Breaking The Ice is a limited edition double disc mix of rare and previously unheard tracks made in Iceland between the late 1960s and early 1980s. Influenced heavily by funk, soul and disco, the mix was compiled by Icelandic DJ and turntablist DJ Platurn, and includes a 16 page digibook featuring sleevenotes and photos taken by his father Magnus Thordarson, a DJ and promoter who in the 1970s set up his own show on Ríkisútvarpið, or the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.

“We pitched an idea to this guy named Ólafur [Ragnar Grímsson, the President of Iceland between 1996–2016] about playing new musical forms and stuff,” explains Thordarson in his notes. “And like a typical politician, he said, ‘Put it down on paper!’ So we gave him a list of music that we thought should be in the library. I have no idea if he figured any of it, he probably only recognised The Beatles.”

Breaking The Ice is released on 23 March by Needle To The Groove. It's available to pre-order now. Listen to part one below:

San Fransisco based visual artist Paul Clipson died unexpectedly on 3 February. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Clipson was an experimental film maker who worked with artists including Liz Harris aka Grouper, Jefre-Cantu Ledesma, Lawrence English, Sarah Davachi, Felicia Atkinson, Rene Hell, and others. He was also a member of the San Francisco post rock group Tarentel in which he worked alongside Ledesma, Danny Grody, Jim Redd, and Tony Cross, making Super 8 films to run alongside each performance. He was recently featured on John Davis's Gravity Spells: Bay Area New Music And Expanded Cinema Art, a four DVD collection of underground non-narrative film.

A crowdfunding campaign has been set up by Root Strata's Maxwell August Croy on behalf of Clipson's wife Yelena Soboleva, with funds going directly to Soboleva and daughter Anya Kamenskaya to help with rent, funeral and memorial costs.

“Our dearest friend Paul Clipson passed unexpectedly from this world” reads the campaign page. “Paul is survived and held in loving memory by his family, a large network of friends and colleagues, and many fans of his work. An incredibly bright light and source of truly boundless energy, his generous heart and vivid talents touched the lives of countless people. It is impossible to qualify the depth of this connection.”

Grouper/Paul Clipson “Made Of Air”

Stroboscopic Artefacts are to release a new compilation in April featuring a selection of new music from Italian electronic artists. Back in 2013 the imprint released its Stellate limited edition series featuring four artists per release, but Flowers From The Ashes, Contemporary Italian Electronic Music is said to be its first artist compilation proper.

Artists featured are Stroboscopic Artefacts’ label boss Lucy, Silvia Kastel, Andrea Belfi, Marco Shuttle, Ninos Du Brasil, Alessandro Adriani, Chevel, Lory D, Caterina Barbieri, and Spazio Disponibile’s co-founder Neel.

“There is a sensibility of decadence and corroded grandeur etched within its four album sides, reminding us that historically ‘decadent’ times have nonetheless resulted in some of the boldest acts of individual and collective creativity,” says the label. “Though many of the artists involved have set of residence outside of their native Italy, all contribute here to make a captivating portrait of a shared spirit and cultural memory.”

You can listen to Caterina Barbieri's offering“Virgo Rebellion” below.

Angélique Kidjo is to perform her latest project, a reinterpretation of the classic Talking Heads album Remain In Light, at London's Southbank Centre in June. Showcasing her new arrangements of songs such as “Crosseyed And Painless”, “Once In A Lifetime” and “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)”, the performance follows her New York Carnegie Hall show last year, in which she appeared on stage with Talking Heads' David Byrne. Byrne has noted that Talking Heads drew inspiration from Kidjo's home country Benin. Produced by Brian Eno and released in 1980, Remain In Light was the group’s fourth studio album

Angélique Kidjo’s Remain In Light show will take place on 8 June, starting at 7:30pm. Tickets are available from £15 up.

Kidjo performed “Crosseyed And Painless” live at the Royal Festival Hall’s opening gala concert of the 2017 EFG London Jazz Festival. You can watch this below.

A national experimental music touring network has been launched in the UK. Called OUTLANDS, it will nurture interdisciplinary music through the support of the musicians and organisations that promote them, while encouraging diversity and building local audiences. In the forthcoming year they plan to commission and tour three new productions. A new live collaboration between Matana Roberts and UK sound artist/improvisor Kelly Jayne Jones kicks off the series with a run of May dates in the UK. Partners include De La Warr Pavilion (Bexhill on Sea), Capsule (Birmingham), Fuse (Bradford), Qu Junktions and the independent producer Al Cameron (Bristol), Cambridge Junction, Fat Out (Manchester), MK Gallery (Milton Keynes) and Peninsula Arts and Karst (Plymouth).

“All over the country artists and DIY operations are doing amazing and fresh new things around music and live performance,” says Caleb Madden of De La Warr Pavilion. “As economic constraints tighten, these activities are less and less likely to obtain the support they need to develop. I am excited to be part of a network that has the longterm ability to support this work, from the artists right through to the venues and their audiences...

“OUTLANDS offers a unique opportunity to respond to and develop this demand at a strategic level,” continues Madden, “providing risk-taking programmes (through experimental art forms, interesting contexts and community involvement) in Bristol and the wider region, sustaining and generating new audiences through high quality production, attractive artists and national marketing support.”

More information can be found on the OUTLANDS website.

An open call has been announced for a musician to spend five days working alongside UK composer and turntablist Shiva Feshareki on a project that culminates with a performance at Sounds Like This Festival in Leeds on 12 March. The residency, which falls under the umbrella music initiative Brighter Sound, is part of Both Sides Now, which focuses specifically on supporting women in music.

“We’re looking for openminded artists who are excited by experimentation, leftfield composition, and are curious to explore the interactions between time, space and sound,” reads the call out. “Your method of performance can be any form of instrument or gear, be it acoustic or electronic, conventional or unconventional.”

Applicants are welcome from women over 18 years old, who are based in Leeds and the surrounding area. Deadline is 11 February. More information can be found on the website.

UK label Arc Light Editions return with a collection of gaelic psalm singing from the Hebrides. Run by The Wire contributor Jennifer Lucy Allan and Multiverse’s James Ginzburg, the imprint’s fourth release Salm Vol 1 features a performance of an improvised song tradition still practised on the Hebrides Isle of Lewis. Captured over two evenings at the Back Free Church in October 2003, the recordings were originally released on CD and cassette by Bethesda Care Home and Hospice. Now Arc Light Editions are releasing it as a vinyl LP for the first time.

The practice of psalm singing, where a precentor introduces a line of a psalm and the congregation respond by singing it, is a form of call and response known as lining out or hymn lining, and was introduced to some areas of America in the 18th century by Presbyterian immigrants.

Arc Light Editions worked with the music’s original producer Calum Martin and Doctor Robert Macdonald from Bethesda Hospice, and a portion of the profits will go to the latter. Salm: Gaelic Psalms From The Hebrides Of Scotland Vol 1 is out now.

Back in November 2016, Noel Meek surveyed the sights and sounds of gaelic psalm singing as part of a pilgrimage from New Zealand back to the country of his grandparents. You can read it via The Wire Portal.

Todd Barton and Ursula K Le Guin's recording Music And Poetry Of The Kesh, originally released as a cassette accompanying Le Guin's 1985 book Always Coming Home, will receive a long awaited reissue next month via Freedom To Spend. Part novel, part lengthy textbook, the publication tells the story of an invented Pacific Coast people called The Kesh and a woman called Stone Telling, weaving an anthropological narrative of folklore and fantasy. For its soundtrack, words and lyrics were put together by the late novelist while the sound was composed by Barton, an Oregon based musician and Buchla synthesist with whom Le Guin had worked on public radio projects.

Both Barton and Le Guin has started work on the reissue before the novelist's death on 22 January of this year. Moe Bowstern, a writer and friend of Le Guin, wrote the sleevenotes for this new edition in which she explains that Barton had built and then taught himself to play several instruments of Le Guin’s design, among them “the seven-foot horn known to the Kesh as the Houmbúta and the Wéosai Medoud Teyahi bone flute.”

The Freedom To Spend label add “Both Barton and Le Guin are sensitive to the sovereignty of indigenous Californians and were careful not to trample the traditions of the Tolowa people who lived in the valley long before the Kesh.” As Barton puts it in notes accompanying the release, “You research deeply, and then you bring your own voice to the table.”

The LP will include a printed jacket with Le Guin’s illustrations from Always Coming Home, a facsimile of the original lyric sheet, sleevenotes by Moe Bowstern, download code and a bookmark. It's released in both physical and digital formats on 23 March.

Watch Ursula K Le Guin and Todd Barton’s “A Teaching Poem/Heron Dance” below.

Previously unreleased recordings of Indonesian electronic music by Otto Sidharta have been released by the veteran Belgian avant garde label Sub Rosa. Sidharta was born in Bandung in Indonesia in 1955, and his works have frequently combined environmental and synthetic sounds. He studied music composition at Jakarta Institute of Arts under Slamet Abdul Sjukur – who had himself previously studied under Olivier Messiaen – and his first performed composition was Kemelut (1979), an electronic piece based on the sound of water. He recently appeared at Berghain’s Raung Ray #2: The Magic Of Sunda in Berlin, an event produced by Morphine Records and Europalia Indonesia. Titled Indonesian Electronic Music 1979–1992, the album anthologises Sidharta’s previously unreleased works. It's available now.

Westbrook Records is set to release a new CD of live recordings of The Uncommon Orchestra featuring Lou Gare. In the early 1960s, Gare worked with Mike Westbrook in a trio that also included John Surman. Nearly four decades later, they reunited as The Uncommon Orchestra, with the AMM saxophonist contributing to the orchestra’s workshops and concerts. But health problems meant Gare was unable to participate in recording the album. He died on 6 October 2017. However Matthew North captured some of their early performances on tape, some of which will be released as Mike Westbrook In Memory Of Lou Gare Tenor Saxophone (1939 To 2017). Westbrook is looking for patrons to support the release. For more information contact: admin@westbrookjazz.co.uk