International Radiophonic Creation Day takes over the airwaves for 24 hours of simulcast programming across the globe on 4 June. UK listeners can tune in to the home of The Wire’s radio show, Resonance FM. The programme will feature work from a raft of artists, taking in drama, soundscapes and experimental forms, although the schedule is yet to be formalised. More info on participating stations here.
Efrim Manuel Menuck, co-founder of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, has a solo release slated up for release at the end of next month on Godspeed’s natural home, Constellation Records. Plays “High Gospel” is Menuck’s sonic paean to Montreal, where he has lived for 20 years. Preview two tracks from the album below:
our lady of parc extension and her munificent sorrows by Constellation Records
Bert Jansch is back on the road and is lined up to play with Neil Young on his spring tour of the US. On top of this, Jansch has also announced that he will be teaming up with the original members of Pentangle to play a series of shows in the UK this summer. Dates and venues have not been announced, but you can follow Bert and Pentangle on Twitter, @bert_jansch and @PentangleBand.
Brian Eno’s second album for Warp is hitting the shelves with a thud (in a 2CD hardback edition) on 4 July. Drums Between The Bells is a collaboration between Eno and poet Rick Holland, who have been working together sporadically since they met in the 90s. The tracklisting is available at the album's microsite (sample: “as if your eyes were partly closed as if you honed the swirl within them and offered me … the world”). The album comes in a number of formats: a hardback 2CD edition with 44 page book and second disc of instrumentals; a 2LP edition with MP3 download code, or a straightforward download. Pre-orders are open online now.
Brian Eno - glitch (taken from Drums Between The Bells) by Warp Records
Sónar festival is for sale, and has released a video advertising itself to potential bidders. Barcelona based Sónar has been running for 18 years, and is being punted around by sales agent Mr Samaniego. Watch the corporate sales pitch here:
Later this month Francisco López will be performing Hyper-Rainforest: an 80 channel concert built from years of field recordings. The piece was developed in residence at EMPAC (The Curtis R Priem Experimental Media And Performing Arts Centre), and the idea is not to conjure the realistic sounds of a rainforest, but to perform a composed sound piece that uses the field recordings as a starting point.
López has been recording on location in rainforests around the world for a decade, and currently has a Kickstarter project up and running to help get a group of musicians to the Amazon this year for his annual Mamori Sound Project. New York EMPAC Concert Hall, 28–30 April, 8pm, $15.
Nick Land, essayist oft-quoted by Kode9 and The Wire’s Mark Fisher, has a new blog up and running about the future of Shanghai. Land says in his inaugural blog that the focus of Urban Future will be “the intersection of cities with the future. It aims to foster discussion about cities as engines of the future, and about futurism as a dynamic influence on the shape, character, and development of cities. More particularly, it scavenges for clues, and floats speculations, about the Shanghai of tomorrow.” Land also promises that things will get “continuously weirder” as the discussion goes on.
Urban Future is a part of the Urbanatomy site. A collection of Land’s work, Fanged Noumena, was released in March this year.
A funeral for jazz violinist Billy Bang, who died last week, is being held on 20 April in New York. The service will take place at 10am at Mount Olive Baptist Church, followed by a burial at Woodlawn Cemetery at 1pm. A memorial fund has been set up to help with funeral costs by Arts for Art, donations can be made via the AFA site. For the obituary of Bang, head here.
Kode9 & Spaceape’s new album Black Sun is released today, and with the artwork there’s a comic strip bundled in. The comic is drawn by composer and producer Raz Mesinai (aka Badawi), and illustrates the concept for the album. Mesinai's drawing is included in the CD and LP version of Black Sun, but not with download, and is accompanied by a lyric sheet to decipher Spaceape’s signature drawl.
Editions Mego is starting up a new vinyl series of recordings from Jim O’Rourke’s archive. Confusingly, the series starts with Old News #5: a double LP which includes live recordings from Chicago, Tokyo and London from 1992, 2003 and 2010. Old News editions 1–4 were cassettes and CDR releases O’Rourke produced in limited runs sold on tour, and Editions Mego are picking up the series from here. There are plans afoot for a sixth in the series, but none to reissue Old News 1–4. Old News #5 is released on 10 June on Editions Mego, and will not be released in any other formats.