The Wire #494 - April 2025

The Wire #494 - April 2025

In this issue:

Raven Chacon: The Diné/Navajo composer foregrounds unheard and silenced voices in his radical works for ensembles, electronics and noise. By Esi Eshun

Ingrid Laubrock: The New York based reedist creates settings for koans and poems as part of a unique new compositional practice. By Stewart Smith

Bastard Assignments: The radical new music ensemble get lost in the woods with their satire of the English countryside. By Robert Barry

Infinity Knives: From Tom And Jerry to sociopolitics, rapper Tariq Ravelomanana keeps it unreal. By Lucy Thraves

Cleaners From Venus: Martin Newell’s songcraft and wordplay across many DIY albums evidence a uniquely wired mind. By Mike Barnes

Lukas De Clerck: Brussels musician extends ancient pipe instruments into the present moment. By Antonio Poscic

Penelope Trappes: Australian artist voices griefs past and present. By Spenser Tomson

Ciaran Mackle: Sample manipulator twists folk song into cubist forms. By Daryl Worthington

Invisible Jukebox: Jeff Mills: Will Detroit techno’s great conceptualist be a wizard IDing The Wire’s mystery record selection? Tested by Chal Ravens

Unlimited Editions: Robert Ridley-Shackleton’s Cardboard Club cutouts

The Inner Sleeve: Loraine James on Circa Survive’s On Letting Go

Global Ear: Osaka’s proto-industrialists revitalise the city’s experimental music scene. By Jere Kilpinen

Epiphanies: Golem Mecanique rewinds to a treasured VHS tape of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accattone

Against The Grain: Mosi Reeves takes on underground hiphop’s gender imbalance

Soundcheck: Laura Agnusdei, Anzü Quartet, Apparitions, Backxwash, Black Rain, François J Bonnett/Sarah Davachi, Brûlez Les Meubles, Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, Cliché Toupee, Clipping, Chick Corea, Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson, Earth Ball, en creux, The Ex, Ash Fure, Geologist & DS, Gnod & White Hills, Judith Hamann, Lonnie Holley, Imperial Triumphant, Eiko Ishibashi, Kafka’s Ibiki, Kuunatic, Labyrinthe Des Esprits, Brandon Lopez, Brandon Lopez & DoYeon Kim, Lust For Youth & Croatian Amor, Masma Dream World, Will Mason Quartet, Zoë Mc Pherson, more eaze & claire rousay, Fred Moten & Brandon López, Bob Mould, Jérôme Noetinger, Conrad Pack, Panda Bear, Pink Must, Sophia Djebel Rose, Sandwell District, Colin Self, Sissy Spacek, Aleksandra Słyż, Wadada Leo Smith & Vijay Iyer, Spiral Deluxe, Hüma Utku, Wolf Eyes x Anthony Braxton, Anna Webber, Zhu Songjie, Rutger Zuydervelt, Various Aggregate: New Works For Automated Pipe Organs

The Columns: Avant Rock by Joseph Stannard; Critical Beats by Misha Farrant; Dub & Reggae by Steve Barker; Electronics by Sam Davies; Hiphop & R&B by John Morrison; Jazz & Improv by Andy Hamilton; Modern Composition by Julian Cowley; Noise, Industrial & Beyond by Raymond Cummings; Size Matters by Byron Coley

The Boomerang: Cadentia Nova Danica; Tobe Hooper & Wayne Bell; Michael Gregory Jackson; Jaroslav Kořán; Oksana Linde; Ted Lucas; The Saints; The Sex Pistols; Smegma; Smith & Mighty; John Tchicai; Various Disco Charge Presents More Sin: Box Of Sin 2; Various Volcanic Tongue: A Time-Travelling Evangelist’s Guide To Late 20th-Century Underground Music

Print Run: 13 Ways Of Looking At AI, Art & Music by Jennifer Walshe; (A)tonal Adventures: A Chronicle Of Intakt Records by Patrik Landolt; Fusion! From Alice Coltrane To Moor Mother by Alex Coles; Volcanic Tongue: A Time-Travelling Evangelist’s Guide To Late 20th-Century Underground Music by David Keenan; What Do You Call It: From Grassroots To The Golden Era Of UK Rap by David Kane; MC5: An Oral Biography Of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band by Brad Tolinski, Jaan Uhelszki & Ben Edmonds; Peter Brötzmann: Free-Jazz, Revolution And The Politics Of Improvisation by Daniel Spicer; Brötzmann In My Focus by Žiga Koritnik; Remixing Wong Kar-wai: Music, Bricolage And The Aesthetics Of Oblivion by Giorgio Biancorosso; Dark Dungeon Music: The Unlikely Story Of Dungeon Synth by Jordan Whiteman

On Location: David Murray/Håker Flaten/Paal Nilssen-Love, London, UK; Jamaaladeen Tacuma, London, UK; Unsound, Brussels, Belgium; Dedicated Play: BEAM SPLITTER x Xiu Xiu, Berlin, Germany + London, UK; Deep Time: Basquiat & Cage 8424, Edinburgh, UK; Alexander von Schlippenbach Trio, London, UK; Ben LaMar Gay, Berlin, Germany; Catalytic Sound Festival 2024, Chicago, US; Alexander Hawkins, London, UK; Roscoe Mitchell, Houston, US; MENT, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Laurie Anderson, Manchester, UK

On Site: Breaking Lines, London, UK; Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal, Los Angeles, US; Tanat Teeradakorn: National Opera Complex, London, UK

Plus: Letters, Charts, Out There

About The Wire

The Wire is an independent print and online music magazine covering a wide range of global alternative, underground and experimental musics. The Wire celebrates and interrogates the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical, marginalised and undervalued musicians on the planet, past and present, in the realms of avant rock, electronic music, hiphop, new jazz, improvised music, modern composition, traditional musics and more. Passionate, intelligent and provocative, The Wire wages war on the mundane and the mediocre. Its office is based in London, but it serves an international readership.