Essays

An occasional series in which we offer a beginner’s guide to the must-have recordings of some of our favourite musicians (and music). This month, Richard Henderson enters the preternatural realm of field recordings.

John Coltrane died of liver cancer 35 years ago this month, burned out by the increasing intensity of his musical quest. In this personal memoir of the final years of Coltrane’s career, Howard Mandel recalls the incomprehensible effect of Coltrane’s later period music as he plunged into a creative kamikaze strike as self-destructive as it was hallowed, fuelled by hallucinogenics, mystic fervour and a belief in music’s power to unite the human race.

In the first of an occasional series, we offer a neophyte’s guide to the must-have recordings of some of the names we like to drop a lot. This month, Barry Witherden tackles the avant garde Tonmeister, Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The combination of digital technology and the easy accessibility of samplers and computers have irrevocably changed the way sound is produced and perceived. As electronic music moves further away from the conventions of the club culture that spawned it to become a profound means of expression in its own right, a new breed of musician is emerging to forge new directions in Ambient and Techno with the parallel sciences of multimedia and electronic networking. Here we profile four such acts: Global Communication, The Black Dog, Bedouin Ascent and the Sähkö collective.

The Incredibly Strange Music books are mondo archaeology for vinyl fetishists. They exhume a hidden world of plastic where exotic Easy Listening, modern primitives, suburban astronauts, Bavarian sex symbols and singing psychics co-exist in fabulous Living Stereo. David Toop provides a guide to the delights of incredibly strange records

Mark Sinker uncovers ideas in black music - about present identity and future possibility - that run counter to all the comfortable old stories

Simon Hopkins grapples with the genre-busting output of John Zorn

Sting and Bono are Sensible. The Butthole Surfers and Bootsy Collins are Stupid. John Adams and Glenn Branca are Stoopid. Biba Kopf explains the difference

In 1995, Electronica has become a nanotechnology, refrying the atoms of other musics into strange new hybrids. In the process, a lattice of invisible, interconnected networks has emerged to link disparate but like-minded musicians, labels and festivals. Rob Young maps the co-ordinates of the new urban music

For some, Frank Zappa was a musical iconoclast, capsizing the barriers between high and low culture. For others, he was a reactionary force, vilifying anything that didn't fit his cynical worldview. Ian Penman sits down with Zappa's newly reissued back catalogue and takes sides