The Wire #491 - January/February 2025

The Wire #491 - January/February 2025

Bumper double issue. On the cover: 2024 Rewind: the Year in Underground Music, including the Top 50 Releases of the Year; the Top 50 Archive Releases of the Year; Critics’ Reflections: our writers discuss their memorable cultural experiences of the past 12 months. Columnists’ Charts: our specialist critics delve deep into their musical niches from noise to modern composition. Plus: YATTA: the New York based artist fuses noise, pop and improv with a spiritual sensibility. By Stephanie Phillips; Music Ex Machina: the epic history of algorithmic music is surveyed at a new exhibition in Lausanne. By Robert Barry; Bridget Hayden: the Vibracathedral Orchestra member swaps free rock for folk on a stark new album. By Lucy Thraves; Sakina Abdou: Ground and improvisation. By Stewart Smith; Oranssi Pazuzu: Mutant metal. By Derek Walmsley; Black Rain: Neo-Neuromancer. By Phil Freeman; Michael J Schumacher: Living space sounds. By Kurt Gottschalk; Invisible Jukebox: Pat Thomas: will the pianist and improvisor have a grand time with The Wire’s mystery record selection? Tested by Seymour Wright; Global Ear: Zurich: the peripatetic noise scene resists gentrification in Switzerland’s biggest city; Unlimited Editions: tape label Strategic Tape Reserve prepare to fail. By Antonio Poscic; The Inner Sleeve: Pamela Z on Robert Rauschenberg’s Talking Heads cover; Epiphanies: Rafael Toral learns that music is the boss; 40 pages of reviews and much more.

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.