Zeena Parkins & Ikue Mori
Steve Smith hears strange fruit from the harp and drum machine of downtown NYC's hardest working women

Henry Flynt
Alan Licht hears how the minimalist and avant Country fiddler's music stretches back to the origins of conceptual art

Mats Gustafsson
The Swedish saxophonist's free jazz wake-up calls are recharged with punk and garage rock energy. By Rob Young

Primer: Psychedelic Soul
Peter Shapiro offers a user's guide to the unlikely late 60s collisions between hippy rock and righteous black music

Invisible Jukebox: Jennifer Herrema
The former Royal Trux driver identifies a lorryload of tracks in our blindfold challenge. Tested by Anne Hilde Neset

Radian
Vienna's improvising rock trio point the microscope towards the intricacies of nanosound. By Will Montgomery

Juana Molina
She abandoned a successful career in Argentinian TV comedy for a new life in electronic song. By David Stubbs

Comets On Fire
San Francisco noise maximalists stoke up an avant rock conflagration. By Marc Masters

Global Ear
Avi Pitchon on the underground scene thriving among the Russian expat community in Tel Aviv

Epiphanies
John Gill relives the moment he realised Can were the ultimate queer group

Print Run
America Over The Water, by Shirley Collins; Making Beats: The Art Of Sample-Based HipHop, by Joseph G Schloss; For The End Of Time: The Story Of The Messiaen Quartet, by Rebecca Rischin; Audio Culture: Readings In Modern Music, edited by Christoph Cox & Daniel Warner; Highway 61 Revisited, by Gene Santoro.

Cross Platform
Michael J Schumacher integrates sound and architecture at his Diapason Gallery, while making over his apartment into a listening hotel. By Julian Cowley
Plus: The International Symposium Of Electronic Arts on the high seas; Per->SON in Cologne; Semiconductor in Brighton; making Heavy Conversation out of a mixed media box; Psychic TV and Warp Vision DVDs. Plus Tom Recchion's Inner Sleeve featuring John and Yoko's Unfinished Music No 1: Two Virgins

On Location
Sonic Youth, Blurt and DKT/MC5 in London, plus the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival and Oslo Jazz Festival.