Lou Reed
The great naysayer has just delivered his most sprawling work since Metal Machine Music: a sonic drama based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. In New York, he reflects on a lifetime of imbalance. By Alan Licht

Alan Silva
The Paris based improvising bassist, artist and pedagogue has spent 40 years dispensing solar energy along with Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, Frank Wright and his own massive Celestrial Communication Orchestra. By Dan Warburton

Primer: Mutant disco
A user's guide to the early 80s avant hustles of New York's Walter Gibbons, Arthur Russell, James White and August Darnell, plus Eurodisco mutations from Hi-Tension and PiL to Pigbag and The Rapture. By Peter Shapiro

Invisible Jukebox: Spring Heel Jack
London breakbeat duo turned experimental big bandleaders Ashley Wales and John Coxon try to identify tracks by Matthew Shipp, György Ligeti, Lemon Kittens, Harrison Birtwistle, Jimi Tenor and more. Tested by Mike Barnes

Supersilent
Since 1997 the Oslo quartet's intuitive improvisations, by turns fearsomely torrential and icily tranquil, have spearheaded Norway's new music assault. Julian Cowley meets their audio virus Helge Sten (aka Deathprod)

Helmut Lachenmann
Ever since his early associations with Luigi Nono and a Baader-Meinhof member, this German composer has remained one of contemporary classical music's most uncompromising outsiders. By Philip Clark

Out Hud
Hua Hsu exposes the small town, west coast roots of the flowering Brooklyn intellectual body movers

Charalambides
Byron Coley sketches a brief history of the Texas group that has quietly left an indelible mark on US rock improv

Global Ear
On a trip to St Petersburg, Jon Tye discovers a raft of Russian unorthodox sounds

Epiphanies
Rob Young goes nuts over a dadaistic John Cage recital

Print Run
Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of The Moog Synthesizer, by Trevor Pinch & Frank Trocco; What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians As Artists, Critics and Activists, by Eric Porter; Overtone Singing, by Mark C Van Tongeren

Cross Platform
Using footage rejected by news networks, a new CD reveals the human consequences of Western sanctions against Iraq. By Phil England
Plus: Review of: William Furlong: To Hear Yourself As Others Hear You; TG24 Exhibition; A Bookshelf On Top Of The Sky: 12 Stories About John Zorn; Åke Hodell DVD

On Location
Boom Bip + Buck 65 + Lali Puna, London Union Chapel; Mike Ladd + Beans, New York Northsix; Moreno+2, London Hammersmith Lyric Theatre; Heiner Goebbels: Hashirigaki London Barbican