Writer and musician John Pietaro on the “post-modern experimentalist embedded in the jazz tradition” who co-founded Ornette's Prime Time

Ex-Wire staffer Frances Morgan selects her favourite articles from just some of The Wire's themed issues

Andy Hamilton picks five articles from The Wire archive that cast some light on the art of improvisation – pieces which, he says, have helped him “develop a view of improvisation that involves an 'aesthetics of imperfection', in dynamic opposition to composition but, as Rohan de Saram comments, ‘making its own laws’.”

Richard Thomas travels to the University of Plymouth for a rare audiovisual reunion of film maker Malcolm Le Grice and AMM stalwart Keith Rowe

A month after his death, the Sähkö founder and friend recalls a musician who “created a language of his own”

Read an extract of Paul Steinbeck's history of Chicago's avant garde jazz ensemble

In the first in our series of contributors unlocking the vaults to The Wire's 400 issue archive, Brian Morton picks out some of its standout articles

“Clone Records is a label that has 25 years in business and still has no hit record. So basically it’s a complete failure and therefore we're still around,” says Serge Verschuur of Rotterdam's leading electro label and shop. To mark its anniversary he talks to Meg Woof about music and the dance of time

The Wire's Rob Young recalls the trouser-shaking subsonics of Pansonic’s “Nordic King Tubby”

The UK improvisor recalls his years with the young Roland UK company and his relationship with Ikutaro Kakehashi

Wire writer Robert Barry's new book shows how new sonic forms emerged from 200 years of utopian possibilities and technological constraints

Philip Clark talks to the composer about a new work to be performed at The Long Now in Berlin

On the closing weekend of Berlin's 30th Transmediale festival, the multimedia artist talks to The Wire's deputy editor about language, stories and the breakdown of democracy

“We would hear about the marching soldiers in Belgium, in France, in Italy, wherever, marching, marching, marching to Russia and of course it was a self-cancelling march.” In the wake of Metzger's death, the composer and harpist remembers their collaborations

Over the last four decades, New Zealand musician Richard Nunns has headed the revival of taonga pūoro, fusing the traditional Māori instrument with modern forms of improvisation

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