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The Mire: Tangents, threads and opinions from The Wire HQ

Wrinkles In Time

Derek Walmsley

While I won't claim that early 90s junglists Tek9 aka 4Hero had the power to warp the spacetime continuum, "Del Die Gogo" from their recently reissued early Reinforced material certainly had me checking my iPod and counting out the beats to check it wasn't skipping. I think they've sampled the synth riff of Human Resource's "Dominator", but screwed up into micro black hole.

Derek Walmsley

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It's The Neu Style

Derek Walmsley

I can't be alone in noticing a subtle shift in the public appreciation of Krautrock. Press release after press release comes into The Wire HQ suggesting a group sounds like Can, Faust and Neu! – a ridiculous claim, as they hardly sounded alike in the first place. Nevertheless, the number of projects coping a Krautrock feel – The Horrors on their new album (after a pretty weak cover of Suicide recently – another act who are threatened with looming canonisation?), the Brand Neu! tribute album (title says it all), featuring Oasis, of all people (Neu! is "great tour bus music", I think Noel Gallagher was quoted as saying), and most bizarre of all, David Holmes. Add Portishead's Third into the mix, and it's almost ubiquitous.

Generally they take only the most basic common denominators of German experimental rock – the motorik rhythm, the spiralling guitars, but particularly, motorik rhythm. What's going on here? Krautrock has suddenly become a signifier of seriousness, the never-ending autobahn of Neu! a kind of aspiration to never-ending longevity, but also a melancholic nostalgia for when there were still roads to be built. Often these days, dropping into a motorik rhythm isn't the sign of innovation, but a lack of anything more interesting to do. It no longer conjures up wide-open possibilities, but an aesthetic retrenchment when there's nothing else they can bring to the table.

Of course, the last thing proper Krautrockers would have done these days is just hammer away at a long-overused rhythm. And just as I was typing this post, a press release just crossed my desk namechecking Cluster and Popul Vuh, too. Of course, one shouldn't blame the artists for such material, but it does suggest Krautrock has become a currency (in all senses) in music industry speak these days.

Derek Walmsley

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Ikki heintaður - non réclamé

Derek Walmsley

Despite our best efforts, efforts to locate the elusive Pom Pom records (see The Wire 303, now on sale) in the Faro Islands have hit a dead end. The search continues...


Derek Walmsley

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Sunny Murray screening competition

Derek Walmsley

We're running a competition to win tickets for this week's screening in London of Sunny's Time Now, a new documentary about the influential drummer Sunny Murray, with a Q&A; afterwards with saxophonist Tony Bevan and Tony Herrington from The Wire. Here's the details:

Win a pair of tickets to the London ICA Screening!
The Wire presents: Sunny's Time Now + Q&A;

London ICA, Cinema 1
18 April 2009 8:15pm
£8/£7 Concessions/£6 ICA Members.

"Bang! Let's go on. Like Louis Pasteur. They ain't fucked with the milk since then, except maybe diluted it a little bit." Sunny Murray

Sunny's Time Now retraces the rough-and-tumble life and career of influential free jazz drummer Sunny Murray. Directed by Luxembourg film maker Antoine Prum, this documentary includes interviews with key witnesses (including Cecil Taylor, Val Wilmer, Robert Wyatt, William Parker, Grachan Moncur III) and exclusive concert footage of Murray in performance with the likes of Bobby Few, Sonny Simmons, and his trio with Tony Bevan and John Edwards. As well as casting some light into the shadows of a star-crossed jazz life, the film reassesses the intricate relationships between the libertarian music movement and the political climate of the 1960s.

After the screening there will be a Q&A; with the director, saxophonist Tony Bevan, and The Wire's Tony Herrington.

Enter here.

Derek Walmsley

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Cath & Phil Tyler's Lovely Molly

Nathan Budzinski


A great part of Cath & Phil Tyler gig at Dalston's Café Oto a couple Friday's ago (20 March) was hearing their version of the trad tune "Courting Is A Pleasure" one of my favourite recordings by the guitarist/vocalist/fiddler Nic Jones - a tune from his excellent Penguin Eggs album. Jones's recording is a great example of his impressive guitar skills, with its faultless and quick, almost harsh rhythmic picking complementing and intertwining with his vocals creating an uncomfortable and driving effect.
The Tyler's version on the other hand, broke the song down into slowly shifting fragments and a sleepy pace, a great version that translated the song into a kind of lullaby (well, compared to Jones's version...) Either way, the Tyler's show was a great gig, different from the studio recordings I've heard (Dumb Supper) which were far more dry, droning and harsh, than the rounded folkiness I heard on Friday.

There's other arrangements of the song out there... One by the Watersons called "Meeting Is A Pleasure" and another version that goes by the name "Loving Hannah" and another whose title is also the refrain of the tune, "Lovely Molly"... I'm pretty sure Cath said that she first heard a version of it on a fund raising compilation released by the New Jersey free form radio station WFMU... I tried to find out which CD she was talking about but to no avail...

Nathan Budzinski

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Adventures In Modern Music 26 March 09

Derek Walmsley

Chris Bohn's Adventures In Modern Music show on Resonance FM last night included a mix from Ekkehard Ehlers, with scratchy vinyl delights from Alice Coltrane, Caetano Veloso and more. Other good stuff from the show included The Threshold Houseboys Choir, Trembling Bells and Super Vacations.

Derek Walmsley

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Nadja + Capillary Action

Last night at Bardens Boudoir, Capillary Action and Nadja played like each other's inverse reflection. Capillary Action offered the spectacle of virtuosity, with technical mastery of their instruments and a sophisticated understanding of melody and harmony. But their immaculate rehearsal-room constructions – imagine Prokofiev re-arranging Red Krayola – left nothing to chance, and as a result felt somewhat empty emotionally. Everything was so controlled it failed to engage.

Nadja on the other hand offered no such spectacle. Just two folk onstage playing their bass and guitar very very slowly, occasionally tweaking the knobs on their FX units and murmuring lackadaisically into their mics. But their (vaguely adolescent) brand of shoegazing miserabilism possessed the emotional richness that eluded Capillary Action. Best enjoyed with eyes closed, their vast, fuzzy drones and delicate fragments of melody enraptured the crowd, who stood there pale-faced and solemnly nodding, dreaming of forests. A victory of heart over head.

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