Newcastle songwriter Richard Dawson will release his sixth solo album on 11 October. 2020 follows on from 2017 release Peasant and has the singer give voice to the modern day citizen, as opposed to the ancient stories depicted in previous releases.

“I was keen to avoid making another album set in the past so soon,” explains Dawson. “Peasant is an album that sounds like it’s covered in dry mud and twig scratches, but I had the feeling that this record needs to be incredibly direct, so that the songs are happening now.”

He continues, “I actually found it incredibly challenging writing in this setting; I think any poetic tricks, devices and grandiose sentiments I might have previously used got scrubbed away in the face of what the characters in these songs are trying to say. People’s thoughts are messy, awkward, conflicting. So whereas with Peasant there was much space for poetry, experimentation and wordplay, here it felt more appropriate to be straight and unvarnished.”

This winter Dawson will be touring across the UK, with dates at London Moth Club (19 November); Brighton Komedia (20); Manchester RCNM Concert Hall (21); Leeds Belgrave Music Hall (22); Liverpool Studio 2 (23); Edinburgh The Caves (26); Glasgow CCA (27); and Newcastle Sage Gateshead (13 December).

You can watch the video for album track “Jogging”, directed by Edwin Burdis, below. 2020 is released on Domino/Weird World. Pre-orders for CD and double LP are available now.

Leila, Daedelus, Oval, Arovane, Coppé featuring Hataken, Minotaur Shock, Loraine James and Sarasara are among those now confirmed to perform at this year's 24rpm all day festival. The line-up will also include DJ sets from Rob Hall, Gez Varley and Sofia Ilyas.

Happening at St John’s Church in west London’s Notting Hill area, label hosts Bit Phalanx have also promised more music in two more rooms, though they’ve yet to announce who’ll be appearing in them.

24rpm runs from 2–10:30pm on 5 October. Tickets are on sale now starting at £30.

Created for Portchester Castle in the south of England, Elaine Mitchener’s sound installation Les Murs Sont Témoins | These Walls Bear Witness examines the building’s past as a prison during the 18th and 19th centuries. The piece focuses on the period of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars between 1793–1815, when some 8000 prisoners of war were incarcerated there, over 2000 of them being African-Caribbean in origin.

Commissioned by the University Of Warwick, Mitchener collaborated on the piece with researchers Abigail Coppins and Professor Katherine Astbury, drawing on personal letters, registers and plays written and performed by the prisoners.

Les Murs Sont Témoins | These Walls Bear Witness is on show until the end of November 2019. On 15 November Mitchener will be in conversation with Astbury and Coppins .

Utrecht’s Le Guess Who? festival has announced the final additions to this year’s bill. They include a premiere of Patrick Higgins & Nicolas Jaar’s new project AEAEA; Deerhoof performing their new album Friend Opportunity; plus Aldous Harding, Quelle Chris, and a special collaboration between William Tyler and Mary Lattimore.

This year Le Guess Who? also launches Hidden Musics, a special section highlighting lesser known global music traditions curated by producer Ian Brennan and Glitterbeat Records founder Chris Eckman. Their programme includes performances from all-female Greek vocal ensemble Isokratisses, Pakistan’s Ustad Saami and Mexico’s La Bruja de Texcoco.

As previously announced, Le Guess Who? stages this year have been curated by Fatoumata Diawara, Iris van Herpen & Salvador Breed, Jenny Hval, Moon Duo, Patrick Higgins and The Bug.

Le Guess Who? runs from 7–10 November. Full details can be found on their website.

Stroboscopic Artefacts turns ten this year, and to mark the occasion label founder Lucy aka Luca Mortellaro has compiled a special release featuring both new and longterm collaborators.

Called X – Ten Years Of Artefacts, the 13 track album includes tracks by Adriana Lopez, Alessandro Adriani, Chevel, Denise Rabe, Efdemin, James Ruskin, LB Dub Corp aka Luke Slater, Lucy and Rrose individually and together as Lotus Eater, Serena Butler, Shifted and another Lucy collaboration – this time with Speedy J –Zeitgeber.

Celebrations continue on Stroboscopic Artefacts club tour from October and January 2020, taking in venues in Basel, Warsaw, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Prague, Montreal, Chicago, New York and Amsterdam.

A remix EP of music by Donato Dozzy, Caterina Barbieri, Xhin and Ben Klock is also rumoured. X – Ten Years Of Artefacts is released on 15 November. Listen to Lucy’s “The Goat God”.

Cellist, producer and composer Oliver Coates has announced the programme for the second edition of Deep Minimalism festival, the first of which happened in 2016. Dedicated to meditative listening and deep concentration, the weekend features Grouper as NIVHEK, Eliane Radigue’s Trilogie De La Mort, rare works by Tod Dockstader, performances of Hanne Darboven’s so-called mathematical music, a selection of works commissioned by UK flautist Kathryn Williams, a performance of Morton Feldman’s Triadic Memories, plus Malibu, Mary Jane Leach, London Contemporary Orchestra and others.

Deep Minimalism 2:0 will take place at Southbank Centre on 2–3 November.

Leed's Opera North company has commissioned Los Angeles composer and producer Julia Holter to create a new soundtrack for the 1928 silent film The Passion Of Joan Of Arc. For the piece she'll be joined by the 36 members of Opera North's chorus as well as her own three-piece band.

The new score follows a live soundtrack for the film that Holter performed in Los Angeles in 2017, though the new piece has increased in scale and sound palette. “I’ll be adapting a couple of relevant medieval chants for the ensemble, to take the melodies to a wild place that reflects the rapture and trauma of [Renée] Falconetti’s Joan, with the help of bells, organ and other instruments,” says Holter.

Holter’s live soundtrack is part of a wider programme for Opera North whose other commissions have seen Haley Fohr score Salomé, Hildur Gudnadóttir, Philip Jeck and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson work on Pandora’s Box, and Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures Of Prince Achmed screened with a gamelan soundtrack.

Julia Holter's score for The Passion Of Joan Of Arc will premiere at Leeds Town Hall on 24 June 2020, followed by a performance at London Barbican on 27 June.

Free music and jazz enthusiast Manfred Scheffner died in Munich on 6 September. He was 79 years old.

Scheffner was born in 1939 in Hardteck, East Prussia (now Krasnolesye, Russia). In 1965 he edited Bielefelder Jazzcatalog, a resource for information about modern jazz and free jazz records. He was a lifelong advocate of small independent labels such as Emanem, ICP and FMP, and in 1967 he opened the Munich record store Jazz By Post.

In 1969 Scheffner co-founded ECM Records with Karl Egger and Manfred Eicher – indeed, he’s listed in the production credits of the label’s first release, Mal Waldron Trio’s Free At Last.

“A truly kind and encyclopedic persona, invaluable for being the cornucopia for countless fans of Experimental Musics,” remarks German promoter Jochen Behring.

Blank Forms have announced the death of New York City downtown poet and collagist Steve Dalachinsky. “An inspired conversationalist, Dalachinsky was beloved by the avant garde community for his cantankerous wit, frank sense of humour, generous compassion and love of music, especially free jazz,” reads the announcement. “Having attended Saturday’s Sun Ra Arkestra concert shortly before his stroke, the legendary wiseass’s last words were: Maybe I overdosed with Sun Ra.”

Born in Brooklyn in 1946, Dalachinsky lived in Manhattan with his wife, painter and poet Yuko Otomo. As a performing poet, he played and recorded with the likes of Joe McPhee, Loren Connors, Dave Liebman and Matthew Shipp. His numerous books include A Superintendent’s Eyes, The Final Nite & Other Poems and Where Night And Day Become One. He died on 16 September 2019.

Sarah Davachi has announced a reissue programme of out-of-print albums in limited edition vinyl or cassette formats. She has already pressed up 200 LPs of her 2016 set Dominions (formerly released by Jaz Records). And on 11 October she’ll be releasing cassette versions of Vergers (2016, Important) and All My Circles Run (2017, Students Of Decay). Downloads will also be available on request.

Davachi has also confirmed her US and Europe tour dates as follows: Philadelphia October Revolution (3 October), Detroit Trinosophes (4), Chicago LAMPO (5), Cleveland Museum of Art at Transformer Station (6), Brooklyn The Sultan Room (7), Los Angeles The Museum of Jurassic Technology (27), Nantes Soy Festival (2 November), Glasgow Webster’s Theatre (5), Manchester The White Hotel (6), Utrecht Le Guess Who? (8) and Rovereto Auditorium Melotti (9).