The Wire (magazine)
The Wire (or simply Wire) is a British music magazine publishing out of London, which has been issued monthly in print since 1982. Its website launched in 1997, and an online archive of its entire back catalog became available to subscribers in 2013. Since 1985, the magazine's annual year-in-review issue, Rewind, has named an album or release of the year based on critics' ballots.
Not to be confused with Wired (magazine) or The Wire (India). For other uses, see Wire (disambiguation).Editor
Derek Walmsley; see timeline below for former editors
Monthly
Tony Herrington
Anthony Wood, Chrissie Murray
Summer 1982
The Wire Magazine Ltd. (independently owned)
English
Originally, The Wire covered the British jazz scene with an emphasis on avant-garde and free jazz. It was marketed as a more adventurous alternative to its conservative competitor Jazz Journal, and targeted younger readers at a time when Melody Maker had abandoned jazz coverage. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the magazine expanded its scope until it included a broad range of musical genres under the umbrella of non-mainstream or experimental music. Since then, The Wire's coverage has included experimental rock, electronica, alternative hip hop, modern classical, free improvisation, nu jazz and traditional music.
The magazine has been independently owned since 2001, when the six permanent staff members purchased the magazine from previous owner Naim Attallah.
Books[edit]
There are multiple books based on material first published in The Wire. Invisible Jukebox (1998), published by Quartet Books, collected entries from the recurring feature of the same name. For these features, an interviewer plays several pieces of music for a musician without identifying them, usually selecting tracks that the musician would be expected to know. The musician is challenged to guess the artist and title, as well as to comment on the music.[50] Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music (2002) was published by Continuum as part of the magazine's 20th anniversary; it collected a mix of new and previously published essays about important but overlooked developments in the history of modern music.[43] The Wire Primers (2009), out on Verso, collected 19 essays that give introductions to various genres and artists.[77] Savage Pencil Presents Trip or Squeek's Big Amplifier (2012) collected Savage Pencil cartoons from the preceding twelve years.[78] Most recently, Epiphanies: Life-changing Encounters With Music (2015) anthologized essays from a recurring guest column about musical experiences that made a profound impact on the writer.[79]