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The Mire

KoP doing GoS

The best Michael Jackson clip you'll see over the coming weeks and month of media coverage.

The Mire

Marshall Allen exclusive ticket offer

The legendary saxophonist and de facto leader of The Sun Ra Arkestra Marshall Allen plays a one-off UK show at London’s Café Oto on 6 July. Allen, who is touring Europe with the Arkestra during July, will be joined by the Arkestra’s piano player Farid Barron as well as some of London’s leading free music players for this exclusive and extremely rare event. Tickets cost £16 in advance, £18 on the door. But in an exclusive offer, readers of The Wire can claim a special discount and get tickets for just £14. To buy discounted tickets, click on either of the links below (NB Discounted tickets are limited and available on a first come first served basis): We Got Tickets or SU Tickets For more information on the event click here

The Mire

Sonar 2009: The Wizard (aka Jeff Mills)

Check out an exclusive excerpt from Jeff Mills's DJ set as The Wizard at Sonar 2009, 18 June: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5246595&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

The Mire

Sonar 2009

If you're in Barcelona for Sonar today & this weekend, come by The Wire 's stall in the editorial fair (it's in MACBA's main building) and say hi... We'll be around all today and tomorrow selling back issues + free CD w/each issue, T-shirts and earplugs (!) checking out the music and generally hanging out. Inspired by the artistic environment, we've constructed an interactive sculptural installation as an added attraction (see below) Stay tuned... We've got some rough and ready video excerpts of Jeff Mills's DJ set as The Wizard, Luomo (Sasu Ripatti aka Vladislav Delay) and Konono Nº 1 live onstage to upload when we get a chance.

The Mire

Rowe Words

Interesting link forwarded to me recently of Keith Rowe describing in detail the thoughts and ideas behind his recent ErstWhile/ErstLive release . Some fascinating ideas here, but such is their conceptual density throughout each minute of the piece, you wonder how (or if) a listener is expected to gain access to this extraordinary inner world of ideas and schemes from the relatively austere music on the disc. This rare glimpse into this artist's inner monologue is nothing like my experience of playing onstage, though. Most of my thought processes were along the lines of 'what shall I do for the next few minutes/where do I want to be in ten minutes'.

The Mire

Fela, Voice Of America

I'm probably the last person on the planet to discover these, but I only just ran across these recordings of Fela Kuti from Nigeria in 1965. Some of these early tracks have been released elsewhere, and often it's a little like hearing the early Wailers – the pieces just haven't fallen into place yet. However, these recordings, made for a show called Voice Of America , I understand, are surely must-listen material.... http://www.voanews.com/english/africa/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry;=8DC92121-9F33-ED7A-D547329B08561449

The Mire

Listening To The Office To Make Music To Listen To In The Office

You may have noticed the Real Office Ambience , field recordings of The Wire office recorded by Jez riley French, which you can download from our website. Jez's contact mics seem to have disturbed some karmic balance at The Wire , because I've sensed several weird audio disturbance since he's been in. The noise-cancelling headphones that are an essential part of a Reviews Editor’s armoury have started feeding back strangely when the battery runs down, giving a wistful, medium pitched sinewave like a robotic sigh before they conk out; the portable CD player that I keep close at hand has started skipping on the first track, so that a Touchin' Bass compilation of electro began to sound like Errorsmith crossed with Oval; then the jack plug of my iPod started malfunctioning, and a Rinse FM download of a funky/house set began to sound like it had been run through a ring modulator, leaving a ghost of the...

The Mire

Comus and Ultra-red on Adventures In Modern Music

Adventures In Modern Music, 11 June with Rob Young: Comus are one of the great forgotten English progressive folk groups. Their 1971 album First Utterance was a blast of savage pagan energy directed against hippy complacency. Amazingly, the group have reformed and will play First Utterance in full at this week's Equinox Festival . Rob will be joined by the group's main singer and songwriter, Roger Wootton, to discuss Comus's history and influences, and play a selection of music by Comus and their contemporaries. Resonance 104.4 FM or online , 11 June, 9PM BST On Saturday 13 June Anne Hilde Neset will be hosting a special extra edition of AIMM where she'll be joined by the international art/music collective Ultra-red (who currently have a show on at London's Raven Row Gallery ) members Dont Rhine and Robert Sember to discuss their various projects. Resonance 104.4 FM or online , 13 June, 3:30PM BST

The Mire

Varèse and the jazzmen

The WFMU blog has a number of MP3s that purport to be 1957 recordings of composer Edgard Varèse conducting a jazz workshop group that includes Charles Mingus, Teo Macero, Art Farmer and others. The music is very moody and abstract and well worth hearing. Claims that it somehow represents ground zero for free jazz should be taken with a major pinch of salt, however.

The Mire

Adventures In Modern Music Thursday 4 June

On Adventures In Modern Music this week, Derek Walmsley will be talking to Simon Reynell of the Another Timbre label and organiser of this month's Unnamed Music Festival in London and Leeds. We'll be talking about the state of improvisation today and Simon will be playing some choice selections of recent music. Listen live on 104.4FM or online at the Resonance FM website . The show is available to download here

The Mire

Only Built For Logan Mills

Not sure who Logan Mills is, actually, but the illustrations he's done of Wu-Tang sleeves as Blue Note covers are absolutely fantastic ( via ihatemusic )

The Mire

Straight To Your Dome

... the Tuffnell Park Dome in North London, that is, straight from Syria. Friday was an amazing Sublime Frequencies show with Group Doueh and Omar Souleyman. Footage of Omar Souleyman raving it up

The Mire

Follow The Wire On Facebook

We've just set up a Facebook page, if you'd like to follow us there, click on: HERE It's still a bit basic but we'll fill it out over the following weeks and then update it regularly with (mostly) relevant info about the magazine, our web exclusives, news and other tidbits...

The Mire

Mixing It

Two amazing You Tube clips of beatmatching. Delia Derbyshire on the ones and twos and threes reel-to-reels (via Gutterbreakz ) Greg Wilson , first DJ to beatmatch on UK TV on The Tube, despite being hassled by an irritating Jools Holland (via Dissensus )

The Mire

Continuous Flow

A search for Company Flow on Amazon yields the following book suggestion: Natural Laws Applied to Production: Show How Modern Industrial Organization is Based on the Principle of Continuous Flow . by Mathews Conveyer Company. Funnily enough, the title sounds rather like a Company Flow lyric.

The Mire

Jackmaster mixes it up for The Wire

An exclusive mix from Glasgow's Jackmaster which was originally broadcast on our Adventures In Modern Music programme on Resonance FM last week. Jackmaster is a resident at Numbers , works at Rubadub , and has his hands in a number of labels as well, including Dress 2 Sweat and Wireblock . Originally I asked him for half an hour, but he provided over an hour's worth of music and with so much unreleased material, I wasn't going to protest! Thanks, Jack!! I'm not sure what it is about Glaswegian DJs (maybe one day I'll bore you all with my theories about places like Glasgow, San Francisco and Detroit), from Optimo to Kode9 to all of the Numbers crew, but they tend to mix it up a bit more and Jack's tracklist is no exception. A good mix all around which is especially interesting to reflect the changing face of UK dance...