The National Jazz Archive has been awarded £83,300 by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Based in Essex, the Jazz Archive will spend the money on the Intergenerational Jazz Reminiscence Project, which is set to begin in January 2016. The project aims to give participants the opportunity to learn about and contribute to the National Jazz Archive through a programme of performance, oral history and reminiscence, and also to explore how different generations have promoted, peformed, supported and documented jazz's heritage. The archive will work in partnership with other specialist organisations including Age UK, Black Cultural Archives, Chelmsford Museums Service, Essex University, Loughton Youth Project, the Open University and local jazz clubs. More information can be found on their website.

London's bass weight label have gone into publishing. Dusk and Blackdown's Keysound label are set to release a book this December containing photographs from the label's regular photographer Nico Hogg. Written in collaboration with the label's co-founder Martin Clark aka Blackdown, London: Signs And Signifiers looks at how London's marginal spaces have changed over time. Images span from Wiley's childhood home to the London Riots of 2011. You can download a free chapter here.

Rewire festival has announced the first wave of acts to appear at the 2016 edition of the festival. Next year will mark the sixth time the three day festival has taken over various venues in The Hague's city centre. Acts include: Animal Collective, Mica Levi & Stargaze presenting Under The Skin, Battles, Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld, Xiu Xiu plays Twin Peaks, Ben UFO, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Beatrice Dillon, Poppy Ackroyd and more.

Rewire runs from 1–3 April, The Hague, Netherlands. Tickets are available now via their website.

A new installation centred on the Japanese vocaloid app Hatsune Miku has been added to the CTM 2016 programme. Called Still Be Here, the piece was conceived by Mari Matsutoya and designed by Laurel Halo. Drawing on the multiple possibilities offered by the Hatsune Miku humanoid synthesizer app, say the festival organisers, their performative installation aims to trace “the dynamics at play between fans, corporations and social desires” by using “a collage methodology with user-generated lyrics, referencing many other contributors and countless online authors and creative commons users”. Choreographer Darren Johnston and virtual artist LaTurbo Avedon have also contributed this Martin Sulzer production.

Wire readers might recall the Hatsune Miku vocaloid app has previously been deployed by Hijokaidan (in their side project Hatsune Kaidan).

Still Be Here will be presented on 5–6 February 2016.

Light In The Attic have announced the latest stage in their Lizzy Mercier Descloux series. Following the release last August of the Parisian poet and musician's debut LP Press Color, LITA is set to reissue Mercier Descloux's 1980s back catalogue, including Mambo Nassau (1981), Zulu Rock (1984), One For The Soul (1985) and Suspense (1988).

The records are available for pre-order now on CD, vinyl, or as a limited edition of 100 coloured wax bundles of all four albums via Light In The Attic's website.

New York City’s The Kitchen is set to stage the world premiere of Robert Ashley's Quicksand in January. Ashley finished the opera, based on his own novel of the same name, shortly before his death in 2014, aged 83. The narrative is entirely sung by Ashley to an electronic orchestra provided by Tom Hamilton. In addition the opera features the live performing presences of its choreographer Steve Paxton, Maura Gahan and Jurij Konjar. Lighting is by David Moodey. .

“I thought that I would try to make an opera libretto from a mystery story, told verbatim,” explained Ashley. The novel upon which it is based was published by Burning Books in 2011. The following year he asked Paxton to set the novel to movement. “Everything in the novel is true, except for a lot of the facts,” quipped Ashley on his publisher's website. Divided into three acts, each containing 16 scenes, the opera-novel tells the story of a composer coerced by a US agency called The Company into working as a spy.

Quicksand will receive its world premiere performance at The Kitchen, New York City, USA, on 28 January 2016. It then runs until 6 February. There are also plans to stage the opera in Europe, details TBC.

As we reported back in October, Mute and Spoon records are set to release a box set of solo works by Can’s founding member Irmin Schmidt. The 12 CD collection covers the entirety of Schmidt's solo works between 1981–2015, including his Irmin Schmidt & Kumo project and an array of soundtrack albums.

Subscribe to The Wire, or renew your subscription, this December and you will be entered into a draw to win one of these limited edition sets. We have three copies to give away so don’t be shy! We also have two Mute tote bags to send out to the lucky runners up.

Subscriber today and receive:

• The print magazine delivered to you monthly by direct mail
• Access to the complete online archive (evey issue since issue 1!)
• CDs & downloads
• Discounts in our online shop
• A chance to win either an Irmin Schmidt box set or a Mute tote bag!

Simply quote: Irmin Schmidt Box Set! in the comments sections when placing your order

The kickstarter campaign set up to fund the final stages of a documentary film about William Parker and Hamid Drake has ended over target. Directed by Michael Lucio Sternbach, Inner-Attunement looks at the “musical brotherhood of bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake”, with the pair discussing “their musical kinship and shamanistic sound ceremonies they deploy worldwide”. The film was previewed at the Anthology Archives during the 20th edition of New York's Vision Festival. The campaign, which ended on 28 November, reached a total of 181 backers and raised $11,394. “We did it!” cheered the organisers on their campaign page. “Inner-Attunement has successfully raised $11,394 via Kickstarter. Thank you. In fact, we have actually exceeded our goal! So grateful for all our backers for making this happen. We truly wish you were all here with us right now to celebrate! We look forward to sharing the film with you early next year and hope you are as moved as we are by the sounds and visions of Hamid Drake & William Parker.”

Watch a trailer of the documentary, with William Parker talking about Roland Kirk’s Volunteered Slavery

Resonance FM’s subsidiary DAB station Resonance Extra is now on air. We announced news of its launch back in October, and today Resonance Extra started transmitting. Progammed by Peter Lanceley, the station operates out of the UK seaside town of Brighton and can be heard locally via DAB. Its broadcasts are also streamed worldwide via their website. Transmitting 24/7 Resonance Extra’s programme includes Bob and Roberta Smith’s Make Your Own Damn Music, Dennis De Caires's Australian outsider music special Down Underground, and Sebastian Melmoth founder and multimedia artist Ilia Rogatchevski’s ambient post-rave morning show. Re-runs of The Wire's Adventures In Sound And Music will also be aired, featuring shows hosted by in-house staff members Derek Walmsley, Chris Bohn, Emily Bick and Joseph Stannard, among others. The station is currently calling for proposals.

Stream now! on extra.resonance.fm

Elijah and Skilliam have released a compilation of the best in grime for 2015. The pair, who have often been touted as changing the face of grime, founded the Butterz label in 2010, since when they’ve released the likes of Terror Danjah, Royal T, Swindle, Footsie and Flava D. Called Grime 2015, the Butterz compilation documents the recent resurgence in the music's popularity. “There's been more hype than ever around the artists, music and scene this year than we have ever seen,” remarks Elijah. “We wanted to put together something that serves as a good entry point to the vocal side of our music at this point in time.”

Grime 2015 features more than 40 MCs, including tracks from Skepta, Stormzy, Wiley, Kano, Big Narstie, JME, Giggs, D Double E, My Nu Leng and Mumdance. The Butterz label compilation is available here. Listen to a megamix below or stream the entire album via Spotify.

Elijah and Skilliam were subject to The Wire 365 Invisible Jukebox, tested by Joe Muggs.