In time-honoured fashion, hope sprang eternal for the British contenders in the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards, held last night in Los Angeles. Downton Abbey had picked up seven major nominations (and 16 in all, including various behind-the-scenes categories), while there were also high hopes for the multi-nominated Sherlock and gongtastic possibilities for the BBC detective series Luther and its star Idris Elba. 

Gaslamp Killer is Californian DJ-producer William Bensussen, beardy Weird Al Yankovich lookalike and one of the key figures in LA’s Brainfeeder label collective. His reputation began to rise around five years ago with an LA club night called Low End Theory that would play music rooted in hip hop and electronica, far from four-to-the-floor house - tending, in fact, towards the bizarre. His debut album is much anticipated by those who like their beats broken and their synthesisers gnarly.

Lee “Scratch” Perry and Friends: Disco Devil - The Jamaican Discomixes

Thomas H Green

Pet Shop Boys eleventh album leaps sideways into smooth, opulent US FM radio production in a way that will initially give long term fans palpitations. The duo sound… different. They recorded Elysium in Los Angeles with Grammy-winning Kanye West producer Andrew Dawson and it sounds that way too.

Welcome to another show, in which Joe guides us around some of the weirder, smokier corners of the broad church of hip hop, and discussion returns to how far genre can stretch and where originality can reside in a multi-channel, everything-available-at-once world. We also take a listen to more and less authentic sounds of South America courtesy of a Brit-in-Colombia, a Colombian Brit, and a legend of British underground sounds turning Colombian sounds into house music. There's some neo-psychedelia and neo-folk thrown into the mix for good measure.

There are a few things wrong with Episodes, the comedy series in which Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig play a British scriptwriting couple who take their hit sitcom across the pond, but there’s a lot more that’s right with it.

Many people will be having their first taste of the late Pina Bausch’s dance-theatre in this copious London retrospective of 10 of her “World City” productions; others will have bought into several of the series, possibly by now wondering how many hours they can take of her barbed view of men and women. For all of us, reading programme notes is beside the point; the background you need is what’s inside you, your memories, your songs, your susceptibilities.

David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars 40th Anniversary Edition

Howard Male

Tonight on Channel 4, a new music series begins with a fantastic premise. A group of music obsessives drive around the USA in a London black cab, finding interesting musicians and recording them performing and talking in the back of the cab. Sounds a little bit like the 2008 Stephen Fry in America series, doesn't it? Well maybe, except Black Cab Sessions has been broadcast online since 2007.

Watch the Black Cab Sessions trailer:

Every year before the Academy Awards speeches are tacitly composed, flowing gowns and priceless necklaces booked and no doubt small blameless animals slaughtered in the Roman style for good luck. Before the gladiators enter the ring, we at theartsdesk continue our novel take on the 2012 Oscars by allotting a category each and asked our film writers to sift through the nominations, tell you who they think will win, who they really would like to win, and who has been most egregiously overlooked by Oscar's overwhelmingly ageing white male judiciary.