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The Portal

Jan Anderzén Portal

August 2011

Jan Anderzén, the Finnish frontman of Kemialliset Ystävät and Tomutonttu is featured in The Wire 330 Invisible Jukebox, tested by Daniel Spicer. Anderzén's newest release is Nääksää nää mun kyyneleet by Tuusanuuskat, a collaboration between Tomutonttu and Es, aka Fonal Records’s Sami Sänpäkkilä.

The Portal

Global Ear: Kiev Portal

August 2011

The group are well-known in the Ukraine, and released their most recent album Dolce Vita in spring last year. They have been touring it for the last year across the Ukraine, Russia, Western Europe and America.

The Portal

Daphne Oram Portal

July 2011

Dan Wilson's article on Daphne Oram, co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and inventor of the Oramics machine, is in The Wire 330.

Essay

Collateral Damage: Bob Ostertag

July 2011

A regular opinion column on the fallout from music’s shifting economy. This month: After committing ‘professional suicide’ by giving away his back catalogue online, Bob Ostertag wonders how the web is changing our understanding of music for good.

Essay

Collateral Damage: Bob Ostertag

July 2011

A regular opinion column on the fallout from music’s shifting economy. This month: After committing ‘professional suicide’ by giving away his back catalogue online, Bob Ostertag wonders how the web is changing our understanding of music for good.

The Mire

110% Dynamite

Spin the dial across the AM airwaves in the UK and you could be forgiven for hearing some oddly familiar sounds, at least for readers of The Wire . Work your way past the 1970s golden oldies stations, past BBC Radio 5 Live's incessant burble of "we want your views", and past the hospital radio broadcasters, and in the unlikeliest corner of the AM band you can hear ice-cold electronics, dystopian hiphop, hauntological echoes, and oddball lo-fi rock. They are all cut-up, layered, and moving gently and untroubled through the ether, behind the vein-bulging voices that boom out on meat 'n' potatoes sports/chat station talkSPORT ("for men who like to talk sport", on 1089 and 1053 AM). Is this perhaps evidence of a radical change of direction at talkSPORT? A station which has, in the past, stirred controversy when shock-jock James Whale told listeners which way they should vote in the London Mayoral elections, or when presenter...

The Mire

Synthesthetic Illusions

At this year’s Mutek, the series of A/V performances (as well as Amon Tobin’s bombastic stage spectacle) were notable for treating visuals with an extra gravity that isn’t often extended to VJs and A/V artists. Across the festival schedule, visuals were brought to the fore and rendered in pin sharp graphics. Here's a clip of Purform, whose set was most collaborative, with the audio visual elements merged into a coherent package, where neither medium is the prime mover. It's this duo that got me to thinking about the effect of hi res visuals on the audio in an A/V show. Here, the monochromatic visuals were rendered across a three screen array. The effect of these super hi-res visuals is a sort of synthesthetic illusion, whereby the audio is exaggerated because of the visuals. There's a phenomenon like this in consumer technology: people watching a higher resolution screen think that they are hearing better quality audio than those...

Essay

Collateral Damage: David Keenan

June 2011

Following Chris Cutler's response to Kenneth Goldsmith's filesharing Epiphany, David Keenan looks at the fallout from music's shifting economy, from the perspective of his webshop and record shop Volcanic Tongue.

Essay

Collateral Damage: David Keenan

June 2011

Following Chris Cutler's response to Kenneth Goldsmith's filesharing Epiphany, David Keenan looks at the fallout from music's shifting economy, from the perspective of his webshop and record shop Volcanic Tongue.