Betty Davis was a mover and a shaker in the Greenwich Village of the late-1960s, she was a great musician but was also politically, sexually and sonically progressive, an explosive mix that was too much for many people in her own day. Words by John Doran
Marc Hollander's Aksak Maboul have released one of the albums of the year and his Crammed Discs label have consistently provided a wide-ranging soundtrack to the globe. He guides David McKenna through favourite albums in this week's Baker's Dozen
From demon-riffing drone-lords Bong to gruelling, piledriver punks Drunk In Hell, power trident-pronged psych outfit Blown Out, experimental soundtracking with Artifacts & Uranium, the atomic noise rock of Melting Hand and the crushing cosmic doom of 11Paranoias, plus a plethora of collaborations with luminaries from the Japanese psych underground, Mike Vest’s discography over the last decade is as dizzying as it gets. Ryan Walker attempts to deliver a guide to the 10 best points of entry
Richard Fontenoy examines this exploration, neither biography nor hagiography, memoir nor biography, of the life of John Balance and of Coil, finding a collection of remembrances - of poetry, of photography and of personal reminiscences - free from mawkishness, which serve not only to recall but to add to an extraordinary legacy