Interviews

Talvin Singh - virtuoso percussionist, producer, club organiser and musical live wire - is a crucial contributor to the passage of black and Asian music into the wide world of global pop. Rob Young speaks to him about his collaborations with Bjork, Sun Ra and On-U Sound, and hears a vision of the future sound of India

Cologne and Düsseldorf are hives of musical activity. A loose community of musicians, label owners, club runners and sonic theorists is building on the legacies of Can, Kraftwerk and DAF, creating the electronic soundtrack for a united Europe. Rob Young meets the stars of selten gehörte Musik: Mouse On Mars, Mike Ink, Dr Walker, A-Musik, Pluramon and more

The compositions of Iannis Xenakis are shot through with the sound of warfare, crowds, arcane mathematics and Chaos Theories. Ben Watson meets a composer whose attempts to transform Futurism into sound capsize the cliches of modern classical music.

Of the all free spirits making up New York’s downtown artistic nexus, pianist Matthew Shipp has come closest to finding the superchord that will blast conventional harmonies wide open. By Howard Mandel.

On the streets and in the subways of New York, the spirit of black free jazz lives on in the music of a few true believers – musicians like Charles Gayle; homeless, neglected but still burning with the passion to be free. By Howard Mandel.

Earlier this year, Radio 3 sent a package of tapes to Karlheinz Stockhausen. The tapes contained music by Aphex Twin, Plastikman, Scanner and Daniel Pemberton. Then in August, the station’s reporter Dick Witts travelled to Salzburg to meet Stockhausen and ask him for his opinion on the music of these four “Technocrats”. But first, they talked about the Geman composer’s own youthful experiments in electronic synthesis…

Digital composer Yasunao Tone's paramedia assault on old paradigms has led him from Tokyo to New York, via Japanese Fluxus pranks, work with Merce Cunningham and Yoko Ono, and destabilising CDs with Scotch tape

A decade ago, Kathleen Hanna's Bikini Kill heralded the days of rage that led to Riot Grrrl, one of the few 90s movements that felt like punk actually happened. Now, Hanna's new trio Le Tigre (and side projects ranging from plunderphonic IDM to conceptual art stunts) are spearheading a rapidly spreading network of feminist flavoured electropunk while defining new parameters for politicised noise in their search for an electronique feminine. Words: Joy Press. Photos: Jake Walters

Roll over Beethoven, it's Vorsprung Durch Technik time! The most visionary - and least understood - of modern European composers, Karlheinz Stockhausen talks to Brian Morton about the 'time bombs' he has created to escape from the 'graveyard' of the Western classical tradition

Are Stereolab the perfect pop group? By combining a rigorous DIY aesthetic with a playful reverence for the arcane relics of musics past, they have managed to make a reality out of that most elusive of notions: experimental music that actually sells