The Wire #496 - June 2025

The Wire #496 - June 2025

Inside our brand new issue:

Cosey Fanni Tutti: The industrial music icon has been to Hull and back with her new album 2t2. By Claire Biddles

Quinton Barnes: The Montreal rapper and producer flips the script in a new project with free musicians. By Emily Pothast

David Van Tieghem: The New York percussionist who has played with everyone on the Downtown scene receives a dedicated collection of his own work. By Robert Barry

Happy Family: Over four decades the Japanese group have moved from rigorous prog to euphoric harmony. By Daniel Spicer

Amina Claudine Myers: Honing her skills on the old school nightclub circuit, the keyboardist is now forging ambitious suites for choir and pipe organ. By Stewart Smith

Quade: Landmark album. By Lucy Thraves

Milk Eyed Sigh: Let it bleed. By Misha Farrant

Liu Zhenyang: Language games. By Josh Feola

Invisible Jukebox: billy woods: Will The Wire’s mystery record collection be recognised by Backwoodz Studioz’s main man? Tested by Mosi Reeves

Global Ear: Bratislava’s LGBTQI+ scene creates safe spaces amid repressive policing. By Chiara Rendeková

Unlimited Editions: LA’s Colorfield label creates spontaneous studio magic. By Daniel Spicer

The Inner Sleeve: Circuit Des Yeux on Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising

Against The Grain: Jo Hutton celebrates radiophonic art as a unique field of creative endeavour

Epiphanies: Daniel O’Sullivan steps outside of himself via the ambiguous, understated moods of library music

Soundcheck: Al Karpenter, Anika, Black Arches with Sexton Ming, Blind IO, Ivor Callin, Rex Casswell, Nels Cline, Coffin Prick, Cosmic Ear, Angel Bat Dawid, Angel Bat Dawid & Naima Nefertari, Demonologists, Deradoorian, Peter Evans & Petter Eldh, Adam Fairhall & Johnny Hunter, Fatboi Sharif & Driveby, Flying Lotus, Mary Halvorson, Jenny Hval, IOM, Evan Johnson, Eleonora Kampe, Kelan, Phil Langero, Ingrid Laubrock, Annea Lockwood, David Longstreth/Dirty Projectors/s t a r g a z e, Lullahush, Sue Lynch & Regan Bowering, Mamuthones, Gabriele Mitelli: Three Tsuru Origami featuring Camila Nebbia, Mopcut, Moundabout, Bill Nace & Evan Parker, Maggie Nicols & Dan Johnson, Paal Nilssen-Love Circus with The Ex Guitars, Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, Kory Reeder, Marc Ribot, Crystabel Efemena Riley, Scanner & Nurse With Wound, Ferdinand Schwarz, Nadah El Shazly, Sleep Unhealed, Alan Sparhawk, Spellling, Stereolab, Surgeon, Territorial Gobbing, Luca Tilli/Sebi Tramontana/Steve Beresford, Julia Úlehla & Dálava, Kamasi Washington, Water Damage, billy woods, Youth Code, Various Marc Urselli’s Best Of Ramones Redux, Various Marc Urselli’s Ramones Redux, Various Only sounds that tremble through us, Various Planet Mu 30

The Columns: Avant Rock by Tony Rettman; Dub & Reggae by Steve Barker; Electronics by Emily Bick; Hiphop & R&B by Richard Stacey; Jazz & Improv by Bill Meyer; Modern Composition by Julian Cowley; Noise, Industrial & Beyond by Raymond Cummings; Size Matters by Byron Coley

The Boomerang: Ash Ra Tempel, Henry Badowski, Cindytalk, Julee Cruise, Purple Trap, Various Born In The City of Tanta: Lower Egyptian Urban Folklore & Bedouin Shaabi From Libya’s Bourini
Records 1968–75, Various Eli Roth’s Red Light Disco: Dancefloor Seductions From Italian Sexploitation Cinema, Various Roots Rocking Zimbabwe, Various Secret Superstar Sounds: Scraping Bubblegum Off My Soul 1977–80

Print Run: America’s Greatest Noise by Frans de Waard; Music In Orbit: Satellite Radio In The Streaming Space Age by Brian Fauteux; The Capitalist Imaginaries Of Popular Music by Charles Fairchild; Feel Like Going Home: Portraits In Blues & Rock ’N’ Roll by Peter Guralnick; Krautrock Eruption: An Alternative History Of German Underground In The 60s And 70s by Wolfgang Seidel; Dub: The Sound Of Surprise by Helmut Phillipps (translated by Ursula Münch); Studio Electrophonique: The Sheffield Space Age From The Human League To Pulp by Jamie Taylor; To Hell With Poverty! A Class Act: Inside The Gang Of Four by Jon King

On Screen: Harmony Korine Baby Invasion; Ísold Uggadóttir Cornucopia

On Location: Tribute To Maryanne Amacher, Paris, France; Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang Winter Solstice Concerts, Chicago, US; Rewire, The Hague, Netherlands; Only Connect, Stavanger, Norway; TLF Trio + CTM/Frederik Worm, Los Angeles, US; Wendy Eisenberg & Ryan Sawyer, London, UK; Counterflows, Glasgow, UK; From The Lips To The Moon, London, UK; MaerzMusik 2025, Berlin, Germany; Maher Shalal Hash Baz, London, UK; Big Ears, Knoxville, US

On site: Käthe Kruse, It’s All Good Now, Berlin, Germany

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.