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August issue on sale now!

This month: Cosmic Guitars: A ten page survey of the state of de- and retuned fingerpicking guitar music, plus an Invisible Jukebox with Caroline Kraabel & John Edwards, a Primer on DJ tools, interviews with Lonnie Holley and MC Yallah, a free Wire Tapper CD, 100s of reviews and more

Tracks

(Virtual) Office Ambience 438

(Virtual) Office Ambience 438

Compiled from the playlists of working at home Wire staff. A selection of tracks from releases we listened to during the making of our August 2020 issue.

On Air

Daisy Hyde presents Adventures In Sound And Music

Daisy Hyde presents Adventures In Sound And Music

The Wire's weekly show on Resonance FM. This edition took place on 23 July and included new music by Lil Asaf, William Basinski's new project Sparkle Division, The Beneficiaries, Richard Skelton and Konstrukt & Otomo Yoshihide

Essay

Marc Orleans RIP

Marc Orleans RIP

Byron Coley chronicles the life of prolific East Coast guitarist, lap steel player and chess freak Marc Orleans, of Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Spore and many more

Book Extract

Read an excerpt from Zully Adler's Charlie Nothing: State Of The Ding

Read an excerpt from Zully Adler's Charlie Nothing: State Of The Ding

Multidisciplinary artist Charles Martin Simon is the subject of a new book by research fellow Zully Adler. As Charlie Nothing, Simon was responsible for one of the rare non-guitar records released by John Fahey’s Takoma label; he was also the inventor of the steel-stringed American automobile scrap metal instrument, the dingulator.

News

Ennio Morricone 1928–2020

Read a selection of articles from The Wire archive celebrating the work of the late Italian film composer who died on 6 July

News

NTS Radio launch listener support scheme

London online radio station announce scheme to support the station and its hosts, as well as a list of new residents including Moor Mother, Haruomi Hosono and Inzane Johnny

News

Jacques Coursil 1938–2020

“I wanted to ‘destroy’ the beat and harmony,” declared the French musician and teacher, who was one of the few Europeans to make an impact on New York's 1960s free jazz scene. By Pierre Crépon

Essay

Missing sounds of New York. By Alan Licht

Missing sounds of New York. By Alan Licht

As lockdown begins to ease and protests over the killing of George Floyd fill the sonic landscape, Alan Licht examines the value of New York Public Library's anthology of nostalgic field recordings

Video

Watch: The Quarantine Concerts

Watch: The Quarantine Concerts

This short film tells the story of The Quarantine Concerts – a decentralised live-streamed performance series operating nightly since late March

Tracks

New material by Nour Mobarak

New material by Nour Mobarak

The experimental vocalist shares a track from her forthcoming release that explores the “affective quality of the human voice in space, outside of the fixed meanings of language”

The Portal

Elaine Mitchener's Sweet Tooth reading list

Elaine Mitchener's Sweet Tooth reading list

Elaine Mitchener's music theatre work Sweet Tooth, a powerful engagement with the brutalities of slavery, its links to the British empire and the sugar industry, and its contemporary echoes, has been made available to stream online. Here Mitchener compiles an extensive resource of relevant reading materials

News

Brother Ah RIP

“If there were no musicians on the Planet Earth, there would still be music.”