30 minute improvisation with Syd Barrett included on new box set The Early Years 1965–1972

Andy Hamilton visits St Johns Church in Seaham, County Durham, to watch the New York ensemble perform a new composition commissioned to mark the town's mining history

Edwin Pouncey recalls a walk in Manhattan with the Suicide vocalist

“It’s a strange thing, to wake in the morning and find yourself instantly severed from a collective ideal that has shaped your whole life in such a dramatic way,” reflects Unsound festival founder Mat Schulz, disconcerted to see Unsound autumn edition’s Dislocation theme politically derailed by UK Brexit’s victory

In the last in a series of articles on Prince, The Wire's Deputy Editor Joseph Stannard recalls five instances of Prince-related intensity

The songs Prince made under a female alias are the pinnacle of his career, says Derek Walmsley

DJ and producer Kirk Degiorgio talks with Detroit’s finest to uncover the inspirational influence of Prince on techno

Cartoonist Hazel Newlevant discusses Wendy & Lisa’s contribution to Prince’s legacy

Alan Licht surveys the late composer and artist Tony Conrad’s film work, which ranged from structuralist classics to public access TV

Hanging loose with Tony Conrad, composer Mario Diaz de Leon learns that tuning is a political issue

Joseph Stannard offers a personal reflection on David Bowie's later career from Tin Machine to Blackstar

Emily Bick perceives the collapse of possibilities in the wake of Bowie's death

Read an essay by Stewart Smith on the cosmic jazz connection of 2015, as featured in The Wire 383

Stevphen Shukaitis hears the continuing resonance of Joe McPhee’s Nation Time, his 1971 free jazz album rooted in the US black cultural nationalist movement of the 1960s and 70s, and McPhee's later interest in the ideas of management theorist Edward de Bono

"They return transformed into insects, examples of voices with the power to sever the link with their human bodies and appetites".

Mike Barnes joins Boredoms and 87 other cymbal players on stage at London’s Barbican – but not before experiencing a symbolic crisis of choice

Stop six in Derek Walmsley's journeys through the new worlds sketched out by jazz from the mid-1950s onwards.

The Royal Trux duo conclude our online tribute to Ornette Coleman

The bass virtuoso was still a teenager when he joined Prime Time and got a lesson in how ideas are more important than notes

The bass player recalls his encounters with Ornette across 30 years and three continents