In Praise of the Riff
Celebrating The Wire's 250th issue, we present a guide to rhythm, repetition, loops and trance, including Chris Sharp on riffs breaking away from rock and David Toop on the riff in free jazz.

Invisible Jukebox: Marshall Allen
The Arkestra leader tries to identify tracks by Coltrane, Ellington, MC5 and more. Tested by Edwin Pouncey

The Finnish underground
Matthew Wuethrich maps Finland's new DIY folk/ noise underground Avarus, Kemialliset, Ystävät, Es and more

John Peel RIP
David Stubbs eulogises the BBC DJ and broadcaster who died of a heart attack in October

Greg Davis
The insomniac Chicago sound researcher creates drones as a cure for his sleeplessness. By Marc Masters

irr.app.(ext.)
Rob Young dissects San Francisco surrealist musician and sound artist Matthew Waldron's exquisite corpses

Global Ear
Do you like Boer music? Andy Hamilton reports from Pretoria, South Africa.

Epiphanies
Susanna Glaser on the fine times to be had in South Wales in the mid-90s

Print Run
Louis Andriessen: De Staat, by Robert Adlington; Blows Like A Horn: Beat Writing, Jazz, Style And Markets In The Transformation Of US Culture, by Preston Whaley Jr; This Is Pop: In Search Of The Elusive At Experience Music Project, edited by Eric Weisbard.

Cross Platform
Dan Warburton visits Sons & Lumières - a gigantic sound art retrospective at the Pompidou Centre, Paris.
Plus, reviews of Bruce Nauman at Tate Modern, Villette Numérique, Cecil Taylor on film, and a new play about Delia Derbyshire called Standing Wave. Plus Adrian Shaughnessy's Inner Sleeve on Tortoise's TNT

On Location
Instal.04 in Glasgow plus the Perspectives Festival in Sweden, Streetmusic Arabe in London, Christian Wolff at 70 in Cambridge, The Revolutionary Ensemble in New York and Ochre 10 in Gloucester.