The Portal
Keijo Virtanen (1951–2022)
September 2022

The veteran Finnish DIY musician has died aged 71. Read Matthew Wuethrich's 2007 interview with the artist via our digital archive.
The veteran Finnish DIY musician has died aged 71. Read Matthew Wuethrich's 2007 interview with the artist via our digital archive.
Robert Barry selects some of his favourite titles from the catalogue of the adventurous German music book publisher
“Free jazz is a real reflection of the times and everything that’s going on [...] It puts beauty back into the world, it vibrates, I think it works on an anatomical level.” US trumpeter, composer and bandleader Jaimie Branch has died aged 39. Read her Invisible Jukebox interview from 2019 in our online archive.
Colleagues of Abdul Wadud share memories of the late cellist during his formative years in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1960s. By Pierre Crépon
As the globe-trotting free music label Leo Records plans an anniversary celebration its debonair founder hosts Clive Bell in a rare soiree
In a coda to the AMM feature in The Wire 461, pianist John Tilbury tells Clive Bell a personal story of the much-admired musical grandfather he never met
Former Scratch Orchestra member Stefan Szczelkun discusses the potential for mass music making contained in Cornelius Cardew’s Nature Study Notes and the Scratch Music book
Next stop on Chris Lane’s tour of the extraordinary versions of Jamaican popular music detours via UK TV police show Echo Four-Two
A moody funk instrumental by The Meters echoes through reggae in versions by Coxsone Dodd, Lee Perry and Harry Johnson, discovers Chris Lane in his latest column
Xenia Benivolski speaks to the Navajo noise musician, composer and sound artist about his most recent projects and winning the Pulitzer Prize For Music
Tom Welsh enjoys a rare audience with the sacred sound yogi who introduced La Monte Young to Indian vocal music and brought the first recordings of Pandit Pran Nath to America
Read Phil Freeman's 2018 interview with the prolific German synthesist and member of Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel and Cosmic Jokers, who died 26 April
In the next stop in his journey through reggae music’s extraordinary versions, Chris Lane checks in with Curtis Mayfield’s game-changing vocal group The Impressions
“There is movement in everything, even in those things that appear to be still.” Read The Wire 340's Epiphanies column written by DJ, composer and sound artist Mira Calix, who died on 26 March
Sound and multimedia artist Magda Stawarska-Beavan discusses her collaborative soundtrack work with Lubaina Himid as part of Himid's London Tate Modern exhibition. By Emily Bick.
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 the wake of the Afrofuturism festival of arts and music at New York’s Carnegie Hall, DeForrest Brown, Jr examines the liberating potential of the movement’s legacy
Miloš Hroch speaks to the Prague based quartet’s Tomáš Procházka and Jára Tarnovski about their collaborations with Japanese musicians, junkyard instruments and the improv scene in Czech Republic. Plus, Buh Records shares an advance stream of two tracks from their upcoming album Uzu Oto