Wire #495

On the cover: aya: New album hexed! explores sobriety and neurodiversity through radical tunings and transformed instruments. By Chal Ravens. Inside: Satch Hoyt: The one-time Burnt Sugar member’s Un-Muting project opens museum archives of stolen instruments. By Francis Gooding; Ailie Ormston: The Glasgow composer moves away from the conservatoire to conduct the sounds of the city. By Abi Bliss; Joke Lanz: At 60 years old the Swiss improvisor still takes a punk approach to the turntable. By Daniel Spicer; Bios Contrast: Kolkata musician Nilotpal Das cooks up the concept of brahmancore. By Misha Farrant; Laura Cocks: Chamber music is the site of connection for the flautist. By Stewart Smith; MIC: Grime provides the setting for sci-fi storytelling in the hands of the London MC. By Lucy Thraves: John King: The composer playing the blues for Palestine’s lost communities. By Kurt Gottschalk; Trân Uy Đúc: The Vietnamese multidisciplinary artist curates the self-scape. By Daryl Worthington; Invisible Jukebox: Alvin Curran: Will the Musica Elettronica Viva member read maritime rites over The Wire’s mystery record selection? Tested by Julian Cowley; Global Ear: Experiments and activism in Danish capital Copenhagen. By Josh Feola; Unlimited Editions: Meticulous design and sonics dovetail in New York new music label Greyfade. By Philip Watson; The Inner Sleeve: Seymour Wright on Anne Gillis’s Lxgrin; Against The Grain: VAN magazine Editor Hugh Morris can’t stand that jazzy sensation; Epiphanies: Surgeon gets all cut up by William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Plus 40 pages of reviews including Gryphon Rue: State of nature. By Abi Bliss; Ed Kuepper & Jim White/Kim Salmon & Masami Kawaguchi: Pacific old masters. By Byron Coley; Strata-East reissues: Black unity. By Daniel Spicer; Music under Stalin: Utopian dreams and nightmares in the USSR. By Andy Hamilton; Borealis: Nordic operations. By Robert Barry; 160 Unity: Footwork on the floor. By Joseph Francis; and much, much more.

The Wire is an independent, monthly music magazine covering a wide range of alternative, underground and non-mainstream 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, electronica, hiphop, new jazz, modern composition, traditional musics and beyond. Passionate, intelligent and provocative