In the second of his journeys through reggae’s extraordinary versions, Chris Lane goes to the Far East with Don Drummond and Judy Garland

In the first of a new column charting the journey of popular songs through generations of Jamaican music, Chris Lane of Dub Organiser and Fashion Records follows the story of a mysterious instrumental by The Supersonics

In a sequel to his 2013 Bell Labs Flutes In Crisis column, Clive Bell takes a measure of the current state of Japan’s traditional bamboo flute

The Beijing based musician deploys unplugged electronic music in the struggle against bad sound systems

Noisemakers are being used as guinea pigs to test new art spaces. It won’t last, predicts musician, artist and Wire contributor Yan Jun after a poorly attended gig in the capital of southwestern China’s Sichuan province

“Why and how can a rock band like The Observatory exist in such a silent dream state?” Yan Jun discusses censorship amid the noise and silence of Singapore

“Why did this gentleman blow up our speaker, mom?” “It’s sound art, dear.”

The musician and poet sounds out the meaning of his life in art

“Is it possible we’ve come full circle?” asks Clive Bell, as he observes more than a century of revolutions in recording technology, from Thomas Edison's tinfoil phonograph to pink vinyl in Sainsburys

Clive Bell takes a look the unlikely musical partnership found in birdsong contests across the globe

Clive Bell unties some new historical knots binding centuries-old Celtic chants, Mediterranean piping, and more

Jennifer Walshe's Aisteach Foundation fakes a history of Irish avant garde activity to cover for the lack of a real one. By Clive Bell

Could the success of Leicester City FC be down to the ancient power of South East Asian music, asks Clive Bell

“I know when I’m capturing the raag and when I’m not,” declares Sangi Rangi website founder and sarangi archivist Nicolas Magriel, talking up the instrument considered the black sheep of India's musical heritage. By Clive Bell.

Read The Wire contributor Nathan Budzinski's report on last year's Dark Ecology trip, a five day cultural tour put on by Amsterdam's Sonic Acts festival.

Has the trend towards cautious messaging drained our culture of art that confronts us with the brutal reality of the choices we face? asks Phil England

Frances Morgan ponders communication, movement and technology as Mark Fell presents Recursive Frame Analysis

Wagakki Band deploy traditional Japanese instruments at dazzling speed to stay ahead of the future, says Clive Bell

Daisy Hyde speaks with the Baltimore based producer trying to deconstruct dance music to get the feel-good out – and bring in a new kind of fun

Richard Thomas checks out – but not into – London's boutique Ace Hotel Shoreditch and its Paul Smith-curated, Moog supported experimental music residency series, where he finds Keiji Haino snoozing, chats Polari with cultural engineers while sipping on a Bibi Spritz and more. But was it all a dream? Or a nightmare?

"A dizzying wealth of details of a peripatetic life in art." Daniel Spicer reports back from the first major museum retrospective of Chilean artist, writer, director and counter cultural magus Alejandro Jodorowsky