In the wake of Hurricane Sandy WFMU has had to cancel its annual record fair, one of the station's key fundraising events of the year. The fair would have raised around $70,000, and since WFMU are refunding all dealers, the station stands to lose approximately $150,000. As a result, WFMU, which survives by the skin of its teeth at the best of times, has been left in its most cash poor state ever. 

Hurricane Sandy also left equipment fried (two streaming computers and audio processing equipment) and the station's FM transmitters are down, although the WFMU vinyl library is safe and well. The station's online broadcast was knocked off air for a while (with station manager Ken playlisting an "extended mix" of John Cage's 4'33"), but managed to broadcast from the homes of various DJs until power was restored. 

Currently the station has raised less than 10% of its target. As per usual, there's WFMU swag on offer for donations. More details here.  

FM3, aka Zhang Jian and Christiaan Virant, are releasing the fourth generation of their Buddha machine. This one comes in neon brights with nine new loops of drone, piano, wind instruments and analogue pulses sourced from Christiaan Virant's Fistful Of Buddha release. 

Buddha 4 is out around the end of November. More details incoming here.

A major exhibition looking at Manfred Eicher's ECM label is opening in Munich. It includes audio, photography, film and archival documents, plus work by contemporary artists whose work is influenced by the label, including the Otolith Group (Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar). A number of live performances, film screenings, children's workshops and discussion panels will also take place around the exhibition, which runs 23 November 2012–10 February 2013.

Playing as part of the exhibition are Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Quartet (11 January), Stefano Battaglia Trio (1 February), Jan Garbarek & The Hilliard Ensemble (11 February) and others. Full details here. 

The Independent Label Market, held each year in London on the weekend of Record Store Day, is holding a Christmas market in London's Spitalfields market near Brick Lane. The two day market will be open 1–2 December.  

Setting up shop for the day are Bella Union, Brownswood, Fabric, Peacefrog, Heavenly, One Little Indian, Soul Jazz, Rough Trade, !K7, Planet Mu, Strut and others. As per usual, label heads will be manning their own stalls, and will be flogging limited pressings and white labels. 

More details here.

Price for each (including postage and packing): £20 for UK, £22 elsewhere. Subscriber discount: £2 off per shirt. Order it here.

Welcome to the brand new Wire website. We've been working on it for a while and hope that it improves on our previous site, with a more dynamic landing page and a structure that allows visitors to see everything that's happening in the wide world of The Wire, from the contents of the current issue, to daily news updates and events listings, plus tracks and radio shows to stream, videos, and archive articles from the early 1980s to now.

The site is a work in progress, and things will continue to change over the next few weeks. If you do find anything that's missing, broken or just have questions or suggestions as to what you'd like to see here, please email jennifer@thewire.co.uk and nathan@thewire.co.uk and we'll try and help.

The site was built by Dorian Fraser Moore of The Useful Arts Organisation from a design by The Wire's art director, Ben Weaver.

Adventures In Sound And Music explores the life, work, complexities and contradictions of bassist and composer Charles Mingus. A mixed race kid born in Arizona, Mingus was a perpetual underdog who suffered from racism from both sides, and whose music touched emotional extremes of love and hate, anger and introspection. No-one made music quite the same way as Mingus, taking improvisation, composition, workshop ideas, folk themes and gospel call and response, and cramming all of them into the dense yet intuitive web of his music.

Philip Clark and host Derek Walmsley discuss Mingus's three decade plus career, which took him to Los Angeles, New York, and through extensive European tours with his Jazz Workshop, the latter of which is the subject of a major new box set, The Jazz Workshop Concerts 1964–65, on Mosaic Records. Music includes his earliest recorded work from the 1940s, collaborations with Eric Dolphy and Duke Ellington, the ambitious but disastrous Town Hall concerts, his work with film maker John Cassavetes, plus his toughest basslines, his tenderest arrangements, songs about hogs and chicken, and more.

Tune in on 8 November online, or at 104.4FM for Londoners. 9pm–10:30pm, every Thursday.

We had so much fun with last year’s ethnographic music special Music From The Lost Worlds (20 October 2011) that we decided to do it all again. This special edition of Adventures In Sound And Music returns to the record collection of writer, musician and Wire contributor David Toop, who will join Derek Walmsley in the studio to play selections from this formidable ethnographic archive, and to talk about these lost sounds and their place in the modern world.

Listen again to last year's Lost Worlds special here.

December 20, 8pm–10:30pm. Tune in online at Resonance FM, or 104.4FM for Londoners.

Taiga records is auctioning off a series of test pressings via eBay to raise funds to pay for future releases. One test pressing of each release in the Taiga catalogue is being auctioned, which includes Eleh, Mary Halvorson's MAP, Rafael Toral, Lotus Eaters, Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening Band and others. Where no test pressing was available, Taiga have substituted a colour vinyl edition from their archive.

Funds raised from the auctions will be used to pay forthcoming releases, which include a triple LP box set by Eleh titled Homage, and Death Blues by Jon Mueller, both due out before the end of the year. Auctions close at the end of this week. View them all here.

Film maker Jeff Broadway is crowdfunding the completion of a feature length documentary on Peanut Butter Wolf's LA based Stones Throw label. Ten hours of footage have already been shot, and to complete the film, Broadway is asking for $35,000. The money raised will pay for more footage to be shot and a lengthy editing process.

Rewards for a pledge run from a digital download or DVD of the film, through T-shirts, photographs, posters, to Quasimoto Rolling Papers, tickets to the film's premiere, a tour of Stones Throw HQ, original Madvillain artwork, or a credit in the film. The campaign closes on 29 November. Watch a preview video below. The Kickstarter campaign can be found here.