Crammed Discs are set to reissue Yasuaki Shimizu's Music For Commercials on 15 September. The album is a collection of 23 short pieces, conceived as soundtracks for Japanese TV commercials for corporations like “Seiko”, “Sharp” and “Honda”, as its track titles indicate.

“TV commercials in the late 70s and 80s didn’t advertise the practical features of products, they were meant to build strategic corporate images,” recalls Shimizu. “You might even say they took a musical approach in their visual expression, though perhaps that’s an overstatement. Being restricted to a time span of a minute or less made it ideal work for refining my intuitive powers. I made a conscious choice not to remix the tracks for this album. The final version of the original recordings appear here untouched, although I do remember working to link the individual tunes, and on the overall mood.”

Saxophonist, electronic music producer and composer Shimizu has released numerous albums and collaborated with artists such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, DJ Towa Tei, Van Dyke Parks, Björk and Manu Dibango, among many others. Remastered for reissue in CD and LP formats, Music For Commercials is released on 15 September by Crammed Discs. Listen to a couple of the tracks featured below:

New York based curatorial platform Blank Forms launches its first annual benefit with a concert honouring Marshall Allen and Sun Ra Arkestra in September. “Please join us for drinks, hors d’oeuvres and a special performance by The Arkestra,” invites the artist initiative. Also playing are Detroit house producer Mike Huckaby (who in 2011 released two volumes of Sun Ra edits) and New Jersey's Yo La Tengo. Funds raised will go towards financing next year's Blank Forms programme.

Blank Forms was founded in 2016 by former ISSUE Project Room artistic director Lawrence Kumpf, and its artistic and curatorial committee are Kathy Brew, Nadia Berenstein, Daniel Carter, Steve Dalachinsky, Henry and Margaret Davis Grimes, David Grubbs, Mike Huckaby, Branden W Joseph, Josiah McElheny, Joe McPhee, Tony Oursler, Yuko Otomo, William Parker, Jeff Preiss, Matana Roberts, Marina Rosenfeld and Felicity Scott.

The benefit will take place on 12 September at Ukrainian National Home, New York, with tickets starting at $125 for a seat, appetizers and drinks, and rising to $5000 for a priority front row spot for ten guests.

The Iowa born vocalist Patty Waters, who was famously discovered by Albert Ayler in 1960s New York, will make a rare UK appearance in December, when she takes up a two day residency at London’s Cafe Oto. Ayler introduced her to ESP-Disk's Bernard Stollman, who went on to release two Patty Waters albums, Sings (1965) and College Tour (1966). After she gave birth to her son in 1969, Waters moved to California and didn't return to music (barring a few sporadic performances) until her 1996 album Love Songs (Jazz Focus). In 2004 she released a collection of previously unissued recordings made between 1962–79 called You Thrill Me: A Musical Odyssey. Since then she has performed live a few times, notably in 2006 when she toured with Henry Grimes.

The London residency will run from 6–7 December. Tickets are on sale now to Cafe Oto’s members, and will be available to the general public from 11am on 23 August.

Listen to Patty Waters's version of the song “Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair”.

This week, Berlin's Pop-Kultur festival stages an exhibition and accompanying panel discussion about the promo stickers plastered on records and CDs. Though they've become less visible in the digital consumer era, they’re arguably on a comeback given the vinyl renaissance. The exhibition and panel will focus on the importance of the sticker as a sometimes essential element of the design of the finished product.

Curated by Tim Tetzner, the Sticker Removals: The Visual Anthropology Of The Hype Sticker exhibition will look at the design work of Ata Macias, Ektro Records, Lo Recordings, Non-Format, Rune Grammofon, Tom Backström, Warp Records and other imprints. And Tetzner is also the moderator of the panel, called Peeled Off, Overseen And Thrown Away – The Hype Sticker’s Changing Relevance In The Light Of Digitisation, which will discuss the importance of these tiny, sticky marketing tools. Also on the panel is Toby Cornish from the Berlin design agency Jutojo and Backström, a graphic designer, illustrator and founder of the Helsinki's Erikoisdance label.

“The hype sticker… wasn’t that the annoying little thing on the outside wrapping of records or CDs?” asks Pop-Kultur. “The hype sticker always led a marginal existence – and then all but completely disappeared with music’s digitisation. But in the course of the current vinyl revival, it has made a comeback and now looks better than ever.”

The exhibition will run from 24–26 August, with the panel debate taking place on 24 August at 8pm.

DMC have confirmed London Posse as headline act for this year’s World DJ Championships Final. The group, featuring Rodney P, Bionic, DJ Biznizz and Sipho, formed in 1986; their 1990 debut album Gangster Chronicle is widely considered a landmark in UK hiphop. The Posse reformed earlier this year for a series of shows to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their debut single London Posse/My Beatbox Reggae Style (Big Life).

The line-up for the final will also include a live tribute to recently passed DJ Daredevil (aka Ben Smith) by a turntablist supergroup comprised of Prime Cuts, DJ Woody and Matman.

The final will be held at Koko, London on 1 October

A self-titled book of Asparagus Piss Raindrop scores and documents will be published this month. Founded back in 2012 by Fritz Welch and Neil Davidson, Asparagus Piss Raindrop describe themselves as “a crypto conceptual science fiction anti climax band”, with many of their members coming from Glasgow's free music scene. They draw inspiration from children’s games, group therapy, shapeshifting, geology, gender theory, and more, with previous works including a six person-plus roller disco with amplified rink titled “It’s Called Discharge”; “The Scented Jackhammer (Journey)”, which teaches participants how to travel underground using their sense of smell; and “Trans Poncho In Posse”, a three hour collaborative composition built around “slug reproduction”. The band’s ever-expanding membership includes Welch and Davidson, plus Liene Rozite, Julia Scott, Stuart Arnot, John Cromar, Tuukka Asplund, Annie Crabtree, Catherine Robb, Paige Martin, Lea Cummings, Armin Sturm, Penny Chivas, Anna McLaughlan, Lucy Duncombe, Sue Fitzpatrick, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, Nickolaus Typaldos, Zerek Kempf, Uschi Luz, Rhodri Davies, Jennifer Walsh, Sharon Gal and many others.

This first edition will not be the final shape of the book, however. Publication Studio Glasgow promise that new editions will be published as and when the outfit produce new works.

Taking place at CCA Glasgow on 25 August, Asparagus Piss Raindrop’s book launch will feature readings and performances from Liene Rozite, Fritz Welch, Julia Letitia Scott and Neil Davidson. It's free to attend but you need to book your place here.

A solidarity event has been organised in Berlin to raise international awareness of Auróra cultural centre in Budapest’s eighth district, now its existence is under threat following an 18 hour police raid. On 20 August, ZK/U Center for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin will present an evening of films and discussion about the current situation of Auróra in the broader context of Hungarian politics.

Auróra is not only a significant hub for music and art, it’s home to organisations advocating the rights of marginalised groups such as Roma, LGBTQI, sex workers, the homeless, and people with substance abuse problems. Founded in 2014 by the Jewish organisation Marom, it is also home to the Jewish community Dor Hadash.

The police raid instigated by local government resulted in the arrest of two visitors for possession of personal use quantities of marijuana. The mayor of the eighth district subsequently revoked Auróra's trade license, eliminating 80 per cent of its revenue from selling food and drink.

“The whole story of Auróra perfectly fits to the political trends in Hungary, where the far right is continuously strengthening, hatefulness is the essential part of the government's communication and the prime minister states that liberal democracy must be transitioned to illiberal democracy (whatever that means),” reads a statement posted on Auróra’s website. “Recently, Auróra has taken a strong stand against the Hungarian government's legislative efforts to impede the work of the internationally renowned Central European University (CEU), foreign agent laws against internationally connected NGOs and the anti-Semitic campaigns against CEU initiator and supporter George Soros.”

Auróra was featured in Nikolaus Gerszewski’s Global Ear report from Budapest in The Wire 380. Subscribers can read it at Exact Editions.

The centre is still operating but it's asking for support to maintain activities and help fund its legal action to regain its trade license. The ZK/U Center for Art and Urbanistics’ solidarity event in Berlin is free but donations are welcome. Alternatively you can donate via their support page.

Mazen Kerbaj's new graphic novel-cum-diary recounts his experiences in Lebanon during the Israeli bombing raids of 2006. Called Beirut Won’t Cry, it’s compiled from his drawings, comics and writings of the time. “Mazen knows that he is what we in the West refer to as 'the other', those whom we do not mourn and scarcely consider," writes graphic novelist Joe Sacco in his introduction. "And if he seems, on closer inspection, more 'like us' (he is, after all, a highly caffeinated, whiskey-drinking experimental musician from the cosmopolitan bubble that exists in a certain part of Beirut) and thus worthy of empathy, he might bristle at a further mischaracterisation. Mazen, his family, his friends, his son and his lover are neither 'the other' nor 'like us' – they are themselves and it is by virtue of their naked, vulnerable, individual humanity that they deserve our rapt attention.”

Beirut Won’t Cry is written in English, French and Arabic. Its book launch takes place at Papercup, Beirut, on 23 August but you can pre-order it via Fantagraphics.

Berlin promoter Manuela Benetton will continue her series of site-specific church events with three concerts in autumn. This run begins at Berlin's Elisabethkirche on 16 September with the premiere of a new collaborative work called The Speaker, a composition for spoken word, electronics, field recordings and string instruments created by Pan Daijing, Valerio Tricoli and Werner Dafeldecker. Argentinian composer Beatriz Ferreyra will open the concert.

On 7 October Ellen Fullman performs on her Long String Instrument at Villa Elisabeth, formerly Elisabethkirche’s parish hall, which opened in 1907. She will be joined by Jörg Hiller aka Konrad Sprenger on computer-controlled multichannel guitar. Finally, on 7 November Charlemagne Palestine will play the organ at Sophienkirche, with a vocal and synth performance by Stine Janvin completing the bill.

You can listen to an excerpt from The Speaker below. More information can be found via Facebook.

Edited on 18 August 2017: The article originally stated that these three shows would mark the end of Benetton's series. However it has now been announced that the series will continue. Details of future events yet to be confirmed

Manchester’s Graham Massey (Biting Tongues/808 State) and Istanbul's Umut Çağlar (Konstrukt) will take up a ten day Samarbeta Music residency at Salford’s Islington Mill. Running from 22 August–1 September, this is their second collaboration since 2015, when they also worked with saxophonist David McLean. That meeting resulted in the album Live At Islington Mill, released by the Austin label Astral Spirits.

Samarbeta say they hope the duo’s renewed meeting of minds will create “a mash of past and present, techno and jazz, DJ and producer and Istanbul vs Manchester”. In the same spirit, last year the Mill presented Toolshed Vs Konstrukt, featuring Massey's 28 piece big band and Çağlar's free music group, who since their inception in 2008 have also performed with Peter Brötzmann, Marshall Allen and Evan Parker.

The plan is for the duo to record an album during their residency, which will close with a live performance in Manchester on 1 September. You can keep up to date with developments at Samarbeta's website.