Amanda Moss, artist and co-founder of London's Corsica Studios, has died following a battle with a rare form of ovarian cancer. Diagnosed last year, a GoFundMe campaign had been set up to raise funds to pay for treatment in Germany. An important figure on the London club scene, Amanda dedicated her life to supporting creative arts in the city. The news was announced this morning via the campaign page:

“It is with great sadness that I have to let you know that Amanda's health deteriorated rapidly over the weekend and at 8.30 pm yesterday evening she passed away peacefully.

“Amanda's family and I would like you all to know how much we appreciate the numerous messages of support, donations and fundraising activities that have been offered over the last few months as they really gave her a chance to try the treatments she needed and to face this illness on her own terms. She was incredibly brave but unfortunately some battles are too big and, despite her determination, positivity and will to succeed, this was one that she just couldn't win.

“Amanda was courageous, dignified and beautiful to the end and wanted everyone to know how much your support and generosity meant to her during her illness. She felt very loved by you all and it goes without saying that she will be greatly missed.

“Adrian, Darren, Yvonne and the family.”

Superior Viaduct has announced the release of the previously unissued live recording of the 1972 premiere of Tony Conrad's Ten Years Alive On The Infinite Plain. Performed at New York venue The Kitchen, Ten Years originally connected Conrad’s film making and music experiments in long duration sound of a kind that he’d begun conducting in the 1960s with Theater Of Eternal Music. The event comprised of film installation and minimalist score for amplified strings.

Edited by Jim O'Rourke, the recording features Conrad on violin, with Rhys Chatham on a six foot long strip of wood with bass strings, electric pick-up, tuning keys, tape, rubber band and metal hardware, and Laurie Spiegel carrying out an arrhythmic bass pulse. The record also includes sleevenotes by Rhys Chatham and Andrew Lampert.

"Ten Years began with image before sound," writes Lampert, "a row of quadruple projections arranged side-by-side, all the shuffling stripes cascading into each other. Over the next two hours the music throbbed and the projectors incrementally shifted inwards, their beams gradually uniting to form one pulsating, overlapping picture."

And Chatham comments, "When I first listened to this recording after not hearing it for over 40 years, it transported me back to the early Kitchen and the heyday of early minimalism, played outside The Dream Syndicate."

Tony Conrad’s Ten Years Alive On The Infinite Plain will be released in double LP and double CD formats 19 May (North America) and 26 May (Europe). Preorder via Superior Viaduct.

Following a determined fan campaign, voters from the World Science Fiction Convention have selected Clipping's album Splendor & Misery as one of six finalists in the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form category of The Hugo Awards.

The album tells a story of interstellar slave ships, abduction and lovesick AIs; Rob Turner, writing in Wire 381, describes it as "Afrofuturism via nerdcore, trading the wonkiness and frazzle of Sun Ra and Dr Octagon for the lofty perspectives of Stanley Kubrick and Samuel Delany. The latter gets a nod in one of Diggs’s denser freestyles (“I got a pocket of stars”) while Kubrick provides the other main plot point: a sentient computer that goes haywire."

The Hugos are the top honours for science fiction writers and editors. Splendor & Misery is the first album to be nominated for a Hugo since the nominations of Blows Against The Empire by Paul Kantner and Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers by The Firesign Theatre, both in 1971.

Read the full list of Hugo nominations on the Tor books website. The final round of voting will close on 15 July. Winners will be announced at the 75th World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki, Finland on 11 August.

Watch the video for Clipping's "True Believer":

Wire subscribers can read Rob Turner's review of Splendor & Misery here.

Alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe died on 27 March, reported San Diego Union Tribune. He was 76. His death was announced on his Facebook page: "Early this morning the great Arthur Blythe passed. As many of you know he was a gentle soul and a musical genius. He had been fighting Parkinson's disease for several years. His spirit will live on in his unique music, which he humbly gave to our universe."

Blythe was born in Los Angeles and moved to San Diego as a young child, but was drawn back to LA as a teenager, where he formed a close association with the pianist, bandleader and composer Horace Tapscott. Both were active in music community organisations in the city, including The Union Of God's Musicians And Artists Ascension and The Underground Musicians And Artists Association. Few recordings of this generation of LA free players emerged at the time, but Tapscott's 1969 free jazz classic The Giant Awakens, one of the best documents of the scene, marks Blythe's vinyl debut, revealing his instantly identifiable declamatory style.

The 70s saw Blythe moving to New York, and playing on dates alongside Julius Hemphill, Lester Bowie, Steve Reid and many more. He made a strong entrance as leader with The Grip in 1976, which led to a contract with Columbia Records. Running from 1979–87, the period encompassed his flirtation with funk and mainstream styles. In 1986, Richard Cook wrote in The Wire 30: "Whatever happened to Arthur Blythe? It’s ten years since The Grip, that remarkable, wailing leader debut of his… the great, straight-ahead Blythe has to struggle against ideas of company funk."

Blythe returned to the West Coast in the late 1990s and continued to play prolifically up until the early 2000s. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2005, prompting his fellow musicians to stage benefit concerts on his behalf.

Arthur Blythe, 5 July 1940–27 March 2017

Ikutaro Kakehashi died on 1 April, announced Tommy Sydner, former advisor at Roland Corporation, via Facebook. “Ikutaro Kakehashi, founder of Roland, father of the TR-909,TR-808, Godfather of MIDI, and someone who I have collaborated with for 38 years, and also considered him as my second father, passed away at the age of 87,” read the post. “He was a super funny, wonderful and gifted human being, and his contributions to the musical instrument world, and music, touched millions of people worldwide.”

Born in Osaka on 7 February 1930, Kakehashi was an engineer and entrepreneur who founded Ace Tone and Roland Corporation. He’s best known for the part he played in the development of electronic drum machines and the MIDI standard.

In the 1950s Kakehashi starting working with electronic organs, eventually founding Ace Tone in 1960. Under that company he invented a hand operated electronic drum called the R1 Rhythm Ace in 1964. A few years later he created the preset rhythm-pattern generator, launched in 1967 as the FR-1 Rhythm Ace, which Hammond and other companies integrated in the manufacture of their instruments.

Roland Corporation was established in Osaka, with its first TR-33/TR-55/TR-77 Rhythm machines going on sale in 1972. A year later Roland’s first synthesizers went on the market; the company participated in the NAMM Show in the USA; and the electronic effects outfit MEG Electronics Corporation (now called BOSS Corporation) was established. In 1980 Roland created the TR-808 Rhythm machine, which made it possible for musicians to programme an entire track. In 1983 Kakehashi launched the MIDI protocol for which 30 years later he was awarded a technical GRAMMY alongside Sequential Circuits' Dave Smith.

In 2002 Kakehashi published his autobiography I Believe In Music; in 2014 he helped found the ATV Corporation.

Will Oldham aka Bonnie ‛Prince’ Billy and Courtney Marie Andrews have collaborated on a cover version of “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free” for the Our First 100 Days initiative, which aims to raise funds for organisations supporting causes that are currently under threat by the Trump administration.

Andrews describes the song as “an amazing gospel tune that became an important song for the civil rights movement in the 60s. A lot of these issues are still relevant today and I wanted to sing a song that had a palpable voice for those issues. I'll never know what it was like to walk the rocky path that Nina did, but her power and unyielding strength were and are something to aspire to.”

“We figured to make a song that would keep folks’ minds, tongues and fingers in motion,” adds Oldham. "James Baldwin [said] ‛This is not the land of the free. It is only very unwillingly and sporadically the home of the brave’.”

Listen to the track at the Bandcamp page

Our First 100 Days was started in conjunction with Secretly Group and 30 Days, 30 Songs. Sold in a subscription format for a minimum contribution of $30, fans will receive one song per day across the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency. Powered by RPM, all profits from Our First 100 Days will benefit organisations that stand in opposition to a Trump presidency: All Above All, Cosecha, Hoosier Action, People’s Climate Movement, and Southerners On New Ground.

OUT.FEST organisers OUT.RA have joined the Barreiro Municipality to commemorate 80 years of public water supply in Lisbon's south bay city Barreiro, calling for artists to submit ideas for site-specific performances at Alto da Paiva Water Reservoire.

“As part of a broader programme built on the relationships between water and sound, we call on national and international artists to submit music/sound art performance proposals,” states OUT.RA’s announcement.

A vertical structure with four circular floors, the reservoir can hold an audience of approximately 30 people. Each artist will be given their own floor for performances with a maximum time limit of 25 minutes. Each performance will be repeated three or four times during the two day event scheduled for 27 and 28 May.

OUT.RA are offering those artists who submit proposals the chance to make use of their sound archive of public water supply network recordings. Access to their archive will be given on request.

Successful applicants will each receive a grant of 500€ (including fee, travel and meals), plus accommodation for up to five days prior to the performance.

Deadline is 16 April. Potential applicants can email OUT.RA for more information.

Tucked inside their copies of the forthcoming May issue of The Wire, all our subscribers will find an exclusive CD and download containing the results of five years' worth of research into new musical instruments and interfaces. Titled Meta Gesture Music: Embodied Interaction, New Instruments And Sonic Immersion, the anthology features musicians who crossed paths during Meta Gesture Music, a research project which ran between 2012–17 at London’s Goldsmiths College in order to explore new tools and techniques for experimental music making, from live computer coding to using bike lights and solar panels as instruments.

The compilation contains new tracks by Goldsmiths professor of media computing Atau Tanaka, both solo and in duet with composer/pianist Sarah Nicolls, as well as Tom Richards performing on his Mini-Oramics set up, Kaffe Matthews making music with sharks in the sea, xname amplifying electromagnetic fields, Laetitia Sonami performing on her patented Spring Spyre, plus Leafcutter John, Renick Bell & Steph Horak, Dane Law, and Ewa Justka.

If you're not already a subscriber to The Wire, fret not: just take out a new subscription this month and we'll send you a copy of the CD too.

Meanwhile, many of the musicians involved in the Meta Gesture Music project will be performing at a special concert at London's Rich Mix on 31 March.

Safe As Milk Festival has announced that its first edition will not be going ahead due to lack of ticket sales. Organised by Graham Thrower (alt vinyl) in partnership with Lee Etherington (Tusk festival), the three-day event made its first announcement last October, and was set to feature a whopping line-up that included Actress, Anna Meredith, Ata Kak, Princess Nokia, Gaika, Carla dal Forno, Circle, Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force, Moor Mother, Shirley Collins, The Residents, This Is Not This Heat, Dopplereffekt, Nurse With Wound, Grouper and many others.

“We are very sorry to announce that we have had to take the decision to cancel Safe As Milk Festival,” reads the statement on their website. “Despite the widespread excitement about the event, we’re sorry to report that ticket sales have not reached a level to make the event viable so, despite our best efforts, we have no other option but to cancel.

“We would like to apologise to all the customers, artists, partners and suppliers that have been let down by this situation. We felt we should take this decision now in the hope of minimizing inconvenience to all involved.

“We would also like to thank the many people that have worked with us on trying to make Safe As Milk happen and the many of you that have shown such enthusiasm for the festival.”

For instructions on how to get a refund, visit their website.

South London's online radio station and app Balamii has started a booking agency. This new arm to the station comes three years after founder James Browning launched Balamii as an events series, and just over two years since the station first went on air. Its hosts include Touching Bass's Alex Rita, the positive femme identity collective BBZ, Crackstevens, The Square and LV.

“I set [Balamii radio] up because it's always been my dream to run my own radio station. I've been doing events since I was 15 so it was a natural progression. It's grown from literally nothing to what it is today,” explains James. “I've decided to start the booking agency to support everyone who's part of the Balamii team. It kind of makes sense to start an agency as there's a great body of people coming through. Also it'd be great to help people get more paid bookings.”

The station streams live daily from its Peckham home on Rye Lane and there is also an IOS App so you can listen direct via your phone. “That was actually the first thing I made for Balamii,” he points out. “Before the studio was built I used to go round recording people and putting the mixes I got up on that.”

You can check out the Balamii roster over on their website or email the station direct. You can also listen live via this link.