WIRE Vinyl & CDs

Review: After Robert Grey's 1990 exit, Wire morphed into WIR, a project designed to wrap up their Mute Records contract with a stripped-down, sequencer-led approach. Graham Lewis took lead vocals while the band reworked their own back catalogue. A chance to reflect on what had been, as opposed to what was yet to be, WIR's lifespan was brief, with only a handful of shows and two conceptual events dubbed I Saw You In Clapham (April 1992) and Vienna (February 1993) rolled into the ensuing campaign. On the Vienna trip, they recorded a sprawling 25-minute session for Austria's ORF, curated by Peter Rehberg of MEGO fame, released by Touch in 1996. This 2025 remaster adds a fresh take on their darkest pop moment, 'So & Slow', reimagined in a live-inspired arrangement with a nod to Taylor Swift's re-recording style.

Review: Wire's formative late-70s run gets the 7" treatment with Nine Sevens, a box of nine vinyl singles spanning 1977 to 1980. Remastered from original analogues, the set pulls together six Harvest-era sides, one from Rough Trade, an unreleased 1980 session, plus the hard-to-find 154 bonus EP - all wrapped in replica artwork and housed in a sharp Bruce Gilbert-designed box. We follow Wire's rapid evolution from clipped punk minimalism into stranger, shiftier terrains, where terse, abrasive, and knowingly off-centre master-demos abrade the ears like rusty scalers. Each 7" sees a staggered digital release, but these tracks won't be lumped into any retrospective, making this the only way to get the full physical set.

Review: Wire's 'Nine Sevens' is a double LP that serves as a reissue of their 2018 box set of 7" singles, which brought together early iconic tracks with more obscure later works. The compilation tracks the band's evolution from their monochrome early phase to the more complex, almost psychedelic sound that emerged by the end of the 1970s. The first disc resembles a traditional greatest hits collection, while the second veers into experimental territory and between them, all these 7" singles represent Wire's pop art explorations as well as being snapshots of the band frozen in time. This fine take on pop culture is a thrilling, artful journey through Wire's pioneering work.

Review: One of history's prominent art punk, post punk, experimental and alternative rock groups, at least one Wire record should sit on everyone's shelf, their richly detailed and deeply atmospheric sound helping lay foundations not just for all the outfits that have picked up the mantel and took the aforementioned styles forward, but also genres such as noise and drone. There really is just so much going on in the often chaotic crescendos and pared back moments alike.

As the title suggests, Not About To Die takes early studio demos from the crew and also correctly makes it clear that, when all these were recorded, the troupe still had decades of creative output ahead of them and weren't going anywhere. That said, by the end of the decade they would disband, before regrouping again, disbanding again, and regrouping. Those details aside, dive in and soak up the unbridled and unapologetic raw creativity at play here.