The Mire

Netaudio survey: How does the Internet influence your music habits?

2010-02-08T02:23:00.000-08:00

The Netaudio festival (an offline festival for online music) are calling out for participants in a short survey about the effect of the internet on how people make and listen to music. It should take about 10-15 minutes of your time and has some prizes up for grabs to those who complete it, including a copy of our very own The Wire Primers, a Last FM membership subscription, a copy of Nicolas Collins's Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware hacking and a copy of Steve Goodman's (aka Kode9) Sonic Warfare: Sound, effect and the ecology of fear amongst other goodies.

Click here to go to the survey

Adventures In Modern Music 4 February 2010

2010-02-04T08:46:00.000-08:00

Tonight's episode will be broadcast live from Berlin in a special Transmediale festival edition. Hosts Chris Bohn and Derek Walmsley will be joined by Family Battle Snake man Bill Kouligas and Wolfgang Müller, musician, artist and founder of Die Tödliche Doris. 21:00-22:30 (BST), 104.4 FM for Londoners, streamed live at resonancefm.com for the rest of the world.

Parallel Voices: Missing Link - tix on sale now

2010-02-04T08:01:00.000-08:00

Tickets for the Carsten Nicolai curated Parallel Voices: Missing Link at London's Siobhan Davies Dance Studio (sponsored by The Wire) will be going on sale from 8 February. The three day event, which features talks and performances from Blixa Bargeld, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Christian Fennesz and Chris Carter amongst others, takes place 17 - 19 March with tickets priced at £15/£10 (multibuy ticket) or £9/£6 per night... Get them while you can as there is very limited space available at the venue!

Click here for more information

Tales Of The Uncanny

2010-01-25T03:03:00.000-08:00

The Exotic Pylon's Jonny Mugwump is launching his hauntological tale-telling show tonight on Resonance FM. Weird Tales For The Winter is a series of eight programmes, broken down into chapters as follows:

Monday 25th January: Moon Wiring Club - "Minuke" by Nigel Kneale

Tuesday 26th January: West Norwood Cassette Library and Matthew de Abaitua – "The Dinner Party Wars" by Mathew de Abaitua

Wednesday 27th January: Dolly Dolly – "Death, Taxes and the Fireplace (being a story concerning love above all):

Thursday 28th January: Belbury Poly and Lawrence Norfolk – "His Name was Legion" by Sir Andrew Caldecott

Friday 29th January: Radio Joy (LIVE) – "The Haunted Beach" by Johny Brown

Saturday 30th January: Mordant Music – "The Bells Will Sound Forever" by Thomas Ligotti

Sunday 31st January: Vanessa Daou – "Love Among the Shadowed Things"

Monday 1st February: John Foxx - "When You Walk Through Me"

You can listen in London at 104.4FM or online at www.resonancefm.com.

More info here.

Otomo Yoshihide & FEN: Reader ticket offer

2010-01-18T04:36:00.000-08:00

Readers of The Wire can get a special ticket offer from London's Cafe Oto for their forthcoming two day residency with Otomo Yoshihide and friends, 4 - 5 February.

FEN, or Far East Network, is a collaboration between Otomo Yoshihide, Yan Jun, Yuen Chee Wai and Ryu Hankil; well known figures in the experimental music scenes of their respective home cities Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore and Seoul. This will be their first UK performance together.

Regularly, tickets are £10 in advance and £12 on the door with a £18 two day pass also available. Readers of The Wire get a special price of £8 per night.

To buy tickets click on the below links:

Day one, 4 February, 8pm

Day two, 5 February, 8pm

Check out Cafe Oto's website for more information on FEN and the artists.

The Wire At CTM

2010-01-18T03:33:00.000-08:00

The Wire will be in active attendance at the Club Transmediale festival in Berlin in February. On 3 February Tony Herrington will be moderating a panel on Interface and Instrument Design: How Technology Affects Music featuring Takuro Mizuta Lippit, Robert Henke, Yutaka Makino and Christopher Salter. The panel is at 19:00 at the HBC venue. On 4 February, Tony Herrington and Biba Kopf will host the magazine's weekly show on Resonance FM live from the festival. Finally, on 5 February The Wire Sound System will play a late night listening set at the WMF Lounge between 23:00-03:00.

In the meantime, the festival has released the CTM.10 Audio Compilation as a free download. The compilation features tracks by Hildur Gudnadottir, Aoki Takamasa, Guido Möbius, Glass Candy, Etienne Jaumet and Scuba, among others, plus a trailer for the film Making CONTAKT about Richie Hawtin's CONTAKT project.

Destroy All Monsters: Hungry For Death

2010-01-14T09:38:00.000-08:00

Ann Arbour [Arbor], Michigan's Destroy All Monsters collective are having a show of their posters, flyers, photographs, blueprints, drawings, banners, magazines, records, and various other ephemera culled from their archive and exhibited at London's Space gallery 22 January - 20 February.
Accompanying the exhibition will be Freek Summit, a gathering and discussion featuring poet and former MC5 man John Sinclair, The Wire's own Savage Pencil, DAM member Cary Loren and other guests on 23 January. Places are limited so contact Paul Pieroni: paul.spacestudios.org.uk to book.

Weird Tales For Winter

2010-01-12T04:12:00.000-08:00

Jonny Mugwump of Resonance FM's excellent Exotic Pylon show emails with news of an intriguing radio event happening towards the end of the month, something between a hauntological radio play and A Book At Bedtime. Looks well worth checking out. Each is broadcast at midnight (so you might wanna double check those dates nearer the time to avoid confusion). Here's what he says:

I've curated 8 pieces of weird fiction with sonic backdrops to be broadcast on Resonance 104.4fm from the 25th January to the 1st February that is something of a hauntological dream project. Do tune in as the pieces are absolutely extraordinary and have been recorded specifically for the project and have never been heard before

There is a webpage which is in the process of becoming a fully blown site here

25/01/10 – Moon Wiring Club- Minuke by Nigel Kneale
26/01/10 – West Norwood Cassette Library and Matthew de Abaitua – The Dinner Party Wars by Mathew de Abaitua
27/01/10 – Dolly Dolly – Death, Taxes and the Fireplace (being a story concerning love above all)
28/01/10 – Belbury Poly and Lawrence Norfolk – His Name was Legion by Sir Andrew Caldecott
29/01/10 – Radio Joy (LIVE) – The Haunted Beach by Johny Brown
30/01/10 – Mordant Music – The Bells Will Sound Forever by Thomas Ligotti
31/01/10 – Vanessa Daou – Love Among the Shadowed Things
01/01/10 – John Foxx - When You Walk Through Me

Here is the Exotic Pylon site for more info.

I've started to so I'll finish

2010-01-06T05:43:00.000-08:00

UK readers may be interested to know that Stewart Lee, comedian, improv fan and sometime contributor to The Wire, was on the BBC's Celebrity Mastermind the other day, answering questions on Derek Bailey. You can still view the programme (in the UK at least) on the BBC's iplayer service. .

The Ex & Brass Unbound on camera

2010-01-04T07:30:00.000-08:00

Check out footage of the Ex's unreleased track "Double Order" put together as a teaser for their UK tour, 29 January – 6 February.

Tour supported by The Wire and produced by Qu Junktions featuring the veteran Dutch group, combining their precision-honed punk with the brass weight of Mats Gustafsson, Roy Paci, Ken Vandermark and Wolter Wierbos. Video by Emma Fischer. Full tour info here.

Into The Vortex on Resonance FM

2009-12-22T08:46:00.000-08:00

Edited highlights of The Wire's Into The Vortex festival will be broadcast on Resonance FM between 10pm-1am GMT on 3 January 2010. The festival took place last October at East London's Vortex venue and featured live sets by Richard Youngs & Heather Leigh, Astral Social Club, Alexander Tucker, Alasdair Roberts & Gordon Ferries, Thomas Ankersmit, Broadcast, The Caretaker, The One Ensemble and The Band Of Holy Joy.

Netmage

2009-12-21T07:41:00.000-08:00

Bologna's Netmage festival has posted various film clips online of works by artists appearing at this year's event, including Cluster & Canedicoda, Carlos Casas, Rachida Ziani & Dewi de Vree and André Goncalves. They are worth a look, if yr interested in tracking current trends in AV culture, electronic arts, gallery films, etc.

The Wire Review

2009-12-16T08:22:00.001-08:00

Subtitled The Most Powerful Review Of The Most Powerful Magazine In Experimental Music, The Wire Review blog doesn't quite do what it says on the tin. Thankfully, what it does do is much funnier and more entertaining than that. We feel unable to comment further, other than noting that we are, of course, flattered once again by such close attention, and urging you to check it out...

Black Metal Theory

2009-12-16T03:27:00.000-08:00

A 6 hour Black Metal theory symposium, called "Hideous Gnosis: A gathering dedicated to the mutual blackening of metal and theory", happened 12 December in Brooklyn. Ben Ratliff, who wrote a Primer article on Tropicalia for us – recently reprinted in The Wire Primers book (Verso) – has this summary in New York Times. Meanwhile, Dominic Fox's Cold World, The Aesthetics Of Dejection and The Politics Of Militant Dysphoria, examining, among other things the music of Burzum and Xasthur, has just been released on Zero Books. Burzum's first new release in 11 years will be released in March 2010, called Belus. Varg "The Count" Vikernes, the group's leader, was released from Norwegian jail this summer after serving 16 years for murder. He now lives in rural Telemark, Norway.

Sensational cover party (NYC)

2009-12-15T05:20:00.000-08:00

Attention New York City crew. To celebrate Sensational's appearance on the cover of The Wire 310, the Wordsound people and Sens himself are throwing a bash in NYC tonight. Expect music, drinks and a bite to eat.

Here's the details:

Please join us as we celebrate Sensational’s December Wire Cover with drinks and
hors d’ oeuvres.

Wednesday, December 16th
6-8 PM (Open Bar)
Planet Thai
30 W. 24th St. (near 6th Ave.)
212-727-7026

RSVP to wordsound@aol.com or 410-733-0566

Parallel Voices: Carsten Nicolai

2009-12-14T02:25:00.000-08:00

News just in that Raster Noton label boss Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) has been invited by the Siobhan Davies Dance studio in London to curate their 2010 edition of Parallel Voices.

The event, subtitled "Missing Link" will feature talks, performances and installations, bringing together practitioners from the worlds of visual art, music, poetry, theatre, dance and science and will feature a new, large scale light installation by Nicolai.

Further information will be released closer to the event, which is set to take place 17, 18 & 19 March 2010 at London's Siobhan Davies Studio space.

[Reciprocess: +/vs.]

2009-12-11T04:58:00.000-08:00

[Reciprocess: +/vs.], which was compiled to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Marseille-based BiP_HOp label and was given away exclusively to all The Wire’s subscribers with copies of the March 2009 issue, has been nominated for Compilation of the Year in the sixth edition of the Qwartz Electronic Music Awards.

The nominations for the awards were chosen by a jury that this year included Gudrun Gut and Alejandro Jodorowsky. Since 1 December the public (that's the rest of us) has been able to listen online and vote on the jury’s nominations. The winners will be announced in April 2010 at a ceremony in Paris.

To hear the nominations in all categories and vote on them go to the Qwartz site.

[Reciprocess: +/vs.] takes the form of an 80 minute piece of music assembled by BiP_HOp label boss Philippe Petit. The piece includes input from a host of underground musicians, including Cosey Fanni Tutti, Simon Fisher Turner, Eugene S Robinson, Jason Forrest, Lydia Lunch, Jean-Herve Peron, Jesu and others.

Technical service is resumed

2009-12-11T02:52:00.000-08:00

Good article dismissing the wild and wooly rumours that Technics are to cease production of their 1200 record decks

Wave of the Wand

2009-12-09T06:09:00.000-08:00

Word reaches me that [Wooden] Wand has just confirmed a fairly rare performance in London tomorrow. How's about that for short notice, spur of the moment gig news?

(wooden) WAND (rare uk show)
HUSH ARBORS
RICK TOMLINSON (voice of the seven woods solo show)

at THE BETSEY TROTWOOD, FARRINGDON
DOORS 8PM, £5 ADM.

Macro mix doubleheader

2009-11-16T07:35:00.000-08:00

Finn Johannsen and Stefan Goldmann of Berlin's Macro Recordings label have provided two excellent mixes for Wire readers. Finn's mix formed part of the latest Adventures In Modern Music mix presented by myself (and also featuring music by Cluster, Ben Frost, Lindstrøm And Christabelle, Gemmy and more) and is available here. Stefan's, meanwhile, has been offered to The Wire as an exclusive download and is available here. Enjoy!

Calling Out Of Context

2009-11-12T07:47:00.000-08:00

The full programme for the ICA's Calling Out Of Context festival, which is sponsored by The Wire, is now available to download. It includes excerpts of iconic texts by/on David Toop, Cornelius Cardew, Arthur Russell, Jacques Attali, Derek Bailey, Michael Nyman, as well as full details of all the events in the festival,, including AGF and Mira Calix on 20 Nov, a night curated by The Wire

Tori & Reiko Kudo London residency

2009-10-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

The first couple of faux-naif pop, Tori and Reiko Kudo of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, land up in London next week for a three day residency, with two solo shows at Cafe OTO on 6 and 7 November, and a final duo show at Kings Place on 8 November.

Cafe Oto: Tori solo
Cafe Oto: Reiko solo
Kings Place: Tori & Reiko duo

Supercollider 140

2009-10-27T03:18:00.000-07:00

I first witnessed live coding when a pioneering trio of the scene, known as Slub, composed/recomposed an ever-changing rabid techno beast at London's underground toilet venue Public Life. Almost ten years later there's a bona fide 'live coding' scene. Many are now members of umbrella collective Toplap, including Dan Stowell, who has recently curated a curious little project, which can now be downloaded freely under the Creative Commons licence. When Dan started tweeting snippets of SuperCollider code he expected a lot of "throwaway waffle" but collated also a bunch of really interesting things. "Not wanting this stuff to vanish into the ether", he's now collected the best pieces into a special download here. Many of these pieces are actually generative, so if you re-run the source code (the track titles) you get a new piece of music.

RIP Maryanne Amacher

2009-10-23T06:55:00.000-07:00

The great composer and installation artist died yesterday October 22. "A sound artist with a reputation for overwhelming volume, precise speaker placement, and site-specific environmental and architectural installations" wrote Alan Licht in his interview with her in March 1999. A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen and a collaborator of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Alvin Curran and others, she has been dubbed New Music's best kept secret.
Thurston Moore made a fascinating documentary on Amacher called Daytrip Maryanne, clips are available here: http://www.ecstaticpeace.com/daytrip/.
Alan Licht's personal piece on listening to her work Sound Characters (Making The Third Ear) from The Wire issue 181 is now uploaded here http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/3220/.

LCD Soundsystem free download

2009-10-23T02:23:00.000-07:00

There's 20 000 free downloads of their upcoming single "Bye Bye Bayou" available on www.lcdsoundsystem.com on a first come first serve basis. It will be available for purchase in shops on 12" 9 November and digitally for purchase on 24 November. According to the publicist "Bye Bye Bayou" is not going to appear on their new album, which comes out early 2010.