Justin Broadrick and Kevin Martin are offering a sneak preview of the title track from their forthcoming Zonal album on Relapse Records. Called Wrecked, the album marks a rebirth of the Zonal alias some 19 years after their limited edition release of The Quatermass Project Volume 1. Before Zonal, the duo worked together as Techno Animal.

The title track “Wrecked” is “our slo-mo vision for smacked out dub and heavily tranquillised hip hop”, declare the duo. “A parallel dreamworld where DJ Muggs meets Basic Channel, with Scientist at the controls. Probably our deepest transmission from the other side. Hypnotic, headwrecked doom for sub aquatic frequency explorers. Heavy as f-ck, zoned to the max. Welcome to our world!”

Zonal’s Wrecked is released on 25 October in CD, LP and digital formats. Pre-order now.

The Wire’s China based contributor Josh Feola and artist Krish Raghav have opened the first chapter of their forthcoming comic book documenting 20 years of Beijing underground music from 1999–2019. Shared via the independent media platform RADII, it tells the story of China's female punk pioneers Hang On The Box and the impact they made on a heavily male dominated rock scene when they formed in 1998.

The Hang On The Box chapter is the only section the pair plan to share in advance of the publication of their complete project, which will cover everything from FM3’s Buddha Machine and The Wire’s other regular China correspondent Yan Jun’s long-running Waterland Kwanyin event series, to the weekly gig turned label Zoomin’ Night. The comic will also document larger topics such as the history of illicit ‘dakou’ cassettes being smuggled across ports in southeast China, the current wave of “boutique cassette and vinyl labels dotting the underground music scene”, mainland China’s connection with Taiwan and Hong Kong, and individual subcultures like hiphop, punk and techno.

“I lived in Beijing from 2009–18 and was involved in the underground music scene there in several capacities: musician, venue manager, promoter, festival organiser, label-runner,” explains Feola. “For the last six years I’ve worked primarily as a writer, though my approach to covering the scene I was a part of in Beijing was always less about music criticism and more about documentation. I’ve wanted to turn my near decade of experience in Beijing into a book for a while, but I kept coming back to the fact that there was no point in sitting down and writing a book-length block of text, because the hundreds of articles I’ve written on the subject over the years already constitute that.”

Feola first came across Raghav’s work via a comic the latter had drawn for GQ magazine. About the Beijing music scene, that comic featured a club called XP, which was managed by Feola. Working together with Raghav on their illustrated underground music history has been “invigorating”, he says, adding that much of his text for it was drawn from the interviews he has conducted over the last decade. “The visual format allows us to fit in so many more details and also draws in an entirely different audience than would be possible with a text-heavy article.

“The big picture for the book as a whole is telling the story of how the entire history of 20th century alternative music in ‘the West’ – from rock ’n’ roll and punk, to no wave and new wave, to hiphop cyphers and all-night raves – happened in Beijing over a single generation,” expands Feola. “While there are some parallels to times and places like 1970s Manchester or 80s Berlin (and some key figures from those periods like Blixa Bargeld and Mark Reeder will make cameos in our story as well), Beijing’s story is unique and we want to tell it as comprehensively as possible, based on our own direct experiences and research.”

A digital copy of Hang On The Box, including a bonus section not featured online, will be available from October. There are plans to publish limited edition prints next year, but the publication date of the full history has yet to be decided.

Hang On The Box featured in The Wire 246 August 2004 issue, which subscribers can read on Exact Editions.

A baker’s dozen previously unreleased Patrick Cowley tracks make up the new compilation Mechanical Fantasy Box, released along with the late producer’s personal journal by Dark Entries.

Recorded between 1973–80, the13 tracks are mixed from four-track stems by Joe Tarantino and remastered by George Horn. Along with sleevenotes by Maurice Tani and essays by Josh Cheon, Theresa McGinley and Jorge Socarrás, the set includes Cowley’s journal, which covers the period between 1974–80, ending on his 30th birthday. Chronicling his transition from lighting technician at San Francisco’s The City Disco, to producer remixing Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and performing with Sylvester at San Francisco Opera House, the journal also offers an insight into 1970s SoMa district and its gay scene. Cowley died in 1982, aged 32.

Released on 19 October, Mechanical Fantasy Box is available to pre-order now as a CD or double LP. Proceeds will be donated to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

The winning projects for this year's CTM Radio Lab open call have been announced. Out of 135 entires from 38 countries, two submissions were chosen: Dani Gal & Ghazi Barakat's Altered State Solution and NUM's Nothingness; Life, Nothingness. The panel was made up of artist Nene H aka Beste Aydin, Elisabeth Zimmerman from ORF Kunstradio, Marcus Gammel from Deutschlandfunk Kultur Radio Art / Klangkunst
, the managing director of CTM Jan Rohlf, and The Wire's deputy editor Emily Bick.

The open call sought radio and live performance or installation submissions addressing the CTM 2020 theme Liminal. Winners receive €5000 plus technical/staging costs with additional funds for travel considered. Works will be premiered at CTM 2020 and broadcast on Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Österreichischer Rundfunk.

For Berlin-based artists Dani Gal & Ghazi Barakat's submission, they consider noise as “an ambiguous space between the disruptive and the creative, and between the oppressive and the subversive.” Inspired by Claude Shannon’s Mathematical Theory of Communication, Gal and Barakat percieve noise as a liminal space and will use techniques of radio jamming, a method of blocking radio transmissions used widely by the Soviet Union and seen today in China, Iran and North Korea.

For duo NUM's project, Maryam Sirvan and Milad Bagheri will create a new work that deals with three stages of time: past, present and future. Incorporating these stages into a graphic score, the project will be a personal voyage into the couple's own experiences as musicians from Iran without formal music training.

More information on the artists and their chosen works can be found on CTM's website. CTM 2020 will run between 24 January–2 February.

EFG London Jazz Festival happens across the UK capital from 15–24 November. Among its highlights is saxophonist, MC and poet Soweto Kinch’s performance of his forthcoming album The Black Peril at EartH in Hackney on 22 November.

The album, says Kinch, connects ragtime, proto-jazz, West Indian folk music and black classical music with hiphop and trap, going on to describe it as “a musical reflection on 100 years of race riots and the revolutionary impact of black music across the modern world”. Choreographed by Jade Hackett, the Hackney concert will feature a 14-piece jazz ensemble including members of London Symphony Orchestra, Makaya McCraven and Junius Paul.

Other festival highlights include Nik Bärtsch & Sophie Clements (15 November); artist-in-residence Terri Lyne Carrington, Angel Bat Dawid and Ozmosys quartet with Omar Hakim, Rachel Z, Linley Marthe & Kurt Rosenwinkel (all 16); Herbie Hancock (17); Corinne Bailey Rae (18); The Art Ensemble Of Chicago (23); and many others. Full details can be found on their website.

The US musician, artist and comic book writer Daniel Johnston died on 10 September from suspected heart attack at his home in Austin, Texas. He was 58 years old. Suffering from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, as well as diabetes and hydrocephalus, Johnston was often viewed as an outsider artist, but he made a considerable impact on the mainstream. His music was covered by the likes of Mercury Rev, Tom Waits and Spiritualized, and the 2006 rock opera Speeding Motorcycle was based on his songs. Famously, Kurt Cobain was spotted wearing a T-shirt featuring Johnston’s Hi, How Are You album cover art drawing of a cartoon frog from 1983.

Born in Sacramento, California, Johnston grew up in West Virginia and moved to Austin, Texas in 1980. His chosen hometown honoured him by displaying a mural of the aforementioned Hi, How Are You artwork and naming 22 January “Hi, How Are You? Day”.

Johnston started recording in the 1970s, often giving his music away for free to friends and fans. He went on to make more than 60 records, beginning with his 1980 debut Songs Of Pain (reissued by Stress in 1988). His fourth album More Songs Of Pain followed a few years later. In 1989 he released It's Spooky with Half Japanese singer Jad Fair. The pair went on to release two Daniel Johnston & Jad Fair albums as well as the 2007 Jagjaguwar set Somewhat Humorous as The Lucky Sperms. In 1994 Johnston signed to Atlantic.

Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary The Devil And Daniel Johnston won the Director’s Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. It was released theatrically in 2006, the same year Johnston’s work was exhibited at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art. He last toured in 2017.

Bass Clef aka Ralph Cumbers’ September release schedule will include reissues of Bass Clef’s first two Blank Tapes albums. But first up is a two track digital single “Hard Lessons Hardly Learned”/“Holy Days Wholly Dazed”, released on 13 September by his new label Open Hand Real Flames. A week later he’s reissuing Bass Clef’s 2007 debut album A Smile Is A Curve That Straightens Most Things and 2009’s May The Bridges I Burn Light The Way via other label Magic + Dreams.

“I vividly and fondly recall Appleblim dropping “Clapton Deep” at FWD at Plastic People,” says Cumbers, recalling various responses to Bass Clef’s debut album. “Geiom played “Cannot Be Straightened” at DMZ. That tune had a strange life of it’s own – later vocalled by Durrty Goodz on his Axiom EP after he picked up a white label at Uptown Records.

“In a further bizarre twist, American Superstar DJ Bassnectar made a bootleg of the tune, combined with an MIA a cappella,” he continues. “I have watched the YouTube clip of it going down a storm at some huge American EDM festival with a weird feeling.”

The release schedule also includes Zamyatin Renumbered, a compilation of tracks from two 12"s remastered by Joe Caithness.

Cumbers has shared “Cannot Be Straightened” via Bandcamp.

Running from 2 October–2 February 2020, the next edition of Belgium’s Europalia international arts festival has a special focus on Romania. Working in collaboration with Romanian music magazine The Attic, Europalia Romania will be presenting concerts by electronic composer Milan Warmoeskerken and The Tulnic Ensemble of Avram Iancu on 3–4 October in Leuven and Brussels respectively. Made up of five women, the ensemble is named after the traditional woodwind instrument from the Transylvanian mountains. At 2.5 metres long, the tulnic was once used as a tool for communicating between mountain village communities. The festival’s 200 attractions also include a rare solo exhibition dedicated to sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957) at Bozar in Brussels.

More information on this and other events can be found on Europalia's website.

Happening between 15–24 November, the programme of this year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival is built around the work of Swedish composer-in-residence Hanna Hartman.

Artists also premiering new music in Huddersfield include Ann Cleare, Naomi Pinnock, Jürg Frey, Marcus Granberg and Georg Friedrich Haas. And on 23 November Frank Denyer's 1990s work The Fish That Became The Sun gets its long delayed first public performance.

Other participants include Jenny Hval, Christine Sun Kim, Ellen Arkbro, Kelly Jayne, Nadah El Shazly, Philip Thomas, Irmin Schmidt and Claudia Molitor, as well as Seth Parker Woods honouring the legacy of Charlotte Moorman, Evan Parker marking his 75th birthday, and Heiner Goebbels giving a rare piano performance.

Finally, the programme has put out an open call for young curators aged between 18–30 aimed at developing talent and leadership for music programmers, promoters and curators of the future. Deadline: 4 October.

Art With/out Small Children takes place on 14 September in Tobiu Art Community Hall, a former schoolhouse in Shiraoi-gun, Hokkaido. Curated by Jay Brown, founder/director of Lijiang Studio, China, and Japanese composer, sound designer and film maker Yasuhiro Morinaga for the Tobiu Art Festival, it’s the first part in a cross-cultural exchange programme that will see musicians from mainland China head to Japan for workshops and live performances, and vice versa. Featuring performances from Chinese sound artist Yao Chunyang and noise musician Wei Wei aka Vavabond, plus [male] guitarist Li Jianhong, the event hopes to not only highlight women in the industry, but also help make travel for artists with children a viable option.

“It’s a bit of a long story,” says Brown. “Initially, we intended to make a link between Lijiang Studio and the Tobiu community, as two rural arts practices. Considering the funder’s interests, the project we are on now is intended as a reciprocal residency between musicians and sound artists from rural China and from Hokkaido – specifically female, minority musicians or sound artists from either place.”

Due to family and work commitments, many of the artists have limited time to spend on their art practice, something that Brown hopes to overcome. “Several of the Japanese musicians we would like to work with are too busy with family to be able to commit to participating in this project,” he explains.

“In this case, we invited Yao Chunyang, a Naxi (ethnicity from Lijiang, Yunnan, where our studio is), and Wei Wei, who is not a minority ethnically, but in the paradigm of a male dominated music scene in China, somewhat out of the mainstream, to come work in Hokkaido.

“Yao Chunyang has a two year old and a two month old child, and Wei Wei has, with Li Jianhong, two year old twins, and without anyone to care for them on this trip, Li Jianhong came. Furthermore, I have a young daughter and [Japanese electronic musician] Yasuhiro Morinaga, who is our connection to Tobiu and a longtime collaborator of mine, has a six month old daughter, neither of whom are joining, which creates its own issues.”

With this in mind, the event has adapted to make family central to the project. “When asked for a title for the performance, we put Lijiang/Hokkaido, and then ‘Art With/out Small Children’ as a subtitle. An alternate title proposed by Weiwei would be ‘We Are All Great Parents’!

“It fits with the idea of environmental improvisation, which Li Jianhong has been working with for quite a while, and which has infected all of our sensibilities,” continues Brown. “On one hand, we could have changed or scrapped the initial idea because of the family restrictions we all face, but on on the other, we are determined to make something happen amidst these exigencies.”

The first performance will happen on 14 September at Tobiu Camp festival from 2pm. “They have been wonderfully supportive,” concludes Brown. “The plan is to perform in the forest, and inevitably the children will be part of it.”

Stage two will see Lijiang Studio reciprocate by hosting a future event for Japanese artists Chiharu MK, Marina Tanaka and Yasuhiro Morinaga at its base in Yunnan, China.

Li Jianhong & Wei Wei were featured in The Wire 406. Subscribers can read that article on Exact Editions.