreating some of the magic of our teenage years cruising around in £100 cars, eating Burger King and listening to heavy metal on the tape deck. We thought it would be fun, bonding. We wanted to do something good for our brother. We were also sick of him endlessly asking”.

All profits from the film will be donated to Mencap, and the soundtrack features contributions donated to the project by artists including Bob Dylan, Devendra Banhart and Blur, plus an original score written by Mike Lindsay from Tunng.

Watch the trailer for the film here:

Promoter Black Atlantic is to soon stage the first in a series of label-curated ‘Hidden Depths’ nights, partnering with electronic independent Ninja Tune to present jazz auteur Thundercat, London producer Floating Points, dub hop innovator Slugabed, and celebrated bass figurehead Offshore live at Fabric in London.

Organised in association with FACT Magazine and Tiger Beer, the event takes place on 16 May. Visit its Facebook event page here.