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PINK FLAG

Wire

10:20

    Originally scheduled for RSD 2020 Pink Flag have decided to make 10:20 a regular LP/CD release. A glimpse into Wire’s working practices, when Wire play live there are different 3 classes of pieces that are performed, new songs, old songs and “new old” songs. The latter often involves taking something that existed on a previous release and re-working it, very often evolving a stage highlight from it. There also pieces that have never seen a major release but for some reason never fitted on an album. The best of these ideas were recorded in 2 sessions - one relating to Red Barked Tree but recorded in 2010 and another relating to Wire’s latest album Mind Hive released in 2020. Incidentally celebrating the decade Matt Simms has been with the band.

    The album divides in to two halves - the 2010 side & the 2020 side - hence the title.

    Tracks 1 to 4 were recorded in the latter part of 2010 and feature contributions from both Margaret Fielder (of Laika) – who had been performing guitar duties with Wire on live dates the previous year – and Simms, who was on the point of becoming an official member of the band.

    Track 1 ‘Boiling Boy’ first appeared on 1988’s A Bell is a Cup… Until it is Struck. ‘Boiling Boy’ has gone on to become perhaps the most played Wire song ever. Throughout the ’00s, it became one of the acknowledged highlights of Wire’s live sets.

    Track 2 ‘German Shepherds’ is another late ’80s Wire song that has developed a second life on stage. The recording is also notable in that it includes vocal contributions from Newman, Lewis and Fielder.

    Track 3 ‘He Knows’ was developed back in 2000 when Bruce Gilbert was still with the band. It emerged in a reinvigorated form in 2008 when it became a staple of Wire’s live show. This is the only studio recording to have surfaced.

    Track 4.’Underwater Experiences’ was demoed for the band’s sophomore album Chairs Missing, but in the end was omitted. Having lay dormant for a couple of years, the song later appeared in two fast, abrasive, contrasting versions on Wire’s notoriously confrontational live album Document And Eyewitness, and a fifth iteration surfaced on 2013’s Change Becomes Us. However, the song has never sounded quite as it does here .

    Tracks 5 to 8 were recorded more recently with the long-established line up of Newman, Lewis, Grey and Simms.

    Track 5 . ‘The Art of Persistence’ arrived fully formed when Wire reconvened in 2000. But it was previously only available as a rehearsal room run-through on long deleted EP The Third Day or as a live version on Legal Bootleg album Recycling Sherwood Forest.

    Track 6 ‘Small Black Reptile’ originally appeared on the band’s 1990 album Manscape. Of all the reimagined songs on 10:20, this is the one that has traveled the furthest. Whereas the original was a skeletal and arch computer-driven pop song, this new version sees the composition retooled as a piece of melodic rock.

    Track 7 ‘Wolf Collides’, with its warm synth tones and spindly lead lines, sounds as if it deserves to be sitting regally on side two of 1978’s Chairs Missing. In actual fact, it was written in 2015 and became a stalwart of that year’s live set. This version was recorded for inclusion on 2017’s Silver/Lead but was omitted due to lack of space.

    Track 8 ‘Over Theirs’ is the climax of the continuing reassessment of Wire’s 1980s output. Although the song appeared on The Ideal Copy and has been an intermittent component of the group’s live shows since 1985, its true power had never been properly harnessed in the studio – until now.

    10:20 is that rare thing: an album that not only serves as a must-have for long-term fans and completists, but paradoxically also the perfect introduction for anyone new to the band.

    TRACK LISTING

    2010 SIDE.
    1. Boiling Boy
    2. German Shepherds
    3. He Knows
    4. Underwater Experiences

    2020 SIDE
    5. The Art Of Persistence
    6. Small Black Reptile
    7.Wolf Collides
    8. Over Theirs

    Wire exhibit little inclination to look back - rather they remain resolutely focused on producing music which is smart, vital and defiantly modern. Mind Hive is the group’s first newly recorded material since 2017’s Silver/Lead. That album garnered rave reviews and career best sales. Yet, if Silver/Lead set the bar pretty high, Mind Hive seems to have no problem vaulting over it.

    Be Like Them is a super-angular composition, utilizing a recently rediscovered Wire lyric from 1977. Colin Newman and Matthew Simms’ guitars constantly mesh and diverge, whilst the rhythm section ensures the song prowls forward with an unstoppable menace.

    Cactused is the first of Mind Hive’s pop moments. The vocal is wide eyed and wired, with effects-heavy guitar work creating a bright web of noise, with the song’s stop/start moments providing a series of precise energy bursts.

    Primed And Ready rides out on a tightly pulsing synth sequence punctuated by icy slivers of guitar. This is Wire at their most compressed yet propulsive.

    Off The Beach is another prime pop song. With its breezy, optimistic melody, and blend of electric and acoustic guitars, the song initially sees the group seemingly celebrating the joys of everyday life but things are destined to turn a shade stranger.

    Unrepentant explores the kind of bucolic soundscape early Pink Floyd would have been proud to call their own. Boasting one of the album’s finest texts, the song radiates out into a shimmering sonic heat haze.

    Shadows pulls the classic Wire trick of placing a dark and cruel lyric in a musical setting of tender beauty. Never has the recounting of atrocity been so seductively pitched.

    Oklahoma is the muscular and dramatic joker in the pack. Lewis’ dark vocal swims through a rich compound of guitar textures and synth tones, building into a masterclass of tension and release.

    Hung is the album’s centrepiece. This 8-minute excursion matches a brief but evocative lyric with a dense, mesmeric guitar grind. Simms and Newman’s keyboards add a plaintive note, as the song moves through a series of sections, each with its own distinct atmosphere.

    Humming is a beatless autumnal drift fashioned from delicate keyboard textures and rich soaring guitar tones. Newman delivers a state of the world lyric with a touching sense of innocence, whilst the piece ends with Lewis’ husky baritone listing locations and their difficult associations. An elegiac end to a supremely confident album.

    Mind Hive arrives at a time when Wire are being cited as an influence by yet another generation of bands. A career spanning feature documentary called People in a Film is due for release late 2020. Quite how a group that has been operating for such a long period is still able to produce such exciting and essential work is difficult to understand. And yet here we are…

    TRACK LISTING

    Be Like Them
    Cactused 
    Primed And Ready
    Off The Beach
    Unrepentant
    Shadows
    Oklahoma
    Hung
    Humming

    Wire

    Pink Flag

      Wire’s first three albums need no introduction. They are the three classic albums on which Wire’s reputation is based. Moreover, they are the recordings that minted the post-punk form. This was adopted by other bands, but Wire were there first. These are the definitive re-releases. Each album is presented as an 80-page hardback book – the size of a 7-inch, but obviously much thicker. After a special introduction by Jon Savage, Graham Duff provides insight into each track. These texts include recording details, brand-new interviews with band members, and lyrics.

      This stunning set of presentations also includes a range of images from the archive of Annette Green. Wire’s official photographer during this period, Green also shot the covers for Pink Flag and Chairs Missing. Promotional and informal imagery – in colour and black and white – is featured throughout the books. Most of the photographs have not been seen for 40 years – and many have never been published anywhere before.

      These special editions are something every Wire fan will want to own. It has been a number of years since these albums were readily available. The aim with these new vinyl and CD releases is to approximate the original statements as closely as possible, but with remastered audio. The vinyl releases have the same covers and inners as the originals (minus the Harvest logo). The digipack CDs have identical tracklistings to their vinyl counterparts. These versions should be considered Wire’s classic 1970s albums, pure and undiluted.

      Pink Flag was very much Wire's punk rock album, and while they fully embraced it's revolutionary spirit, they came at it from their own obtuse angle. unhindered by talent (any kind of prior musical schooling) they gleefully took a baseball bat to Rock's overblown torso with humour and irreverence, producing classic, unsurpassed razor pop brilliance and a joyful antidote to the pomposity of their forerunners.

      STAFF COMMENTS

      Martin says: From the naked aggression of "12XU" and the ominous chordless drone of the title track, to the playful artpunk of "Start To Move" and "Brazil", this is, beginning to end, pure, unadulterated genius. Nothing more to add.

      TRACK LISTING

      01/ Reuters
      02/ Field Day For The Sundays
      03/ Three Girl Rhumba
      04/ Ex Lion Tamer
      05/ Lowdown
      06/ Start To Move
      07/ Brazil
      08/ It’s So Obvious
      09/ Surgeon’s Girl
      10/ Pink Flag
      11/ The Commercial
      12/ Straight Line
      13/ 106 Beats That
      14/ Mr. Suit
      15/ Strange
      16/ Fragile
      17/ Mannequin
      18/ Different To Me
      19/ Champs
      20/ Feeling Called Love
      21/ 12XU

      Wire

      Chairs Missing

        Wire’s first three albums need no introduction. They are the three classic albums on which Wire’s reputation is based. Moreover, they are the recordings that minted the post-punk form. This was adopted by other bands, but Wire were there first. These are the definitive re-releases. Each album is presented as an 80-page hardback book – the size of a 7-inch, but obviously much thicker. After a special introduction by Jon Savage, Graham Duff provides insight into each track. These texts include recording details, brand-new interviews with band members, and lyrics.

        This stunning set of presentations also includes a range of images from the archive of Annette Green. Wire’s official photographer during this period, Green also shot the covers for Pink Flag and Chairs Missing. Promotional and informal imagery – in colour and black and white – is featured throughout the books. Most of the photographs have not been seen for 40 years – and many have never been published anywhere before.

        With "Pink Flag" Wire tapped happily into punk's energy and iconoclastic tendencies, "Chairs Missing" is, perhaps, a little truer to their own instincts. They didnt completely shed the past completely; the joyful "Sand In My Joints" and grinding "Mercy" have more than a hint of "Pink Flag" about them, but their 1978 offering is moodier and much more textured than its predecessor, the addition of swathes of electronic sounds moving them firmly into post punk territory, a genre they helped to spawn. There is pure pop beauty on here too, of which "Outdoor Miner"  and "French Film Blurred" being the most gorgeous examples. 

        STAFF COMMENTS

        Martin says: Their most varied L.P. and possibly their finest hour (or so). Straddling the fire of punk and the colder, darker charms of brooding electronic post punk, it also contains within its grooves moments of melodic magic. Worth buying for the outrageously amazing "Outdoor Miner" on its own.

        TRACK LISTING

        SE Tracklist: Disc 1 (Original Album)

        01/PracticeMakesPerfect
        02/French Film Blurred
        03/Another The Letter
        04/Men 2nd
        05/Marooned
        06/Sand In My Joints
        07/Being Sucked In Again
        08/Heartbeat
        09/Mercy
        10/Outdoor Miner
        11/IAmTheFly
        12/I Feel Mysterious Today
        13/From The Nursery
        14/Used To
        15/Too Late

        Disc 2 (Singles, B-sides & Studio Recordings)

        01/I Am The Fly (single Version)
        02/Dot Dash
        03/Options R
        04/Outdoor Miner (single Version)
        05/Practice Makes Perfect (single Version)
        06/Underwater Experiences (Advision Version)

        Disc 3 (Studio Demos) Fourth Demo Sessions

        01/Practice Makes Perfect
        02/OhNoNotSo
        03/Culture Vultures
        04/It’s The Motive
        05 Love Ain’t Polite
        06/French Film Blurred (version 1)
        07/Sand In My Joints
        08/Too Late
        09/I Am The Fly
        10/Heartbeat
        11/Underwater Experiences
        12/Stalemate
        13/I Feel Mysterious Today Fifth Demo Sessions
        14/ Dot Dash
        15/ French Film Blurred (version 2)
        16/ Options R
        17/ Finistaire (Mercy)
        18/ Marooned
        19/ From The Nursery
        20/ Indirect Enquiries (version 1)
        21/ Outdoor Miner
        22/ Chairs Missing (Used To)
        23/ Being Sucked In Again
        24/ Men 2nd
        25/ Another The Letter
        26/ No Romans 

        At a time when back catalogue outsells fresh creativity and newcomers achieve fame by adding a lick of paint to their parents’ record collections, it’s unusual to find a band who, despite plying their trade for decades, are willing and able to make new work that’s as vital and relevant as their own illustrious past recordings. Wire are such a band, and with "Red Barked Tree" they have succeeded in making a statement that will sound as strong in 30 years as their celebrated historical oeuvre does today. "Red Barked Tree" rekindles a lyricism sometimes absent from Wire’s previous work and reconnects with the live energy of performance, harnessed and channelled from extensive touring over the past few years. "Red Barked Tree" was conceived, written and recorded mostly during 2010 by the pared-down lineup of Colin Newman, Graham Lewis and Robert Grey - with no guests.

        Ranging from the hymnal "Adapt" to the barking sledgehammer art-punk of "Two Minutes", the album encompasses the full range of style and nuance that has always endeared Wire to pastel-tinged pop aficionados and bleeding-edge avant-rockers alike. Whatever Wire make is Wire music: this is the band’s enigmatic guiding axiom. While Wire remain agnostic about the nature and identity of their aesthetic essence, it’s always been instantly recognisable, manifesting itself throughout their heterogeneous work. This enigma waits be revealed among the "Red Barked Trees" …


        TRACK LISTING

        01. Please Take
        02. Now Was
        03. Adapt
        04. Two Minutes
        05. Clay
        06. Bad Worn Thing
        07. Moreover
        08. A Flat Tent
        09. Smash
        10. Down To This
        11. Red Barked Trees


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