The recent London performance of Luigi Nono's composition for orchestra and live-processing, Prometeo, was presented as an apotheosis of the Italian composer's work. John Wollaston essays a paraphrase of this complex 'super-capsule' of the untransmittable

Twenty Five Years from Scratch, ed. Michael Parsons, London: London Musician's Collective, 1994.

The late Derek Bailey's musical 'career' was founded on years of wage labour as a guitarist in dancehalls and nightclubs. An idea which aspirants to today's fully professional-entrepreneurial cultural sector would find barely comprehensible, suggests Matthew Hyland. For what other than individual elevation above wage-worker status defines the 'creative' life that these subvention-seekers clamour for so shrilly?

Sakada Thin Autonomy

19th October 2004, 61-75 Alie Street

Between the long stagnant and vital (full of forms of life) trough of commercial road, the self-mythologising skyline of the money mill beyond Aldgate, the Titanic, Totenschiff, death ship: a container ship of spent labour power looms out, for this night welcoming an evening of para-musical hiatus.

Some who were present :

The heritage devotee dressed in deerstalker and eastern entourage

Some thieves

Prologue

At last, a radio station worth listening to. Dave Mandl tunes in

In the first part of this issue’s review Special, Brandon LaBelle surveys some key practitioners creating sonic performances that mix ‘found’ and mediatised sound – a mix that parallels the wider ‘immaterialisation’ of time and place

Eddie Prévost, percussionist and pioneer of improvised music – notably as co-founder of the seminal ’60s band, AMM – takes aim at the increasingly ubiquitous practice of sampling

In the second half of this month’s Special, Flint Michigan explores the broad church that is ‘musique concrète’. From maths nerds obsessed with seriality to sonic activists standing around in parks with microphones, the avant-garde has gone to very varied lengths to release music from the ivory tower of composition by letting in ‘real world’ sound.

Electronic festival at London’s Barbican Centre

After Karlheinz Stockhausen's controversial outpouring post 9/11, it was a surprise to find the Barbican's Electronic festival - which showcased his greatest works - completely sold out. Anne Hilde Neset and Lina Dzuverovic-Russell learn what sounds to listen out for in Stockhausen's work and sample the club of the future with Aphex Twin, October 01