A major retrospective of multidisciplinary works by the master drummer Milford Graves will open in September at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Philadelphia, in partnership with Ars Nova Workshop. Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal explores the life and practice of Graves over six decades and comprises of over 40 works.

The exhibition is an attempt to open the “doors of his habitat”, with the show’s curator, Mark Christman, visiting Graves at home to gather works for the exhibition. His home in Jamaica, Queens, is packed with his creative inquiries, including a dojo, and a basement full of drums, prints, sculptures, and a laboratory of heart monitoring equipment. Graves has been studying the heartbeat as it relates to rhythm since the 1970s, and in 2018 was diagnosed with amyloid cardiomyopathy, sometimes called stiff heart syndrome.

In addition, the exhibition includes photographs, costumes and archival recordings. Graves still performs and hosts events from his home – his continued research and home remedies for his condition are documented in a recent article in the New York Times – and he hopes to stream live during the exhibition.

The multitalented Graves has also patented stem cell regeneration technology that utilises frequency response, and he teaches gardening and herbology to his neighbours as a way to promote health.

Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal is organised alongside Anthony Elms and Jake Meginsky (director of recent documentary Milford Graves Full Mantis). It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue to be published by Inventory Press. Graves was on the cover of The Wire 409, March 2018.

Peruvian multimedia artist Paola Torres Núñez del Prado will release her AI poetry record this month. Currently based in Sweden, Núñez del Prado was awarded a place on the Google Artists and Machine Intelligence programme in 2019.

With the help of the programme's engineers and researchers, Núñez del Prado recorded an album exploring the signs of the Quipus – an ancient string device used by the Incas and other cultures of Andean South America for data collection and archiving in the absence of an alphabet writing system – and the work of Peruvian artist and poet Jorge Eduardo Eielson.

“My residency (part of the Google Artists + Machine Intelligence programme) consisted of studying the Quipus and reviewing the possibilities of machine learning for its understanding,” explains Núñez del Prado. “I wanted the Quipus to speak again. For that, I needed a voice – not just any voice but one that would come from beyond life, from that future life that audiovisual media now enable us to maintain by leaving sound or video recordings of people already dead, for posterity, in a way allowing these to live forever.”

To create the poems, a generative AI pre-trained model was fine-tuned with texts of Eielson, Chilean poet Cecilia Vicuña, and the artist's own.

She dubbed the AI system Aielson, combining the term AI with Eielson's name. Eielson (1924–2006) was a Peruvian artist and poet who presented his reinterpretations of the Quipu at the 1964 Venice Biennale. For this project Núñez del Prado set out to emphasise accent and style of speech by training two deep learning models – the voice synthesis pair Tacotron 2 and Waveglow – first with an Argentine voice, and then with the voice of Eielson.

“The machine learning algorithm that I used for poetry generation – GPT2, a ‘large transformer-based language model’, part of the Natural Language Processing branch of Artificial Intelligence – can be either seeded, that is, I could write a phrase, for example, ‘I would like this poem to’ and the system could complete it in a way that is ultimately dependent on the text that it has been trained up with [...] or, depending on the configuration I choose, it can just generate random samples.

“I have not pre-seeded any of the poems generated in the album,” she continues, “that is, they have been completely and independently generated by the algorithm. I found this rather fascinating.”

The album's title, El Tiempo Del Hombre (The Time Of Man), and its track names, were also generated by Aielson.

El Tiempo Del Hombre was created with the support of Navajo artist and Creative Technologist Holly Grimm, and is self-released on Bandcamp. An album launch will take place on 21 August at 11PM BST. Join on ZOOM: Meeting ID 833 6690 2837.

Listen to “Ciencia”:

Watch a short video about the album:

Aki Onda has three new albums on the horizon. The first one, Rupture, was inspired by the southern Italian folktale of Tarantism. Myth would have it that a bite from a tarantula would provoke extreme spiritual possession in its victims, leading to frenzied dancing and a series of folk dances, called the Tarantella. The legend and practice were widespread until the 18th century, though have since faded into obscurity. Recently the theme was also the subject of a project by FLEE in 2019 with the release Tarantismo: Odyssey Of An Italian Ritual.

“I was inspired by the phenomenon and began to listen to the traditional folk music of the region,” explains Onda. “These are quoted into the tracks, mostly in indirect ways but occasionally directly sampled.”

The other two release forthcoming include his first duo album with Japanese artist Nao Nishihara on Fttari, and his third album with frequent collaborator Akio Suzuki on Hasana Editions. Both expand on his interest in sonic explorations and the use of handmade instruments and found objects.

Listen to the title track “Rupture”.

”[The] Wel EP re-imagines a world where we come together as one, take charge of our fate, and move towards common goals in tackling the many global problems we face as a species,” says Endeguena Mulu aka Ethiopian Records, a co-founder of the style known as Ethiopiyawi electronic. “Artists and creative industry players in almost all African countries identify the lack of funds as the major challenge in their journey to create, promote and sustain their creative career. Although the creative sector can play a significant role in the growth and development of the African economy, governments and the private sector do not have a structured support system, policies on the industry and neither do they consider it a priority. This has created an environment where funds for the creative sector are ignored leaving artists without a glimmer of hope to advance their creative journey.”

He continues, “now that COVID-19 pandemic has hit the creative industry big time, African artists are in an even more pressing situation where they have to not only to consider immediate economic situation, but also have to think about the longer-term future.”

The title Wel (ወል) translates as In Common and was inspired by the poet Laureate Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin. The release will include ten tracks plus two videos and other visual artworks from 23 artists. The campaign is intended to support Mulu and the collaborating artists' careers and day-to-day livelihood, with donor perks ranging from a pre-order copy of the EP to a private virtual tour and interactive music lessons. More details via Indiegogo.com.

More acts and a film programme have been added to this year's Tusk event – a “multi-sensory showcase of sonic adventures” run in partnership with Sage Gateshead.

The festival has greatly expanded on its regular film programme, central to which is Dental Practice, a newly commissioned ten part serial by Edinburgh based animator and comic artist Malcy Duff. “I grew up next door to ‘The Jazz Dentist’,” explains Duff. “I could never hear the sound of drilling, or teeth being pulled, but occasional guitar and drums would gently gurgle through the walls. This cartoon is not about that dentist. Dental Practice is a cartoon (tooncar) with a silent soundtrack split into ten parts. It tells the story of a dentist and their patient(s) as they look into each other’s mouths. I would encourage the viewer to treat this cartoon like a neighbour of the wonderful music at this festival. Place your ear on the wall.”

Other participants in the film strand include Vicki Bennett, David Tibet, Sir Richard Bishop, Los Siquicos Litoralenos and Church Of Satan founder Anton LaVey. Tusk will also show archive footage from 2012 and 2013 editions including performances from Hijokaidan, Hieroglyphic Being, Fushitsusha, Endon, Smegma, Oren Ambarchi and Eyvind Kand & Jessika Kenney.

In addition, Tusk Fringe will be presenting performances from Wanda Group, Yol, Plastiglomerate, Ghosh and Drvg Cvltvre. Meanwhile, the main line-up includes Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O’rourke, Roscoe Mitchell, Deathprod, Aaron Dilloway, The Dead C, Horse Lords, Yeah You, OOIOO, Maja SK Ratkje, Nihiloxica, Mariam Rezaei x Stephen Bishop, Angel Bat Dawid, Moulay Ahmed Elhassani, Guttersnipe, Gaelynn Lea, Blood Stereo, Sarah Hennies, Yoni Silver, Nour Mobarak, St James Infirmary, Laura Cannell, Opal Tapes, The Tenses, Evicshen, Crank Sturgeon, Blóm, Chlorine, Erika Leaman & Jordan Edge, Skull Mask, Territorial Gobbing, Angharad Davies, Robert Ridley-Shackleton and Lump Hammer

Tusk Virtual 2020 will take place online from 28 September–11 October.

Through his new book Beefy’s Tune (Dean Blunt Edit) London Goldsmiths lecturer Dhanveer Singh Brar has opened a conversation with the music of Dean Blunt. Focusing on Blunt’s 2016 album BBF Hosted By DJ Escrow, his essay addresses what he sees as the musician's indifference to Britain, while acknowledging the depth and complexity of his portrayal of Blackness in the UK.

Brar’s Beefy’s Tune (Dean Blunt Edit) is published by the87press. His second book Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski: The Sonic Ecologies Of Black Music In The Early Twenty-First Century will be published by Goldsmiths Press/MIT Press in Spring 2021.

Transformation is the theme of the 22nd CTM festival, which its organisers describe as its Pandemic Edition. “If there is one thing the past year has shown, it is that the grotesque inequalities on this planet – whether social, ecological, or political – cannot be sustained,” declares CTM’s press statement. “What seemingly began as a health emergency is rather an intertwining of environmental, social, economic and political crises – and part of a global crisis of equity and of care.

“Amidst fragmented narratives and realities,” the statement continues, “how might we envision a different future?”

Three open calls have also been announced. As usual, CTM Radio Lab seeks proposals for works that combine radio and live performance or installation, and which are connected to the current festival theme. Open to artists worldwide, the commissioned works will premiere at CTM 2021 in Berlin and also broadcast as a 40–55 minute radio show in Deutschlandfunk Kultur’s Klangkunst programme. The Österreichischer Rundfunk (Austrian Broadcasting Service) will also showcase the works via one or more of its platforms. Special restrictions in line with COVID-19 requirements have also been put in place. Proposals should take into account that a presentation of the work may not be possible in front of a live audience, and applicants from outside of the EU should be prepared to participate remotely. They also recommend artists take into account social distancing measures and suggest interesting presentation alternatives. Deadline is 16 September 2020.

Other open calls include one for generative audio works for the festival’s Kontinuum strand. The call invites composers and musicians to submit proposals for a generative audio stream to be played 24/7 over the course of a year. “The stream should have a narrative quality in the broadest sense of the term, with special attention paid to how the stream/sound piece develops over time in a compelling way. The work should refer to the CTM 2021 Transformation theme, and respond to states of multiplicity.” FInally, the Research Networking Day 2021 seeks students and scholars to submit critical research presentations from all areas of study that also address the scope of CTM’s Transformation theme.

This year CTM has also launched a new website that promises not only festival information but also essays and articles previously printed in its yearly CTM magazine.

PC Music has announced the release of a massive 49 track box set by its founder AG Cook. Called 7G, the music is spread are across seven discs, each of them following a different theme determined by instrumentation: AG Drums, AG Guitar, AG Supersaw, AG Piano, AG Nord, AG Spoken Word and AG Extreme Vocals. Not only that, purchases made on Bandcamp come with some emailed add-ons, including AG Data of extra images, text, sound & MIDI; the 30 minute audio file AG Waveform; and AG Zoom, a virtual card for VIP entry to a 7G event, listening party and afterparty.

Pop covers include artists Blur, Taylor Swift, Charli XCX, The Strokes, The Smashing Pumpkins, Tommy James And The Shondells, Life Sim and Sia, and the set features vocal contributions from Caroline Polachek, Tommy Cash, Hannah Diamond, Cecile Believe and Alaska Reid.

AG Cook’s 7G is released on 12 August by PC Music. Listen to this seven minute mix.

The 25th anniversary edition of Brian Eno's A Year With Swollen Appendices will be published in November in the UK and early next year in the US. Covering the year of 1995, the diary documents his collaborative work with artists including David Bowie, U2, James and Jah Wobble, plus essays on generative and ambient music, and the role of the artist and their work. It also features a new foreword by Eno himself.

A Year With Swollen Appendices will be published as an eBook and in a hardcover edition redesigned in the same size as the original diary by Faber and Faber on 19 November in the UK and 9 February 2021 in the US.

Back in January, just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Cairo residents Rama and ZULI launched a new video series of live music and DJ sets called irsh; an excuse, they said, to hang out with their friends and play music. “If you’re not entirely into house and techno, neither are you into partying for partying’s sake,” they say, “then Cairo can be quite boring.” Unfortunately, social distancing measures bought the new channel to an abrupt halt not long after its launch.

The pair have since compiled did you mean irish, including tracks from their circle of friends and affiliates, some of whom have already performed on irsh and others who are set to do so in the future. Artists featured are ZULI himself, Ma3azef’s ABADIR, Karem Lofty, 3Phaz, Abdullah Miniawy together with HVAD, BLTNM’s Al Nather, Tor5y x Lil Asaf, ltfll, El Kontessa, and Onsy.

Did you mean: irish is released on 25 September. You can watch previous broadcasts on their YouTube channel.

Listen to Abdullah Miniawy & HVAD’s “The Dirty Canes Lake” from did you mean: irish

Watch a DJ set with ZULI, 1127, Rama, Al Nather, $$$TAG$$$, mmmmmmalak and Shabmouri