Norwegian musician Arve Henriksen (one third of improvising group Supersilent) is releasing a seven LP box set via Rune Grammofon. The box set, titled Solidification, spreads four albums across 14 sides and includes a new album titled Chron. Also included is Henriksen's debut Sakuteiki, plus Chiaroscuro (which features Jan Bang and drummer Audun Kleive) and Strjon, a tribute to his Norwegian home town Stryn, recorded with Supersilent members Helge Sten and Ståle Storløkken.

The liner notes are written by Late Junction presenter Fiona Talkington and John Kelman, managing editor of All About Jazz. For the dedicated audophile, the box set also includes 2 DVDs with all tracks as FLAC, plus 16-bit files and 24-bit WAV files. Solidification is released on 4 February on Rune Grammofon.

Berlin's CTM festival, sister festival to Transmediale, has announced its second wave of acts. Dean Blunt will be performing The Narcissist for the first time, and Terre Thaemlitz will give a talk and performance on his recent Soulnessless project. Atom™ will be playing two shows, a commissioned piece titled Bauteille with Marc Behrens, plus a free show.

Also added to the line up are Ghédalia Tazartès, Skream feat Sgt Pokes, Pantha du Prince & The Bell Laboratory, Simian Mobile Disco, Xiu Xiu & Eugene S. Robinson, Demdike Stare, dʼ Eon, Holly Herndon, Forest Swords, Set Mosaic, Pete Swanson, People Like Us, Boris Hegenbart, Felix Kubin, Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez with A Guy Called Gerald, Gatekeeper, EAN, Necro Deathmort, Sun Worship, xorzyzt, BlackBlackGold, Tom Ass, reliq, Wife and Lucas Abela.

Already announced for the festival are: Diamond Version with Atsuhiro Ito, Emptyset, Florian Hecker, Heatsick, Jar Moff, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Lee Gamble, Mark Fell, Matmos, Myrninerest, Oneirogen, Ernstalbrecht Stiebler featuring Agnieszka Dziubak, Werner Daffeldecker and Ensemble L’Art pour L’Art.

The 2013 edition of CTM takes place 28 January–3 February, across various venues in Berlin. Full programme preview here.

Low return next year with an album produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy for SubPop. The release will be their tenth, and coincides with the group's 20th anniversary. The new record, titled The Invisible Way, will be released on 18 March next year. It was recorded in Tweedy's studio and includes vocals from Death Cab For Cutie's Benjamin Gibbard.

The group also play the UK in April, covering Birmingham, Manchester, Gateshead, Glasgow, Bristol and London, before hitting Europe for 14 dates in May. Full tour listing here. Low have also released a five track live EP titled Low Plays Nice Places, in exchange for your email address. Download below.

In 2007–2008 artists Duncan Whitley and James Wyness took a trip to Seville and made multi-channel recordings of the Holy Week processions there, which involve 58 Catholic brotherhoods plus floats and brass bands. Whitley and Wyness then mapped the recordings, and developed them into a large scale sound installation in the crypt of St Pancras Church. 

Now Whitles and Wyness are publishing a PDF book with embedded audio recordings of the project, titled Listening Through Holy Week. The book includes 12 recordings, maps, essays and photos, and can be downloaded via Issu and Scribd (it's also published in Spanish). 

The entire collection of recordings has been archived as part of the British Library's sound collection (reference C1338), and SoundFjord is currently in the process of developing an exhibition and events series (with ethnographic film screenings). The series will run alongside Whitley's project, and use files sent back from his trip to Seville in Easter next year. More info on the SoundFjord project in the coming months.  

French psychedelic drone maker High Wolf has been forced to cancel his European tour and was temporarily stranded after a bag containing his fees for six shows, merch money, train tickets, and computer were stolen at the train station in Antwerp. High Wolf's asking anyone who wants to lend a hand to buy something from his Bandcamp. He was touring with Plankton Wat (aka Eternal Tapestry guitarist Dewey Mahood), who'll be carrying on the tour without him.

More on High Wolf's Facebook page here.

Andrew WK was formally invited by the US State department to visit Bahrain as a Cultural Ambassador to the Middle East promoting "music, freedom, and positive party power" at a concert in Manama on 2 December. 

The US authorities, despite being the first mover in the booking, deemed WK "not the best choice", and found he did not "meet standards". Putting on a show by a man whose public image involves having a bloodied face, and who advocates partying till you puke via an EP release in 2000 and regular Tweets (but who has also given lectures at Yale and Harvard), was said by a spokesperson to be an "inappropriate use of US government funds". 

WK said in a statement: "When I was originally invited by our contact, it seemed everyone was aware of what I stand for with my positive attitude. They were aware of how I look and my high-energy rock music. They were excited to bring my message of living life to the fullest to the people in the Middle East… So for a Department of State representative to say Andrew WK ‘doesn’t meet their standards’ after they invited me and planned my trip for a year… well, that doesn’t meet my standards either. You can’t judge a book by its cover. I would’ve done a great job and represented our nation with dignity and pride.

"Despite all these challenges, I still would love to go and I vow to continue partying, and working everyday to unite our human race through the power of positive partying."  

Peter Brötzmann has written a letter announcing that he'll be mothballing his Chicago Tentet, having reached what he feels is the project's creative peak. He told David Keenan in The Wire 345: "For the audience even the routine is a kind of show and they like that. But it comes to a point where the band starts to fulfil expectations and I think I hate that."

The tentet are Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, Mats Gustafsson, Ken Vandermark, Paal Nilssen-Love, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Per Åke Holmlander, Johannes Bauer, Michael Zerang, Kent Kessler and Jeb Bishop. They played a sold out two day residency at Cafe Oto in November this year. Read Brötzmann's letter below:

14 years… The Chicago Tentet

That's a long time for a 10/11 piece band. Time to say goodbye? Time to stop? For sure time to think about the future! 

There are a couple of reasons why I decided to stop it, at least for the moment. The first one is the everlasting critical economic situation, actually with no expectation for better times  – we Germans and Americans can't count on support from our cultural departments.

The second, much more important, is the music. Hanging together for such a long time – with just a couple of small changes – automatically brings a lot of routine. In general nothing against, you need it sometimes to survive, but if it gets so far that one can't exist without the other – music is over.

In 2011 with the weekends in London and Wuppertal we have reached the peak of what is possible in improvisation and communication with an immense input from all of us. For my taste it is better to stop on the peak and look around than gliding down in the mediocre fields of 'nothing more to say' bands. 

I love to work with larger ensembles and I won't say, 'That's it,' but I need a bit of time to think about some changes, the financial situation is important and in a way the financial situation forms and builds sometimes the music. Who can afford to travel with a quintet nowadays, you see what I mean?

I think the next fall will answer the question about the future of a NEW tentet.

Tokyo, 17th of November 2012

P Brötzmann

WE NEED AGAIN AND AGAIN A MORE ADVENTUROUS SPIRIT

Excuse my language A KICK IN THE ASS and what we call in German VERUNSICHERUNG

The Her Noise project, started by Lina Džuverović and Anne Hilde Neset (contributing editor at The Wire), has launched an online archive. It includes video and audio recordings of interviews, talks and performances, plus images of Kim Gordon, Lydia Lunch, Christina Kubisch, Diamanda Galas, Else Marie Pade, Kaffe Matthews, Christina Carter, Chicks On Speed, Peaches, Erase Errata and others.

The archive also includes Her Noise's six part radio series for Resonance FM which was broadcast in 2005, and the Her Noise map, an incomplete sprawling diagram of a network of female artists and musicians (a crop from the original pictured above, hi-res at the link). 

The site will also be hosting guest curated essays, recordings and videos, starting with contributions from philosopher and Wire writer Nina Power, sound artist Ain Bailey, plus musician and composer Tara Rodgers, and also contains a large bibliography.

Richard Skelton is selling off two left handed guitars to raise money for future projects. Skelton is selling a Baby Taylor acoustic guitar, which he used on Landings and Box Of Birch, and a Fylde Custom Alexander acoustic guitar, made by Roger Bucknall in Cumbria, which he played on Marking Time. The latter still has the same strings as were used when recording Marking Time, and has not been used to play live. The former was used on Skelton's field trips to the West Pennine Moors between 2006 and 2009.

More details on the Baby Taylor here, and more on the Fylde Custom Alexander here. For more details or to make an offer, email corbelstonepress@yahoo.co.uk.

Matthew Herbert is releasing a box set of rare and unreleased material in March next year. Before that though, his label Accidental Records is reissuing 2001 album Bodily Functions as a 2CD pack, the original release bundled with a disc of remixes.

Remix duties are given over to DJ Koze, Plaid, Richard Devine, Matmos, Jamie Lidell, Mr Oizo, Perry Farrel and others. Three will also be released as a 12": DJ Koze's mix of "You Saw It All", Dave Aju's mix of "Foreign Bodies" and Mr Oizo's mix of "Back To The Start". Both the 2CD pack and the 12" are released on 17 December.

More details incoming on the Accidental site.