Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who died 20 years ago, would have been 79 on 15 October. To commemorate his birthday US label Knitting Factory has announced the fourth in its series of Kuti anthologies is a box set curated by Erykah Badu.

“I prefer things that come super-duper easy to me. Effortless creations are MY forte. That's how I feel about the music of Fela Kuti,” writes Badu. “IT’S SO GOOD that there is NO way he gave it any thought. With Fela, it seems to just have spilled right out of him. We instantly get the feeling that we are connected to those tones and vibrations. It is this breed of pure honesty that we are most attracted to, I think, because we get the feeling we are witnessing something... well, we should not. Largely, this is because we are automatically made part of a movement, manufactured as we watch. The maker and the watcher become one living, breathing organism.

“Fela Kuti is a fucking genius,” she declares. “Please listen to these tracks, preferably with a nice blunt… with a nice slow burn.”

Badu’s selections include “Coffin For Head Of State” (1980), “Yellow Fever” (1976), “No Agreement” (1977), “JJD (Johnny Just Drop)” (1977), “VIP” (1979), “Army Arrangement” (1984) and “Underground System” (1992).

Restored and remastered from Fela’s original recordings, Fela Kuti:Vinyl Box Set #4 will be released as a seven LP collection in a limited edition of 3000 copies. Badu has also penned seven essays for the set, which also includes seven in-depth commentaries written by Afrobeat historian Chris May, song lyrics and never before published photos of Fela Kuti, and a poster designed by Nigerian artist Lemi Ghariokwu, who was responsible for 26 of Kuti‘s previous album covers. The series’ previous curators were Questlove in 2010, Ginger Baker in 2012, and Brian Eno in 2014.

Fela Kuti:Vinyl Box Set #4 is released on 15 December by Knitting Factory Records. Pre-orders are available now.

You can watch part two of Badu's favourite Kuti track “Coffin For Head Of State” below:

Repeater Books are currently compiling a major anthology of Mark Fisher writings. The book will be edited by Darren Ambrose, with a foreword by Simon Reynolds.

Ranging from some of his earliest K-Punk blog essays in 2003 through to an unpublished K-Punk post on the recent US election, this comprehensive collection will bring together a selection of his writings on politics, popular culture, music, film and television. It will also include a selection of reviews and interviews and other key pieces on activism, precarity, hauntology, mental health and popular modernism, as well as his recent thoughts on acid communism. Wire writings featured will include a review of Sleaford Mods' Divide & Exit (The Wire 362) and David Bowie’s The Next Day (The Wire 351), plus the essay “Autonomy In The UK” (The Wire 335).

Still in the early stages of production, the anthology has a pencilled in late 2018 as a publication date.

This year Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival commemorates its 40th birthday with two world premieres performed by Red Note Ensemble.

First up will be a new work by James Dillon which expands on New York Triptych, performed at the HCMF in 2013. Following that will be a part performance, part kinetic-sculptural piece by Norwegian composer Maja S K Ratkje titled Aeolian. For this new commission, Ratkje, who was the HMFC's composer in residence back in 2012, has collaborated with UK installation artist Kathy Hinde and accordion soloist Andreas Borregaard to build new air-activated instruments for a sculptural installation designed specifically with Red Note Ensemble in mind.

HCMF runs from 17–26 November. You can watch a video of Ratkje and Hinde's piece below:

Following their September launch with the first ever reissue of Koharu Kisaragi/Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 12" Neo-Plant (reviewed in The Wire 405), UK based Lag Records are set to release Joe Hisaishi's 1984 electronic score to the Shogakukan Manga Award winning comic Kisshō Tennyo, written and illustrated by Akimi Yoshida.

Hisaishi is now best known for his soundtracks to Studio Ghibli classics like Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, as well as for his work with Kitano Takeshi aka Beat Takeshi, the Japanese comedian, screenwriter and TV personality responsible for Takeshi's Castle (as documented on the 2001 Polydor release Joe Hisaishi ‎– Meets Kitano Films). Hisaishi’s earlier work showcased his skills as an electronic musician and composer of anime and manga soundtracks, such as Kisshō Tennyo’s breezy yet sometimes sinister collection of synth arpeggios.

The album has been remastered by Jerome Schmitt and comes with new artwork by Luna Monogatari. The gatefold LP includes a download card and poster and is available for pre-order now. Originally released by anime label Animage, Kisshō Tennyo will be reissued on 26 February 2018. You can listen to some excerpts below.

This November London-based artist collective Happened will celebrate Taiwanese experimental music at London's Cafe Oto. Four artists will feature at the event, including Chiyou Ding on electronics, Alöis Yang with an audio visual piece, Yen-Tzu Chang performing homemade electronic instruments and Lucia H Chung with non-input feedback improvisation.

“This particular event comes about from my desire of bringing people’s attention to Taiwanese experimental and electronic music” explains organiser and performer Lucia H Chung. “When talking about experimental music in Asia, people firstly think of Japan, and then perhaps more recently China. Taiwanese experimental music seems to be neglected on the map and I would like to use this opportunity to introduce the UK audience to Taiwanese artists and their work.”

Cafe Oto's Project Space will also be host to sound installation Micro Loop Macro Cycle by Alöis Yang.

The event takes place on 4 November. More information can be found on Cafe Oto's website.

Liverpool’s Bluecoat centre for contemporary arts will present the premiere of Elaine Mitchener’s Sweet Tooth on 23 November. The 50 minute piece is the result of five years’ research interrogating the historical links between the sugar industry and the transatlantic slave trade, and brings together text, improvisation and movement.

Also coming up at Bluecoat is a Captain Beefheart weekend running from 9–13 November. Curated by Kyle Percy, in collaboration with Chris McCabe and Bryan Biggs, the programme features music, poetry, a symposium, a walking tour, a fanzine, an archival display and a student exhibition involving artists, experts and fans.

Dean Blunt and Mika Levi have been working on an opera. Not much is known about the piece at this stage except that it is called Inna and was written and directed by Blunt with music by Levi, who recently penned the score for Pablo Larraín's Jackie.

Earlier this year new Hyperdub signee Klein wrote a musical for the New Music Biennial, which was performed at the Southbank centre on 7 July.

Inna is scheduled for performance on 27 & 28 October. And you can watch this sound snippet via YouTube.

One week before its official release date on 20 October, Haley Fohr aka Circuit Des Yeux or sometime alter ego Jackie Lynn is streaming her new album Reaching For Indigo via her website. For this release The Wire cover star (issue 390) has collaborated with a range of artists including Cooper Crain, Rob Frye, Whitney Johnson, Ryley Walker and Tyler Damon.

The concept behind the album is based on a “moment in time” on 22 January 2016. “It's an album to be listened to as a whole, with a message that conjures a complete experience not fully attainable through isolated songs,” declares her press release.

You can hear the album now via Haley Fohr’s website, and you can pre-order it via Drag City.

Japanese electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda has bought his new site-specific installation to London’s Store Studios, following showings in New York’s Times Square and elsewhere around the world. Called test pattern [N˚12], it’s a continuation of Ikeda’s ongoing test pattern series which processes data from sound and imagery into binary code.

Also on show at Store Studios is Arthur Jafa’s Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death (2016). The installation follows Jafa's recent exhibition at Serpentine Galleries, A Series Of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions, which featured a listening session live stream of performances by Steve Coleman, Morgan Craft, Micah Gaugh, Melvin Gibbs, Jason Moran and Kokayi Carl Walker, the results of which were cut direct to disc and released by VF. For Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death, Jafa creates a vision of African-American identity through a selection of found footage and contemporary imagery, including photographs of civil rights leaders and aerial views of the Los Angeles riots, set to Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam”.

Finally, Store is screening Jeremy Shaw’s 20 minute sci-fi pseudo-documentary Liminals, which follows a group of eight dancers as they act out ecstatic rituals, drawing parallels between spiritual gatherings and 1970s hedonistic rituals. A 10" record of Liminals’ soundtrack will be released at a later date.

Curated by Store X The Vinyl Factory, all three showings run until 10 December at Store Studios. Entry is free.

Aikido instructor and free improv saxophonist Lou Gare, who died on 6 October, was the co-founder of AMM with guitarist Keith Rowe and drummer Eddie Prévost. He played with the group up until their 1973 album To Hear And Back Again, and then not again until The Nameless Uncarved Block on Matchless in 1990.

During the 1970s Gare moved to Devon where he continued to make music solo and with local musicians such as pianist Sam Richards in Synchronicity, which also featured David Stanley and Sarah Frances. The group performed throughout the 1990s and early 2000s in the Southwest, and they also toured the Czech Republic. In 2005 Gare released a solo album, No String Attached, and in March 2011 he played a two day residency at London Cafe Oto, when he played solo, with his band and former AMM colleague Eddie Prévost.

A keen martial arts student and teacher for over 20 years, Gare told Julian Cowley in The Wire 325, “In martial art you learn an enormous amount about how to direct your energy and conserve it, and about how to keep relaxed. That’s one of the things I love about the way I play saxophone. When I’m playing really well my whole body is very relaxed. I just watch it working, in a way.”