To mark Thrill Jockey's 20th anniversary (another birthday to add to ours and Touch's 30th birthdays in 2012), there's a batch of reissues on the way from the label, including most of Tortoise's back catalogue on LP. Getting reissued on vinyl are Tortoise's self titled LP, as well as Standards, It's All Around You, Millions Now Living Will Never Die, TNT, and Beacons Of Ancestorship.

Also getting reissued on LP for Thrill Jockey's anniversary are Trans Am albums Surrender To The Night, The Surveillance, Red Line and their self-titled LP, plus The Sea And Cake's Nassau, The Biz, The Fawn, Oui and One Bedroom's self titled LP. Vinyl reissues of two Sam Prekop albums, releases by White Hills, Freakwater, V3, Directions in Music, Daniel Higgs, The Fiery Furnaces and Fennesz/Daniel/Buck's Knoxville are also planned.

There are no dates for the LP releases yet, other than that they'll be spread throughout the year, and will be repressed in limited numbers on vinyl, and all come with digital downloads. More info on other Thrill Jockey 20th anniversary goings on here.

Contrabass soloist and composer Stefano Scodanibbio has died in Mexico at the age of 55, after a battle with a form of motor neurone disease.

Scodanibbio was born in Macerata, Italy on 18 June 1956. He was best known to readers of The Wire as a frequent collaborator with Terry Riley, with whom he released Lazy Afternoon Among The Crocodiles. Scodanibbio also had work written for him by Sylvano Bussotti, Franco Donatoni, Fred Frith, Vinko Globokar, Salvatore Sciarrino, Iannis Xenakis and others.

In 1987 Scodanibbio performed a four hour marathon, playing 28 pieces by 25 composers. He was also active as a composer and wrote over 50 works for strings, and was chosen four times for the International Society of Contemporary Music, in 1990, 1993, 2002 and 2006.

In the 90s he began teaching classes and seminars at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, University of California, Stanford University, Oberlin Conservatory, Musikhochschule Stuttgart, Conservatoire de Paris, and Conservatorio di Milano.

Wire are releasing The Black Session – Paris, 10 May 2011 on 7 February, recorded in Radio France's Paris Studios in front of a small invited audience. The Black Session was previously only released a tour exclusive, and includes guitarist Matt Simms, a recent addition to the trio. There's a track from the album over at Spin.

More info at Wire's site, Pink Flag.

WordSound and Black Hoodz label boss Skiz Fernando (aka SH Fernando Jr) has gone from Crooklyn to cooking, and written a book on Sri Lankan home cooking titled Rice & Curry.

Rice & Curry contains recipes for patties curry powders, curries, rices, desserts and how to milk a coconut, and is published by Hippocrene Books in New York. Fernando runs a blog with the same name as the book, and a YouTube-based cooking series titled Pan Asian.

Read Fernando's blog here, and watch a video from his YouTube series on curry powder processing below.

Fashion Records, which was instrumental in the evolution of UK dancehall, digital reggae and the UK 'fast chat' style, is having its entire back catalogue reissued digitally. Fashion Records was started in 1980 by John MacGillivray and Chris Lane. Operating from the basement of the Dub Vendor shop, they released artists such as Top Cat, Smiley Culture and Cutty Ranks, helping to lay the foundations for Jungle.

The back catalogue will be reissued by Believe Digital. At time of writing there are no specific dates for the reissues, although Believe say it will be in the first quarter of 2012.

Minor update: Along with digital reissues of back catalogue, Fashion records is also releasing a 20 track best of compilation, titled Fashion In Fine Style.

Matthew Ingram, aka Woebot, has published a book titled 100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s. The book takes in strands of metal, glam rock, French artists, punk and pub rock, and is released digitally as a self-published eBook via Amazon. Ingram says: "Last year I started writing an article on the 100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s but it ballooned out of all proportions and I decided to turn it into an eBook.

"Over time we have lost touch with the original character of the 70s. Using 'lost' records I've attempted to re-examinine the decade and redress what I see as imbalance. Beyond small reviews of a meticulously-selected 100 albums there's quite a lot of contemporary history, much theorising and lots of gags."

100 Lost Rock Albums of the 1970s is available in the US and UK via anything that has a Kindle app.

A new publishing house called Test Centre is launching, with a short series of spoken word LPs and print communications. Test Centre was started by Will Shutes and Jess Chandler. The first release will be a spoken word vinyl LP by Iain Sinclair, which includes readings from his work Lud Heat, Suicide Bridge, Downriver and White Chappell Scarlet Tracings, recorded on a day long tour around East London, plus some of Sinclair's archival recordings.

Following this there are plans to release LPs of spoken word by writers Chris Petit, Stewart Home and Tom McCarthy. The publishing house then intends to move to print only communications. Co-founder Shutes says: "Our feeling is that people remain interested in tangible goods, including vinyl, and that there is room for new work on an independent scale by young or youngish people."

Test Centre launch a new site in just under a week, which will also be carrying a full call for submissions. Stay tuned here.

Sean Albiez, who co-edited 2010’s Kraftwerk: Music Non Stop, and appeared at a Wire Salon on the Kling Klang studio legacy in March last year, has a new EP out via Bandcamp, under his alias obe:lus. He describes it as having “a hauntological dimension that works with the early sound recordings of FirstSounds.org”. The EP is called I Saw No Shadow Of Another Passing From Her and is available here. Listen below:

Collaborative EP project Long Division With Remainders is being reinstated for 2012, under the title Collision/Detection. For the new series invited artists are asked to create four tracks using audio submitted to a central pool by the group. A new EP will be released every six weeks, and contributions are on the way from Hong Kong In The 60s, West Norwood Cassette Library, The Doomed Bird Of Providence, Kemper Norton and others. The schedule begins with a release from the Psychological Strategy Board (aka Jonny Mugwump and the Time Attendant), which will arrive on 27 February. Listen to "The Synthetic Profile" by Psychological Strategy Board below.

Long Division With Remainders began in 2009 with 14 Versions Of The Same EP, a collection of sounds sent out to artists to be reworked, which was then released as a CD box set.

The Synthetic Profile by Psychological Strategy Board (for LDWR) by frontandfollow

Michael Gira embarks on a European tour following a handful of dates in the US. San Francisco Great American Music Hall (w/ Sir Richard Bishop, 15 March), Los Angeles Echo (with Sir Richard Bishop, 16), Seattle Triple Door (with Sir Richard Bishop, 22), Portland Mississippi Studios (with Sir Richard Bishop, 23), Denver Oriental Theater (with Wovenhand, 24), Dublin Button Factory (4 April), Belfast Black Box (5), Glasgow St Andrew's Church (6), London Cafe Oto (7), Paris Le Point Ephémère (9), Amsterdam Paradiso Upstairs (10), Kortrijk De Kreun (11), Tilburg Roadburn Festival (12), Copenhagen Loppen (14), Aalborg Studenterhuset (15), Oslo John Dee Club (17), Stravanger Cementen (18), Stockholm Debaser Slussen (19), Helsinki Korjaamo Culture Factory (21), Berlin D Roter Saloon (22), Vienna Chelsea Club (23), Lausanne Le Bourg (25), Düdingen Café Bad Bonn (26), Ravenna Bronson Club (27), Florence Sala Vanni (28), Rome Chiesa evangelica metodista (29), Zurich Exil (1 May).