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WIRE, "READ & BURN 01"
Following the "12 Times You" 7", on which Colin Newman remixed liverecordings of Wire playing that little old number "12XU" infast'n'furious cut'n'paste fashion, our swimmers found the stroke fortheir third length. This six song EP marks the first fruits of a newkind of R'n'B, but joking aside Wire sound like they're splitting theirsides over the "Everybody Loves a History" idea, smashing their historyto bits and glueing it back together in new shapes. Or maybe theyreally had to hark right back to the simplest forms because they'dalmost forgotten how to play guitars and so here and there it soundslike they're reincarnating their debut album 'Pink Flag' in a precisecomputer studio cut up frenzy. Imagine various cuts from 'Pink Flag'given the manic makeover the way they gave "Our Swimmer" a "SecondLength" and you'll begin to make out the shapes emerging here.Lyrically a lot of this could be read as Wire commenting on their musicand existation, especially the superbly titled opening salvo "In theArt of Stopping" which could be seen as a manifesto of sorts, after allWire have stopped a couple of times before. After a snare tap Colinslurs the verse, "Trust me, believe me" (which could hail from any oldpiece of pappy pop - but hang on, maybe he's actually singing "Tryspeed") and then rises to a stop as he hollers, "It's all in the art ofstopping" (you'd be hard pushed to find any other band with a lyriclike that). His delivery is vaguely reminiscent of "Once is Enough" butseems sillier, especially when he starts braying like a disgruntledmule, and the track also appropriatelt recalls the jabbering "CheekingTongues." Meanwhile spindley Gilbert guitars spit harsh circles andsome comical morphed backing vocals really lift the track off thetracks. The whole thing gets crunched down into an infinitessimalshrunken hard chip blurt before the whole caboodle rushes back, poweredalong by the relentless mono rhythmic crack of Robert's reawakenedsnare that went to bed. Rock bluster is dissolved into techno tricks,and even tiny shards of glitch have been worked so subtley into the mixyou hardly notice at first. The incredibly uplifting rush of energyfrom "Germ Ship" is even more exciting. It sounds like a bastardisationof "Pink Flag" and "The Commercial" but given a high octane refueling,and the guitars ignite. This tune was debuted at their Edinburgh gigthat saw off the twentieth century, with Newman and Lewis bothobstreperously hollering their fatal attractions, but here Lewis hasgone quiet and Colin is hushed to a whisper until the end when heshouts out the title to end it in 21st century digipunk style. Thesetwo tracks have ensured constant rotation. Whilst the rest of the EP isgood fun musically, I'm not so convinced that it's going to add up tomuch more than good fun, but its early days and Wire recordings veryoften reveal hidden depths with later plays. The "Surgeon's Girl"ending for "1st Fast," the "Comet" chorus about the chorus going "Ba baba bang," and that track's very retro 'Pink Flag' album feel seemedalmost smugly self referential at first, but the detail and humour havewon out in the end. Maybe the most mashed future-past meltdown is "IDon't Understand" which reinvents "Ally In Exile" with "An Advantage inHeight" via two chord "Lowdown" funk with the great opening couplet"Over the edge / Under an illusion." Lewis steps up to the mic for thelast track "Agfers of Kodack" and sounds as if he's just swum all theway from Sweden to sing it, or maybe he's been torching the sand in hisjoints. It sounds oddly as if it could be a drastic reworking orforerunner of "In The Art of Stopping," and is probably as close toheavy metal as Wire have ever stepped. With this EP Wire have in asense cast aside progression in favour of temporal corruption. Like theFall and Sonic Youth, they seem to be moving outside of linear time andzapping back and forth throughout their own universe. Perhaps whenprogressive rock bands amass a certain musical critical mass theycollapse like suns into black holes that turn time into space. If soWire are creating intense gravitational pull and inspiring their mostpretentious reviews yet. - samples:
