Philip Clark on Deutsche Grammophon's 1970s forays into free improvisation, and the impact of DG's current boss, former A&R pop picker Max Hole

Damon Krukowski on musicians who drop their mother tongue and sing in English – and why it's great to sing in Welsh

"Some recordists are like hoarders, bringing home whatever they find outside with little discrimination as to what's worth preserving and what’s not." Derek Walmsley sorts through The Wire's post bag in search of the person behind the mic.

Emily Bick feels the qualitative in the different approaches improvisors and composers take to the sonification of data sets

Clive Bell on the recent furore over Sam Callow's accompaniments to traditional British folk singers.

“We have, at the present time, a destruction taking place, in and of nature, unprecedented in history..."

Damon Krukowski imagines a different analogue metaphor for our digital music making tools

“That musician really gets up my nose”. Like a bloodhound, Mr Bell picks up on the scent of a new musical accompaniment and asks whether it's gesamtkunstwerk or gimmick.

Yan Jun chews over some spicy food and experimental music: What are these enlargements of bodily experience reacting to?

Since the pirate stations shipped out, the FM radio spectrum is being repopulated by the people

A&R time travellers and unnecessary reissues are stifling a new generation of artists, says Britt Brown. Where is our faith in art made by the living?

Richard Thomas is left hungry for ideas by the consumer feeding frenzies unleashed by music festival programmers out to fill every seat at the table

Clive Bell wonders about the fate of the musician-instrument relationship in the age of the laptop.

"The end of the world has already happened and we are all living in that apocalypse together." Yan Jun takes the temperature of two of China's biggest cities and their music.

Novelist and poet Stewart Home listens in to getting pumped, and works out some listening suggestions for the more discerning gym bunny.

Writer, musician and activist Christopher DeLaurenti on sonic protest and his field recordings of social change.

Yan Jun on beer in Singapore, venues in Beijing and bloody Russians

Tony Herrington crashes Noise of Art's bogus celebration of 100 years of electronic music.

Clive Bell laces up his travellin' shoes and goes for a wander through the clips, clops and squeaks of footwear in music.

Richard Thomas weathers obscure, dilapidated venues and relcalcitrant promoters to take the pulse of NIFI – Non-Idiomatic Free Improvisation music