Robert Wyatt is receiving an honorary degree from the University of Kent this month. On 18 July, Wyatt will be presented with his honorary doctor of music degree at Canterbury Cathedral, the city in which he's spent most of his life, and where the Soft Machine formed in the late 1960s. More details and other recipients of honorary degrees are listed here.

Robert Wyatt will also be in conversation with Marcus O'Dair at Bristol Arnolfini on 26 September, as part of The Wire's Off The Page festival. More details here.

Ryuichi Sakamoto has been diagnosed with throat cancer and has cancelled all forthcoming shows to concentrate on treatment. Sakamoto apologised for the cancellations, including his appearance at the First Sapporo International Art Festival 2014, where he was guest director, along with other planned performances of new material. In a statement he wrote that "the first wealth is health", saying that he plans to return to performing after a full recovery.

Read the full statement online here.

From 4–9 August Resonance FM will be broadcasting from Outlandia, an artist treehouse studio in Glen Nevis, Scotland, at the foot of Ben Nevis. The week long series, a collaboration with Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson's London Fieldworks, includes broadcasts of 20 specially commissioned artist performances and contributions from local residents. Artists include Bram Arnold, Ruth Barker, Ed Baxter with the Resonance Radio Orchestra, Band Of Holy Joy's Johny Brown, Tam Dean Burn, Benedict Drew, Goodiepal, Lee Patterson, Geoff Sample, Mark Vernon, Tracey Warr and others.

More details here.

Turner Prize nominated artist Catherine Yass hit a bum note recently when a planned project to drop a piano off the top of the empty Balfron Tower was cancelled. The Erno Goldfinger designed residential block in Poplar, East London – currently empty and awaiting renovation – was to be the site of a community workshop by Yass looking at how sound travels when falling 27 storeys. 250 locals signed a petition objecting to the project, and as a result the building's managers cancelled the proposed event.

[HT London Evening Standard]

Tusk festival's one dayer takes place this weekend at Newcastle's Star And Shadow, with No Balls, Torturing Nurse, Bongoleeros, Lumisokea, Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura, Annihilating Light, Richard Pinhas and more. If you're unable to get to the North East this weekend, Tusk are streaming the whole day's performances live from the embedded video below, and there'll be an online only film programme of material from the festival's archives, including past performances and videos featuring Richard Dawson, Pelt and others. The broadcast starts at 11:30am, and runs until the end of the festival, which will be around 1am.

Following up his recent release with Keiji Haino and Stephen O'Malley, Oren Ambarchi is keeping up the pace with a new album, a continuous 47 minute piece recorded with a number of guests in locations all over the world. Quixotism includes Thomas Brinkmann, Matt Chamberlain, Crys Cole, Eyvind Kang, Jim O' Rourke, John Tilbury, U-zhaan, Ilan Volkov & the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, and contains five sections, recorded in Cologne, Reykjavik, Melbourne, Seattle, London, Los Angeles and Tokyo.

Oren Ambarchi is releasing Quixotism on 29 September via Editions Mego, with a performance to tie in with the record's release at London's Corsica Studios on 21 September.

UPDATE: Due to a problem with test pressings, the release date has now been postponed until October.

Dean Blunt, Marisa Anderson and Jonny Trunk have been added to the programme for the fourth edition of The Wire’s Off The Page festival.

On the Sunday of the festival, which takes place at Bristol’s Arnolfini over the weekend of 26–28 September, Blunt will present “Black Metal”: A Reading. As with his recent sold out Free Jazz performance at London’s Cafe Oto, no other details as to the nature or format of the reading will be forthcoming prior to the event itself.

Meanwhile, later on the Sunday, Marisa Anderson will headline a special Off The Page closing concert at Bristol’s Cube cinema which will also feature cellist and Earth member Lori Goldston and Brian Mumform's Dragging An Ox Through Water. Shifting musical gears somewhat, Jonny Trunk will once again be on hand as Off The Page’s resident DJ, spinning his patented selection of audio esoterica in the Arnolfini bar for the duration of the festival.

A full breakdown of all confirmed Off The Page talks, speakers and events has just gone up on the Arnolfini website. Details of the closing concert at the Cube are here.

Arts agency Electra, responsible for the Her Noise archive and other projects, was one of those dropped from Arts Council England's portfolio for 2015–2018, losing its annual funding of £65,000. Electra has been funded since 2005 and its current support ceases March 2015, but this will not affect currently programmed events. Electra are working towards securing alternative financial support.

More info here.

Vicki Bennett has published her first book, a collaboration with communications designer Gregor Weichbrodt. The Fundamental Questions sources online answers to life's biggest questions, compiling the answers into a 596 page print on demand book. Bennett and Weichbrodt compiled user generated answers to questions such as "Who am I?", "Where do I come from?", and "What is my purpose in life and what happens when I die?" into a large text, meant to remind us that there is always more than one answer.

The Fundamental Questions is published via print on demand service Lulu, and a preview is available to read here.

Vashti Bunyan's next album will be her last. Yesterday she announced Heartleap, a ten track record due for release on FatCat on 6 October, which she is adamant will be her final release.

"When I wrote the title song "Heartleap" just four months ago," she says, "it was like all the songs I'd ever wanted to write. It was a condensed way of saying all I'd ever wanted to say. Anything more would feel like a repeat."

Following the album's release, Bunyan says she will be concentrating on writing a book, tracing her two year journey in the late 1960s with Robert Lewis through the UK by horse and cart: "For a while now I have promised myself and my children that after this album I would set about writing a book that will tell the real story of the Just Another Diamond Day journey."

Heartleap was recorded in a studio in Bunyan's home in Edinburgh, and unlike 2005's Lookaftering, which brought in a number of supporting collaborators, is largely arranged and composed by Bunyan herself, with brief appearances from Vetiver's Andy Cabic. She says she "wanted it to be more akin to my very first recordings, pre-Diamond Day... I wanted to see what I could do without using the ideas of others."

It took seven years to complete, with Bunyan recording her vocals alone, and piano parts built up from single notes and multiple one-handed takes, with album artwork a painting titled Hart's Leap by Bunyan's daughter Whyn Lewis.

Vashti Bunyan will be playing five UK tour dates in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Farndale, to mark Heartleap's release. Full details on our Listings page.