The Wire publisher asks: What is wrong with this industry? Why is it such a monoculture? What is wrong with the white people who run it, work in it, report on it, study in it?

The Wire’s publisher zooms in on one bad riff as a way of entering the late pianist’s musical universe

Tony Herrington decodes the covers of two radical political book publishers with musical roots

Reasserting the roots of Kraftwerk’s sound in African-American R&B and jazz reveals how the soul of electronic dance music is being throttled by the dead hand of the culture industry. By Tony Herrington

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. This article originally appeared in The Wire 131 (January 1995).