Pyrenean art school CAMP has announced two new funding initiatives in a bid to widen its accessibility. The Open Grants programme is available to anyone and offers to cover half the cost of a session at CAMP, while its Educational Match Programme gives universities the opportunity to cover part of the cost, with the art school matching any donations. Classes scheduled for 2018 are: Video and Installation Art with Laure Prouvost, Environmental Sound Recording with Chris Watson, Modern Composition with Gavin Bryars, Hidden Sounds with Christina Kubisch, Live Art with Anne Bean, Deep Listening, Meditation and Laughter with Laraaji, Screenwriting with Walt Donahue, Experimental Performance with Eli Keszler, Ensemble Playing with Apartment House, and Play Writing with John Burgess.

Bruxa Maria’s Matt Cargill, also of Sly And The Family Drone, is currently in hospital following an accident that left him and fellow members of Bruxa Maria and Silent Front with serious injuries. The two groups were in France heading for a gig in Paris when the accident happened on 20 January. Both are now facing considerable costs to cover their medical bills and replace equipment. A JustGiving campaign has been set up to raise funds on their behalf – a benefit concert at New River Studios in London has already contributed £873. At the time of writing Matt Cargill was still in hospital with a collapsed lung and fractured humerus. Other members are variously suffering from a fractured rib and vertebrae, a broken arm, bruises, sores and scrapes.

“The project is about spatial dislocation, my internal conversation and very fast machines,” explains Gaika when asked about his forthcoming project The Spectacular Empire II: The Time Machine, which he has adapted for a performance at MONOM this week. Commissioned as part of Berlin's CTM festival, this extension to Gaika's Spectacular Empire series makes use of the venue's new 4DSound system; a spatial and immersive sound environment that houses 48 omnidirectional speakers and nine subs.

In September 2017 Gaika’s story The Spectacular Empire: A Future Imagined was published by Dazed. It starts from a familiar scene of civil unrest, but culminates in the mass redistribution of power and a New London run by a collectivist militarised cult called The Spectacular Empire. Experimenting with time travel, they eventually disappear into folklore, perhaps heading for Africa in 2062. Is The Spectacular Empire II: The Time Machine, then, a continuation of this? No, states Gaika. “It's more an interpretation of, then a linear continuation,” he declares. “I tend to be fairly indirect about such things.

“The Spectacular Empire II: The Time Machine is an audio visual performance piece where I'm doing some really interesting things with my voice,” he continues. “The Time Machine is performative, and it’s immersive as well as ‘viewed’. It is about presenting inner worlds and asking the audience to enter themselves fully and believe.

“This work is about imagination. I believe we have the power to write history with our imagination. I’m someone with a fairly elastic grip on time as a notion, partly due the amount of travel I do, and an overactive imagination. I guess The Time Machine is a pretty arcane attempt at warping the mechanics of a commonly perceived reality.”

When asked about a political drive to his work, Gaika responds, “I feel like these people – Trump, May, Putin et al – they really mean to kill us all. As an artist I feel like it's disingenuous to pretend we are in some sort of separate bubble where none of that matters.”

The concept of The Spectacular Empire was based on a screenplay (yet to be finished) that his brother, the film maker Kibwe Tavares, is currently working on. It also draws inspiration from neo-noir anime and brutalist architecture, says Gaika, who continues, “It’s an aesthetic thing mainly. A large part of The Spectacular Empire and therefore The Time Machine, is about the art and its context, namely how changes to the built environment affect the behaviour of people. High density housing in London is a key starting point for this as a thought experiment.”

Indeed, in previous interviews this Brixton, South London based artist has referenced the sounds of the city as a major inspiration for a lot of his artistic output. He expands on the theme: “The sonic palette and also the way we experience sound in many dimensions – bouncing sound off of materials, real or imagined is a large part of The Time Machine. I think it’s quite alien to experience performed music this way but not alien when we think about how and where we actually hear everything else.”

But is there a friction between an urban landscape and the glossy, high definition approach of the 4D system? “Yes there definitely is, luxury things like 4D are inaccessible to 90 percent of urban artists and sadly not really relevant to many people living in high density housing. To be honest the elitism does grate. However I think the only real solution is participation, subversion and demonstration thereof. I hope by doing this I can show that is what is possible.”

The Spectacular Empire II: The Time Machine takes place on 30 & 31 January at MONOM, Berlin, with support from TCF and IOANN. Also commissioned is Pan Daijing, who will be supported by FIS and IOANN, on 1 & 2 February. Gaika appeared on the cover of The Wire 388.

Mark E Smith died at his Greater Manchester home in Prestwich on 24 January. He was 60 years old. The Fall founder and frontman had been struggling with health issues for a number of years. Smith was born in Broughton in Lancashire on 5 March 1957. In June 1976 he attended the infamous Sex Pistols gig at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall alongside future members of Buzzcocks, The Smiths and Joy Division, and soon after formed The Fall with his friends Martin Bramah, Una Baines and Tony Friel, the first of numerous line-ups that would see some 60 musicians filter through the band. Their earliest recordings – represented by 1978 debut EP Bingo-Master’s Break Out!, the following year’s Live At The Witch Trials and Dragnet, 1980’s Grotesque (After The Gramme) and 1982’s Hex Enduction Hour – established many Fall trademarks: dogged repetition, clanging guitars and Smith’s unique lyricism, drawing as much on daily mundanity as the weird fiction that had inspired him while growing up, barked in a working class Mancunian accent. From 1978 onward The Fall maintained a work ethic that saw them release studio albums at the rate of roughly one a year. Most recently, they released New Facts Emerge in 2017.

In spite of the misanthropic outlook which made his interviews required reading, Smith frequently collaborated with other artists, including Michael Clark, Edwyn Collins, DOSE, Gorillaz, Coldcut and Inspiral Carpets. He also worked with Mouse On Mars on the project Von Südenfed. In addition to The Fall, Smith released two solo spoken word sets, 1998’s The Post-Nearly Man and 2002’s Pander! Panda! Panzer!.

The Wire’s first interview with Mark E Smith was published in August 1986 (issue 30). Over the next three decades he and The Fall were covered extensively in the magazine: he was interviewed at least seven times, appeared on the cover three times and twice sat the Invisible Jukebox test (Smith being the only artist to take this honour).

For more on The Wire’s Fall coverage, see our online Archive Portal.

A fundraising campaign has been launched to save US bassist and producer Bill Laswell's Orange Music Studio. Laswell moved his operations from Brooklyn to New Jersey in 1998, when he took over the space that had once housed Grand Slam Studios. At Orange Music, Laswell’s production work has included sessions with Tabla Beat Science, Sly & Robbie and Matisyahu, as well as Bernie Worrell and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. But now the space is calling for help to remain open.

“Beset by health problems while trying to navigate this harsh and uncertain economic landscape, Laswell is struggling to maintain Orange Music, the legendary New Jersey studio that he as helmed for the last 20 years. He is putting the call out to all fans, friends and fellow artists alike: If you can help, please do so now. No contribution is too small,” reads the fundraising page.

At the time of writing the campaign has raised $11,749 out of its $25,000 target, with a wide range of downloads, CDs and T-shirts on offer to donors as a thanks for helping. More information can be found at gofundme.

On 17 February Coltrane Culture will celebrate the life, music and spiritual journey of the jazz musician and composer John Coltrane. “Many cultures still use music to evoke higher states of being, focusing the mind and body as a conduit to connect with the spirit,” says the event’s curator Denys Baptiste. “John Coltrane is considered by many as one of the world’s best Jazz musicians, who channelled music through the lens of the divine. His early career was hampered by addiction until 1957, when he experienced a dramatic spiritual awakening that changed both the course of his life and transformed Jazz on a global scale. The spiritual source of his music has inspired both musicians and listeners alike, making his Jazz truly timeless.”

The event will feature a screening of John Scheinfeld's Coltrane documentary Chasing Trane, followed by a panel discussion exploring his influence today. There will also be a selection of Coltrane inspired performances including a solo harp set from Alina Bzhezhinska, The Gary Crosby Quartet with Evan Parker, live performances by Tomorrow’s Warriors, and Denys Baptiste performing music from his album The Late Trane. Other attractions include a DJ set by Blacktronica’s Charlie Dark, hiphop and jazz inspired yoga and meditation sessions, and a showcase of Coltrane inspired art and music by students at Big Creative Education.

Coltrane Culture will take place at Mirth, Marvel & Maud in Walthamstow, London.

Camden Arts Centre is set to host a project based on Daphne Oram's Oramics machine. Held over two afternoons in February, the event will feature live performances on the recently built Mini Oramics machine, as well as discussion.

In the mid-1970s, Oram began work on a mini version of her original full size Oramics machine which had been designed and built a decade earlier. The machine was never released during her lifetime, with the blueprints now housed at the Daphne Oram archive at Goldsmiths University of London. London based artist and musician Tom Richards has constructed a version of the machine (and subscribers can read an interview with him about it in Wire 391). Throughout February Richards, alongside Sarah Angliss, James Bulley and Shiva Feshareki will spend time experimenting on the machine. The outcome of which will be performed at the arts centre on 24 February.

Ahead of the event, The Wire's Frances Morgan will host a panel discussion with Richards, Angliss and Bulley, considering Oram’s work and her work with optical sound.

Tickets are available via Camden Art Centre's website.

“It is with profound sorrow that the family of Ramapolo Hugh Masekela announce his passing,” reads the family announcement of South African trumpeter, composer and singer Hugh Masekela’s death. “After a protracted and courageous battle with prostate cancer, he passed peacefully in Johannesburg, South Africa, surrounded by his family.

“Hugh's global and activist contributions to and participation in the areas of music, theatre and the arts in general is contained in the minds and memory of millions across six continents and we are blessed and grateful to be part of a life and ever-expanding legacy of love, sharing and vanguard creativity that spans the time and space of six decades,” it adds.

Masekela was born in 1939 in Witbank, a coalmining town east of Johannesburg. Having played piano from a young age, at 14 he was inspired by the film Young Man With A Horn to pick up the trumpet. At that time he studied at St Peter's Secondary School in Johannesburg. Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, the anti-Apartheid chaplain at the school, procured Masekela a trumpet and arranged for the bandleader of Johannesburg Native Municipal Brass Band to teach him. He later formed The Huddleston Jazz Band, South Africa's first youth orchestra, alongside his schoolmates, and by 1956 he was a member of Alfred Herbert's African Jazz Revue.

“My parents were the second urban generation on a totally large scale,” Masekela told Charles De Ledesma back in an interview in The Wire 10. "So were still experiencing the traumas of adapting to urban after rural life, having been brought to the city as a cheap labour force and put in encampments – townships.”

Masekela’s music agitated for political change, protesting against Apartheid, government and hardship. In 1959 he formed The Jazz Epistles alongside Abdullah Ibrahim (at that time still known as Dollar Brand), Kippie Moeketsi, Makhaya Ntshoko and Johnny Gertze – the first black South African jazz group to record an LP.

“I grew up watching the average black township person who went to the shebeens, how they were after their lands had been taken away, their traditions ruined, their relegation to below the status of second-class citizens, and the constant repression and harassment,” he told De Ledesma. “I saw how it was eating everybody up; most people couldn't cope with it. By the time I was 14, the buses had come to take us to be issued with passes, stand in rows and get numbered. The only difference with the way we were getting treated and the way the Jews in Nazi Europe had been treated ten years before was that we weren't exterminated... I grew up realising music was my only chance; by the time I was 15 I was making music and by 21 I was out of the country.”

Following a brief period at the Guildhall in London, he headed for the US and attended the Manhattan School of Music in New York to study trumpet. He formed a quartet with Larry Willis on piano, Hal Dobson on bass and Henry Jenkins on drums. He also wrote and recorded extensively with vocalist Miriam Makeba, whom he was married to in the mid-60s, and their compositions form the backbone of several albums of the time.

In 1972, Masekela returned to London with Ntshoko, Willis and Eddie Gomez and recorded Home Is Where The Music Is with fellow South African Dudu Pukwana. He then stepped in as trumpeter for Fela Kuti's group, and while on tour in Lagos, met Hedzoleh Soundz and began playing with them. “I was happy to return to Africa, to get back to the energy there, where you don't have to struggle so much to get people to listen,” he told De Ledesma. “Playing with Hedzoleh was like my musical education all over again. It felt like for the first time in a long while I was playing the music of where I'd come from, only it was fuller rhythmically, more percussive.”

Masekela did not return to South Africa until after the fall of Apartheid, but in the early 1980s he set up a recording studio in neighbouring Botswana, and in 1985 founded the International School of Music there. His 1987 single “Bring Him Back Home" became an anthem for the campaign to free Nelson Mandela, and when he finally returned to South Africa in the early 1990s, he explored the mbaqanga style. His autobiography Still Grazing: The Musical Journey Of Hugh Masekela was published in 2004. In 2008 he announced he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer but he continued being active in music. The Jazz Epistles reunited in 2016, bringing Masekela and Abdullah Ibrahim together for the first time in 60 years for a concert at Johannesburg’s Emperors Palace commemorating 40 years since the Soweto uprising in 1976.

On 26 January Black Editions will reissue High Rise's second album High Rise II. Freshly mixed and remastered by founding band member Nanjo Asahito, the release will feature the original LP artwork fully restored with its original design of textured jacket and metallic ink printing. It will also feature a new insert featuring never before published group photos and artwork by artist Munehiro Narita.

High Rise II was originally released by PSF in 1986 and was High Rise's second album. It's released on vinyl on 26 January, and will be available digitally on 9 February.

February sees the premiere of the new work Cycles Of My Being. Composed by multi-instrumentalist and composer Tyshawn Sorey, lyricist Terrance Hayes and Opera Philadelphia Artistic Advisor Lawrence Brownlee, it’s a song cycle exploring the experiences of living as a black man in America.

“In these divided times, we hope to create something that brings people together with mutual respect, understanding, and communication across races and generations.” says Brownlee, who will be participating in a Q&A after its premiere performance on 20 February at Perelman Theater in Philadelphia (tickets available for $25). Other dates include Lyric Opera in Chicago (22 February) and New York's Carnegie Hall (24 April).