New album ORGANVM PERCEPTVS is what happens when machines listen to pop songs and humans transcribe and play the results, says Happy Valley Band leader David Kant

On the eve of her London Barbican concert on 18 February, with more UK dates to follow, singer and folk custodian Shirley Collins selects songs of the soil that speak direct to the heart

The author of This Is Memorial Device, a fictionalised account of post-punk in Lanarkshire, documents his ‘love letter’ to his hometown with a selection of annotated images

The Wire's Rob Young, author of the forthcoming biography of the legendary German rockers Can, remembers their late founder member

Following the death of contributor Mark Fisher on 13 January 2017, we present a selection of his articles for the magazine from the past ten years. Introductions by Derek Walmsley

Eleni Ikoniadou and Lendl Barcelos talk extreme frequencies, cryptic records and sonic warfare with the audiovisual research group

What’s to be learnt from Pauline Oliveros’s contribution to 1960s electronic music? Frances Morgan finds as many answers as questions in Important’s 2012 box set Reverberations

The Argentinian guitarist talks about telematic improvisations and Reynols’s noisy collaboration with the late composer

A series of playful postcards makes for a serious rethinking of women’s place in history

Hiphop prophets from Wu-Tang Clan to Jay Electronica use Five-Percent theology to reveal New York as a site of holy revelation. By Rob Turner

Disco historian Tim Lawrence, author of Love Saves The Day, remembers the late party purist's selection policy at parties in New York, London and Sapporo

A survey of performances and recordings of improvised church singing from the Outer Hebrides

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

The multilayered contexts and playful durations deployed across a new generation of video albums such as Beyoncé’s Lemonade and gallery installations including Ragnar Kjartansson’s Take Me Here By The Dishwasher recreate the quirks and tensions of old school listening habits.

“It was life and death at times”. Following Daniel Spicer's Primer on Spontaneous Music Ensemble in The Wire 392, Trevor Watts reflects on bizarre encounters and key moments from a life of gigging

From toadfish grunts in Panama to ice fields in Greenland, check out sounds, images and notes from the recordist’s expeditions around the globe

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

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

Stefhan Caddick and Farm Hand's Noctule creates an environment incorporating the sounds of cavers, bats and echoes in a Welsh cave. The Wire's Deputy Editor Emily Bick talks to them in advance of their appearance at the Green Man Festival

The New York trumpeter and composer celebrates the USA’s lesser known maverick composers