American sound artist Bill Fontana has been awarded an artist's residency in among the scientists at CERN in Switzerland. He'll be working at CERN in Geneva and the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz, developing work recording sounds with microphones and sensors.

The residency starts next year, and Fontana will visit the large hadron collider in December to make some test recordings. More details here. 

The full length follow up to Matmos's Ganzfield EP, the result of four year's worth of telepathy experiments, will be released in February next year, titled The Marriage Of Two Minds. Following the release, the duo will also play one show at London's XOYO in March.

The Marriage Of Two Minds will be released on CD and vinyl, with the latter also including a white noise locked groove and eye coverings so you can re-enact the original experiments. The album includes deconstructions and segments of The Buzzcocks's "ESP", Leslie Weiner and Holger Hiller's "You", plus guest appearances by Dan Deacon, Dirty Projectors's Angel Deradoorian and Jason Willett of Half Japanese, among others.   

The Ganzfield experiments that form the primary source for the tracks are sensory deprivation telepathy tests, whereby a participant is placed in a darkened room and has low white noise piped into their ears via headphones. In Matmos's tests Drew Daniel then attempted to transmit the idea of the new Matmos album into the minds of their subjects. The subjects described out loud anything they received, which were translated into directions, concepts, and scores for the album (all transcripts are included in the liner notes).   

The Marriage Of True Minds is released on 18 February on Thrill Jockey. Matmos play XOYO on 19 March 2013. 

A new work by John Zorn is being performed at Glasgow's City Halls with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on 12 January (for free!). The show will include the first performance of Suppôts et Suppliciations, a new work commissioned by Radio 3. While Zorn will not be playing, he will be in attendance and overseeing rehearsals.   

Also being performed is Zorn's short wordless opera La Machine De L’être, string piece Kol Nidre, plus Aporias. The concert will be recorded by Radio 3 for broadcast later on the same night at 10:30pm. Tickets are free, and can be collected from Glasgow City Halls box office (contact them on 0141 353 8000). Some sparse details here. 

Glasgow City Halls, 12 January, 7:30pm. 

Read a John Zorn Primer from The Wire 156 here. 

Off an overgrown path towards the back of a Hampstead churchyard lies a stone slab decorated with a large nine-fold geometric symbol, the enneagram, and a statement that ends:

"...we ever cease to be hereafter
The unreal has no being
The real never ceases to be”

The grave belongs to AR Orage, a pioneering populariser of the early 20th century mystics George Guirdjieff and Peter Ouspensky, and editor from 1907 to 1924 of the weekly progressive journal, The New Age.

At the dawn of the modernist era, Orage's journal both defined and named a burgeoning global movement that, over the next century, sought to expand minds and change the world via a potent combination of mysticism, self-discovery, humanitarian politics, environmental concerns, and the embrace of technology.

Ideas that flourished in fin de siècle and early 20th Europe gained a new potency in postwar America, particularly on its coasts, where cutting edge science and ancient mystical ideas effortlessly overlapped, in political and military circles as much as in creative cultural salons.

The themes and ideas emerging from this foment, including mind-to-mind and mind-to-machine communication, the exploration of inner and outer space by human and non-human intelligences, an increasing awareness of the Earth's fragile ecosystems, and our relationship to the animal and plant kingdoms, also inspired, and continue to inspire, legions of musicians, from John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Alvin Lucier and David Tudor to Barry Manilow, The Carpenters and Stevie Wonder.

For this edition of The Wire Salon author and Strange Attractor founder Mark Pilkington presents an illustrated history of the key themes, ideas and influences that have shaped New Age music, from George Gurdjieff to James Ferraro, AR Orage to Genesis P Orridge.

Along the way we'll meet Ascended Masters on Himalayan peaks, vibrate to the sounds of the universe within, dive ketamine oceans with cetacean choirs, tune in to the Harmonic Convergence, communicate with Higher Intelligences across Time and Space, and all the while experience the unboundaried bliss of the infinite YOU.

The talk will be accompanied by a special New Age audio-visual mix by The Wire's Nathan Budzinski.

To get ready for Mark's New Age history, click here to watch a cosmos of New Age music playlist.

London Cafe Oto, 6 December 2012, 8pm, £4 on the door only.

Steve Beresford has been awarded one of this year's Paul Hamlyn Foundation awards for composers, meaning he'll receive £50,000 (upped from £45,000 in previous years) across the next three years. Beresford is one of three composers receiving the grant this year, with Eliza Carthy and Edmund Finnis.   

Recipients of the visual art arm of the award this year are Ed Atkins, Pavel Büchler, Andy Holden, Elizabeth Price and Lis Rhodes. The money can be spent by the recipients however they choose, from paying bills to funding new work and buying instruments or materials. This year The PHF also gifted £5million to The Roundhouse for the Paul Hamlyn Roundhouse Studios. 

More details here. 

Writer Sukhdev Sandhu is curating a one day event in New York on Quatermass author Nigel Kneale, titled A Cathode Ray Seance. Speaking at the event will be Dave Tompkins (author of How To Wreck A Nice Beach), Strange Attractor founder Mark Pilkington and artist Rose Kallal, among others. A book will also be published with essays from Tompkins, Pilkington, Ken Hollings, Evan Calder Williams, Mark Fisher, Will Fowler, China Mieville, Joanna Ruocco and others.  

The day will include screenings of Quatermass And The Pit, Murrain, The Stone Tape, a panel discussion, plus performance of The Road, a deleted Nigel Kneale TV play. The conference takes place at New York's Michelson Theater, 17 November, midday–9pm, and it's free. More details (including a full schedule) on the Strange Attractor site here.  

Fabric in London is hosting four events across the next 12 months to mark Ricardo Villalobos's ten year anniversary at the club. The first event takes place on 24 November. Also on the bill along with Villalobos, is Craig Richards, Heiko MSO, Margaret Dygas, Terry Francis, Norman Nodge, Marcel Fengler, Dan Andrei, Shaun Soomro, plus live sets from Sieg Über Die Sonne, Bruno Pronsato and CTRLS. 

The first night in the series takes place 24–25 November, (Saturday 11pm–Sunday 2pm). More details on future events incoming.   

Yoko Ono has been named as the curator of next year's Meltdown at London's Southbank Centre. She celebrates her 80th birthday next year, and her Meltdown will take place 14–23 June. No acts have yet been confirmed for next year.  

The 2012 edition was curated by Antony, and included performances of William Basinski's Disintegration Loops, Elizabeth Fraser, Planningtorock, Buffy Sainte-Marie, CocoRosie and others.

More details incoming here. 

Stocking fillers for finger pickers: Tompkins Square starts a sideline in trading cards later this month with a set on Obscure Giants [an oxymoron?] Of Acoustic Guitar. The set of 37 cards is out on 23 November (that's Black Friday if you're in the States), with illustrations by Shana Cleveland.  

Tompkins Square aren't the first to print up a set of trading cards: Numero Group also sell a set of 110 hand numbered cards of Numero No Hitters. 

More details incoming here.