Keep strumming, keep strumming, keep strumming those f*+~ing GUITARS!

great mix of thoughtful lyrics and driving rhythm

WIRE – CHANGE BECOMES US – pinkflag (pf20)

“Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time…,” laughs Colin Newman when asked to explain Wire’s original motivation for Change Becomes Us. While that might sound like the kind of feeble excuse you’d offer in mitigation when a drunken escapade goes horribly wrong, not only was it a good idea, it actually turned into a superlative one. 

In spring 2012, Wire’s plan had been to convene at Rockfield Studios in Wales to review the rudimentary blueprints of songs that had never made it beyond a few live performances in 1979 and 1980 – a time when the band-members were in creative overdrive yet the band was disintegrating. The aim wasn’t simply to resuscitate and record old songs – in fact, many of them hadn’t become proper songs in the first place, existing only as basic ideas or undeveloped parts. Rather, the objective was to approach that unrealised work as an oblique strategy, a potential springboard for Wire’s contemporary, forward-looking processes, a possible point of departure for new compositions.

This took place with Wire firing on all cylinders, as a four-piece studio entity again, the core line-up of Newman, Graham Lewis and Robert Grey now enhanced by guitarist Matthew Simms. Simms had played a key role in helping the band to cultivate and shape its new sonic landscape throughout the preceding year’s live work. Out of the exploratory Rockfield session and subsequent, extensive development and production at Newman’s Swim Studio, the ostensible source material became, in the classic Wire tradition, something quite other than what it may have once been or what it might have become if it had been pursued in 1980. 

“Love Bends” is a case in point. Its roots lie in “Piano Tuner” -- the raucous, octave-hopping number performed in February 1980 at the Electric Ballroom in Camden and preserved on Document and Eyewitness -- but it’s now morphed, improbably, into an irresistible, totally modern pop song. “It had to be turned into something else,” explains Lewis, “because it only really had one bit.” Just as improbably, the gently lilting “Re-invent Your Second Wheel” is tangentially connected to the notorious “Zegk Hoqp,” which was more of a one-time happening than a song at the Camden gig -- mostly shouting and banging, executed by a stage-full of Wire cronies in funny hats. “It was written for performance, around people with newspaper headdresses; not with music in mind,” Lewis emphasizes. Similarly transformed, “& Much Besides” is a six-minute oneiric-melodic interlude that gives no hint of its putative origins in “Eastern Standard” --  a dreary, obtuse three-minute geography lesson delivered with former manager Mick Collins at the Electric Ballroom concert.

Newman’s writing and production reimagines the past in ways that ultimately break any substantive connection with it, making entirely new pieces; and these songs themselves enact Wire’s restless drive to become other, often thriving on a fundamental tension between opposing sonic characteristics. With its stop-start, soft-hard, quiet-loud structure, “Adore Your Island” veers between what Newman describes as “prog and unhinged punk rock,” never quite resolving itself; the drama of “Attractive Space” hinges on a progressive splitting of the song’s personality, between its calm expansive, anthemic orientation and an increasing sense of intensity and claustrophobia. 

Change Becomes Us encapsulates the paradoxical essence of Wire’s creativity. The tendency of these new songs to refuse a single, settled identity is emblematic of the band’s ever-evolving aesthetic -- one that’s always hinged on sustained tensions and oppositions: between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the comfortable and the unsettling, the melodic and the brutal, the cerebral and the visceral, the smart and the moronic, the obvious and the inscrutable, the rational and the absurd. This intrinsic, core ambivalence generates the essential otherness that has characterized Wire’s most memorable, distinctive work -- from the epochal innovations of Chairs Missing and 154 to the electronic-pop deconstructions of A Bell Is A Cup to Send’s postmodern-punk expressionism and the widescreen lyricism of Red Barked Tree.

Change Becomes Us is an undeniable part of that illustrious lineage. Definitely more than just a good idea at the time.

Wilson Neate


Change Becomes Us

Be Still

Out now!
http://bit.do/SR001Juno
http://bit.do/SR001Decks
http://bit.do/SR001Deejay

PV

A2: Purple Velvet - Lost In Vienna [Secret Reels] Out Now!

112 KBPS FILES - DON'T BE A DUNCE!

Stream & Buy - https://razor-n-tape.fanlink.to/FamilyAffair2

RNT brings the heat for their 2nd outing in their Family Affair compilation series, representing both their ever-expanding RNT menáge, as well as their tight knit musical nuclear fam. Aural hugs all around on this fam jam!

--

www.razor-n-tape.com​
www.razor-n-tape.bandcamp.com

Family Affair Vol. 2

Stream & Buy

SMTHNG SMTIME (Megatronic & Edseven) - Luck (With You)

Buy/Stream

Oceanic - Sing It To Happen (DJ Version)

The Music Remains

Dream Keys

Harmonics Remixed

Progress (Black Science Orchestra Vocal Remix)

Buy Now via Beatport:
https://www.beatport.com/release/the-clone/1972252

Early support from Laurent Garnier, Solomun, Massimiliano Pagliara, Richy Ahmed, Sasha, Tensnake, The Drifter, Alex Dallas, Joris Voorn, Atjazz, Danny Howard/BBC Radio 1, Serge Santiago, Behling & Simpson, DJ Feadz, Peter Kruder, Rainer Trueby...

Over the past five years, elusive Berlin production duo Kyodai have gained support from some of the most respected players in the game, from Laurent Garnier and Masters At Work to Jimpster and Gilles Peterson. 
Known for their machine driven funk and techno influence they have an individual and timeless take on house music whether it's soulful, melodic or jacking. They released music on Exploited, Freerange, Pokerflat, Local Talk, Suol - just to name a few. 
Last year we were treated with the stand out track 'Houston In The Blind' - a collaboration with Daudi Matsiko and memorable Electronica and Bleakfolk. 
This year they return to Exploited with the house banger 'The Clone' which sounds like a fusion of Detroit, Berlin & Mallorca. Ready to get cloned. 

Early Feedback: 
Laurent Garnier: Kyodai as brilliant as ever - full support. 
Solomun: Thanks!
Massimiliano Pagliara: Nice!
Richy Ahmed: Wkd.
Sasha: Timeless goodness.
Tensnake: Big one!
Alex Dallas: Killer!
The Drifter: Fun fun. 
Serge Santiago: Yes yes.
Atjazz: The boys are unstoppable. 
Behling & Simpson: Kyodai are some of the best producers around IMO. This is beautfully done.
Danny Howard/BBC Radio1: Cool!
DJ Feadz: Yeah!
Peter Kruder: Great big room tune ! will play that.
Jacques Renault: Sounding cool.
dOP: Good track.
Rainer Trueby: Loving the piano and the architecture! Banger!
Alex Bark: Sogenanntes klassisches Material.
Finn / Rinse FM: Feeling this.
Iron Curtis: Thanks guys.

Label: Exploited
Artist: Kyodai
Release: The Clone
LC: 15799
Cat: EXPDIGITAL149
Publisher: Exploited Ghetto Music Publishing

Beatport Release: 03.04.17
I-Tunes Release: 17.04.17

Buy Now

Kyodai - The Clone | Exploited

Track One from the forthcoming Wire album "Change Becomes Us"

Doubles & Trebles

Pre Order Ltd Edition

Keep Exhaling

Adore Your island

Re-Invent Your Second Wheel

Stealth of a Stork

Love Bends

Since their formation in London in 1976, the members of Wire have maintained and advanced a musical project which treats the creative potential of a rock band as a fluid, amorphous medium. As removed from self-conscious intellectualism as they are from the inherent conservatism of much rock music, Wire employ their unique, endlessly restless and risk-taking creativity to question every aspect of songwriting, recording and performance. They delight and disturb in equal measure, troubleshooting the circuitry of perfect pop, or patrolling the limits of focused experimentalism. In terms of working together as Wire, the group's members disbanded in 1980, reformed in 1985, disbanded in 1992 and reformed for the second time in 2000. Such sabbaticals from their career as Wire have served to sharpen the group's edge and focus, updating the tactics with which they pursue this shared project.

see more - www.pinkflag.com

Love Bends

WireHQ

Recent comments

mike^is^thankful

lkffct

Eric Devaert

Dennis

Related tracks