Bulk giveaways of music online make it impossible for listeners to make any sense of an artist’s work, argues James Kirby

Bulk giveaways of music online make it impossible for listeners to make any sense of an artist’s work, argues James Kirby

Read about the Public Information label's top picks of the web. The label, which focuses on archival releases and the "pre-digital soundworld" is featured in The Wire 334 in an article by Dan Barrow. Their next release is an anthology of work by the inventor and amateur electronic musician Fred Judd.

Read the full transcript from Derek Walmsley's interview with Jeff Mills in The Wire 300, February 2009

André Vida is featured in an article by Clive Bell in The Wire 334. Vida is currently performing as part of Anri Sala's exhibition at London's Serpentine Gallery (runs to 20 November, 2011 and is reviewed in The Wire 334).

Grouper is the subject of a feature by Nick Richardson in The Wire 334. A I A: Dream Loss/Alien Observer is out now, self released by Harris and available here.

File sharers uploading rare and out of print records challenge official histories of music by confronting hand-me-down narratives with the source artefacts, argues Mutant Sounds blogger Eric Lumbleau.

File sharers uploading rare and out of print records challenge official histories of music by confronting hand-me-down narratives with the source artefacts, argues Mutant Sounds blogger Eric Lumbleau.

The culture of copying is intrinsic to all music, argues Marcus Boon. So get over it – copyright buccaneers are roadtesting creative alternatives to obsolete capitalist models.

Marcus Boon is the author of The Wire 333 Collateral Damage article, part of our ongoing series looking at changes in the economy of music and its distribution.

The culture of copying is intrinsic to all music, argues Marcus Boon. So get over it – copyright buccaneers are roadtesting creative alternatives to obsolete capitalist models.

Paul Gilroy's Epiphanies article on two 1970 performances from The Voices Of East Harlem choir at the Isle Of Wight Festival and Albert Hall is featured in The Wire 333. Gilroy's latest book is Darker Than Blue: On The Moral Economies Of Black Atlantic Culture (Harvard University Press). On the cusp of the 1990s Gilroy wrote about jazz-funk and fusion for The Wire, in reviews and a regular column called New Fusion.

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).

Musician and composer DJ /Rupture aka Jace Clayton is featured in The Wire 333 in an article by Peter Shapiro.

The folks at Krakow's Unsound festival are putting together a publication that they'll distribute during the fest (9–16 October, supported by The Wire). Below, read contributions and listen to tracks from artists who will be performing at Unsound, including William Bennett, Christelle Gualdi aka Stellar OM Source and Natural Snow Buildings.