James Kirby, the musician behind V/Vm and The Caretaker, has announced that he will shortly be taking down his V/Vm website along with all related microsites, including his blog History Always Favours The Winners. Although Kirby doesn't know exactly when he'll be taking the sites down, he says that it will happen sometime before the end of the year.

Kirby, who has been regularly making his music available online at Brainwashed.com since 1996, goes on to say "It's a good time for it right now, to withdraw at a time when literally everything is twittered/twattered non stop and uploaded to three hundred sites or more... This year I have enjoyed so far as I have released nothing new..." Despite the impending online purge Kirby says "everything will be replaced by something, not nothing" and that new works by The Caretaker and Leyland Kirby are in the pipeline.

France's Institute For The Coordination Of Scientific And Musical Research (IRCAM for short) is offering scholarships to artists and scholars at the beginning of their careers who would like to spend a period of residency at IRCAM in Paris. The residency offers a group of candidates the opportunity to develop their own music research projects with one or more of IRCAM's project teams. They offer a scholarship of €1200 but don't cover travel or lodging costs. Since opening in 1977 under the directorship of composer Pierre Boulez, IRCAM has had an important role in the development of electroacoustic music and sound art. The deadline for application is 30 September, click here for more information.

Contemporary music label NMC Recordings has launched The Music Map, an interactive website which allows visitors to explore relationships between composers, their influences and their work. It contains all of the artists whose work has been released on the label along with many more. NMC are also welcoming suggestions for changes or modifications.

Berlin's annual Transmediale festival of electronic arts and its musical offshoot Club Transmediale (CTM) are calling for works to be a part of the 2011 edition, which takes place in Berlin between 1–6 February. They're looking for a wide array of work as long as it addresses "globally complex, media immersed and technologically diverse society". They're also calling out for submissions for the The Vilém Flusser Theory Award, a media theory and research award. The deadline for submission is 31 July 2010. Click here for more information.

SoundFjord, a new, dedicated sound art gallery space is set to open with a celebration on 31 July, 4-8pm. The night features music from mimosa|moize, Dead Wood and Claire M Singer & Bill Thompson, a screening of Tune In by Esther Johnson, and Felicity Ford's Sonic Tuck Shop. Click here for more information and to RSVP

Following the inaugural event, the gallery kicks off their programme with Stillness.Subtropical/Stillness.Oceanic, an exhibition of work from the LA based sound artist Yann Novak which will run 4–25 August.

Berlin based artist Julian Rosefeldt will be the next artist featured at the BFI Gallery at London's Southbank Centre (currently hosting John Akomfrah's Mnemosyne). Rosefeldt initially trained as an architect but now specialises in large multi-channel films which play with narrative and sonic conventions in cinema. The work to be shown, American Night is a "political Western" about recent US foreign policy and was partly shot on a former Sergio Leone film set in southern Spain. The title refers to a technique in which footage shot in the daytime is filtered to imitate the look of that shot during night, a widely used effect in Cowboy and Western genre films. London BFI Southbank, 10 September–7 November, free.

Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier is to release her first solo record The Trip. The album, which is out 21 September on Drag City, features compositions written by Sadier, along with several cover tracks including Les Rita Mitsouko’s dance-funk-punk "Un Soir Un Chien" which was used in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1987 film, Soigne Ta Droite. The Trip was recorded with musicians Richard Swift and April March along with Julien Gasc and Emmanuel Mario, who previously collaborated on Sadier's post-Stereolab project Monade. Also, Sadier has plans for a European tour during October, click here for more details.

Founding member of the Anticon label and collective, Tim Holland (aka Sole), is releasing a book. The Pyre contains a poem written by Holland with illustrations by artist and film maker Ravi Zupa. According to Holland his poem is about the "story of civilization" drawing on influences such as Keats, Villon, Debord, Byron and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The book is accompanied by an "audiobook/album" containing over 20 tracks recorded using an analog 8-track. The publication of The Pyre follows Holland's departure from Anticon earlier this year. The Pyre is out 7 September, available from Soleone.org.

Birmingham's Capsule art and music production agency (organisers of the forthcoming Supersonic Festival, supported by The Wire) have recently launched the Home Of Metal digital archive. Home Of Metal aims to collect all types of memorabilia relating to Heavy Metal music from Birmingham and the Black Country, areas which they claim to be the birthplace of Metal.

They're inviting all Metallers around the world to share their passion for the music of West Midlands Metal groups such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Napalm Death and Godflesh and contribute stories and memorabilia by uploading images, sound files and film footage to their site. They're looking for everything from concert tickets to photographs, badges, album covers, t-shirts, demo tapes, fan letters, fanzines, flyers, lyrics, posters, press articles, set lists and promotional materials to build their online collection, which will be used for a series of exhibitions being developed for 2011.

JG Thirlwell has teamed up with Fred Bigot of Electronicat to collaborate on a new EP. Hydroze Plus consists of the songs "Overcoat" and "Calm Calm", as well as a Thirlwell remix of "Overcoat", called "Epi-Dose" and Bigot's remix of "Calm Calm" entitled "Belladonna". The EP is a vinyl only release in a limited edition of 500, available from the French art and music label Optical Sound. Hydroze Plus will be available digitally from Thirwell's own Ectopic Ents label at a later date.