British trans existence in 2025 is precarious, making the intersection of underground music and queer nightlife liberatory and life affirming, writes Rosie Esther Solomon

In The Wire 496, Jo Hutton argues that radiophonic art is its own highly developed and theorised artistic practice, not merely an offshoot of electroacoustic music

Philip Brophy analyses the musical rendering of emotional and cultural deception in Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s scores for Smile (2022) and season one of The White Lotus (2021)

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Flutist, sound artist and composer Barbara Held worked closely with Japanese composer Yasunao Tone, who died earlier this month. Here, she remembers their collaborations and friendship

In an extract from his new book, Jamie Taylor remembers the first time he went to visit Ken Patten’s studio, home to early iterations of The Human League, Vice Versa (later ABC), Heaven 17 and Clock DVA

Read an extract from Daniel Spicer’s Peter Brötzmann: Free-Jazz, Revolution And The Politics Of Improvisation, in which the author reconsiders the connections between the German saxophonist's playing and that of Albert Ayler

In The Wire 495, Daniel Spicer reviews five albums that form part of a Strata-East reissue programme that celebrates the rich legacy of the New York label

In an extract from his new book, US pianist Matthew Shipp outlines what he means when he talks about Black Mystery School pianists

In the third instalment of his rebooted Secret History of Film Music column, Philip Brophy analyses two horror scores by Gazelle Twin – Black Cab (2024) and Nocturne (2020) – and considers how psychological turmoil can be expressed in sound

Following the release of a new LP by the Orchestra Of Futurist Noise Intoners, director Luciano Chessa and Sanatorium Of Sound director Gerard Lebik discuss the legacy of Italian Futurist composer Luigi Russolo

In The Wire 495, Hugh Morris argues that the word jazzy denotes a cluster of cliches that neglects to engage with jazz itself

Following Michael Hurley’s death on 1 April, Ryan Meehan tracks the outsider folk singer and cartoonist’s journeys across America and remembers the restless bohemian spirit that powered them

In The Wire 494, Ken Hollings reviews two albums inspired by William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer