“Wire’s first three albums need no introduction. They are the three classic albums on which Wire’s reputation is based. Moreover, they are the recordings that minted the post-punk form. This was adopted by other bands, but Wire were there first. These are the definitive re-releases. Each album is presented as an 80-page hardback book – the size of a 7-inch, but obviously much thicker. After a special introduction by Jon Savage, Graham Duff provides insight into each track. These texts include recording details, brand-new interviews with band members, and lyrics. The original album is presented on its own CD, accompanied by discs that feature relevant extra tracks: singles; B-sides; demos; and many previously unreleased songs. Pink Flag is a two-CD set; Chairs Missing and 154 have three CDs each. All audio has been painstakingly remastered (or, in some cases, mastered for the first time). This stunning set of presentations also includes a range of images from the archive of Annette Green. Wire’s official photographer during this period, Green also shot the covers for Pink Flag and Chairs Missing. Promotional and informal imagery – in colour and black and white – is featured throughout the books. Most of the photographs have not been seen for 40 years – and many have never been published anywhere before. It has been a number of years since these albums were readily available. The aim with these new vinyl and CD releases is to approximate the original statements as closely as possible, but with remastered audio. The vinyl releases have the same covers and inners as the originals (minus the Harvest logo). The digipack CDs have identical tracklistings to their vinyl counterparts. These versions should be considered Wire’s classic 1970s albums, pure and undiluted. …”
Boomkat (Audio)
YouTube: Pink Flag (2006 Remastered Version), 154 (2006 Remastered Version), Chairs Missing (2006 Remastered Version)
“German composers and producers Sven Laux and Logic Moon have each spent more than a decade cultivating distinctive voices within the contemporary ambient and post-classical landscape. Based in Berlin and Mainz respectively, both artists arrived at atmospheric composition through diverse musical journeys, from DJ culture, electronic experimentation and field recording to a deep appreciation of cinematic and modern classical forms. Between them they have released music on respected labels including Dronarivm, Archipel, Ambientologist, Shimmering Moods and they’ve both been regulars on Whitelabrecs too. Their collaboration began with The Unavoidable Death of Loneliness on Ambientologist in 2022, followed by The Quiet Companion on Shimmering Moods the following year. Their third collaborative album, Sea of Grey, represents the most ambitious chapter in this ongoing artistic dialogue. Developed over a period of more than two years, the record expands upon the cinematic post-classical and Ambient foundations of its predecessors, embracing a broader emotional range and more intricate compositional structures. Built through a
“Preseason top 25 rankings are a fun exercise, a time-honored tradition that begins the day after the national championship game — when they’re considered way-too-early — and changes all offseason. It sparks endless, months-long debates and disagreements. And then, on the first day of the season, everything goes out the window. … Placing programs in tiers as opposed to a 1-25 ranking (don’t worry, we also 
“So, the same venue as the previous 
“Brilliantly translated by Lydia Davis, here are Proust’s tormented, touching, and often very funny letters to his noisy neighbor. Marcel Proust’s genius for illuminating pain is on spectacular display in this recently discovered trove of his correspondence, Letters to His Neighbor. Already suffering from noise within his cork-lined walls, his poor soul was not ready for the fresh hell when his neighbor Dr. Williams married a widow with small children. Chiefly to Mrs. Williams, these ever-polite letters (often accompanied by flowers, compliments, books, even pheasants) are frequently hilarious—Proust couches his fury in a gracious tone. In Lydia Davis’s hands, the digressive brilliance of his sentences shines: ‘Don’t speak of annoying neighbors, but of neighbors so charming (an association of words contradictory in principle since Montesquiou claims that most horrible of all are 1) neighbors 2) the smell of post offices) that they leave the constant tantalizing regret that one cannot take advantage of their neighborliness.’ Proust makes fine distinctions among his auditory torments: ‘The valet de chambre makes noise and that doesn’t matter. But later he knocks with little tiny raps. And that is worse.’ Lydia Davis has written a generous translator’s note, tracing much of what we can know about Proust’s perpetually dark room; she details the furnishings as well as the life he lived there: burning his powders, talking with friends, hiring musicians, and, most of all, suffering. Letters to His Neighboris richly illustrated with facsimile letters and photographs—catnip for lovers of Proust. With an Introduction by Jean-Yves Tadié and a translator’s note by Lydia Davis. …”
“The D Sixth Avenue Express is a 
“To reach Tristan, roughly halfway between Africa and South America, Kelly Green crossed 1,738 miles of the South Atlantic from Cape Town aboard the M.V. Edinburgh, a 205-foot lobster boat. She had never been to sea before, and she worried about seasickness, but it never came. After a week at sea, the ship dropped anchor off Calshot Harbour, in front of Tristan da Cunha’s only settlement — Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. Its two small piers, jutting into the water, looked to Kelly like arms reaching out to welcome her. Kelly could see most of the island’s residents (then 264 people) waving, including her mother and father, Marina and Sean Burns. Her father had been sent to the island, a 
“… These songs originate from the city of Sanaa, the sheikdom of Lahej and the port of Aden. Samar is the delicious, luxury time when people gather for relaxation, refreshment and music. This record contains oudh playing, percussion and singing from Yemen. The three Kawkabani brothers sing traditional poems and play oudh (lute), double drums, tambourine and, occasionally, the kanoun (zither). They were recorded in Sanaa in 1973. The oudh player Hassan al Zabeede and his double drum playing brother sing songs in the Lahej style and were recorded in Taez in 1973. …”
“Ambient music is a 
“From afar, the R train subway entrance at the northwest corner 77th Street and Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge doesn’t warrant a second glance. It looks like any other street-level entryway, with the Helvetica signage, the concrete staircase, and the no-slip step tread at the top of the stairs. But look closer, and some unique details emerge—like the unusually thick cast iron sides of the entrance. On those slightly rusty cast-iron sides, you can see strange design motifs. One appears to be a cross, and under the cross a series of rings. The spikes on the back of the entrance are also curious. Is it part of the design, or a way to keep people from sitting down and lounging around? With all of these odd features, it’s clear the 77th Street entrance belongs in another era. A little backstory from the archives and an early photo of the station offer some clues. The station opened in 1916, part of the BMT Fourth Avenue extension that brought subway service to Brooklyn neighborhoods like Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, and Bensonhurst. The photo, from January of that year, captures the station when it made its debut. Though the sign at the top of the entrance and the lights that illuminated it no longer exist, it’s the same entrance New Yorkers use today to get to and from this stretch of Bay Ridge—which at the time was transitioning from a country retreat lined with fine houses and mansions to an urbanized part of New York City. The opening of the BMT subway accelerated this change. Between 1910 and 1924, the population of Bay Ridge doubled, according to the 
“I think I discovered Anatole Broyard’s Kafka Was the Rage as a consequence of reading Philip Roth’s The Human Stain. Some years back it was alleged that Coleman Silk, the professor who ‘passes’ as white in The Human Stain, was based on Anatole Broyard, himself a Louisiana Creole of mixed race said by some to have ‘passed’ in the metropolitan literary world of New York city and the New York Times where he was literary editor, reviewer and columnist for eighteen years. Roth strenuously denied using Broyard as a model – and indeed, whether or not Broyard did ‘pass’ is still hotly disputed. (Broyard himself never commented on this charge directly, I don’t think, although in a 1979 column he did say, ‘I ran away to Greenwich Village, where no one had been born of a mother and father, where the people I met had sprung from their own brows, or from the pages of a bad novel…Orphans of the avant-garde, we outdistanced our history and our humanity.’). In any case, this is not really significant as far as Broyard’s tragically slender but wonderfully readable output is concerned. He only published four books, and two of these came out after he died aged 70 in October 1990. Kafka Was the Rage is a short, elegant, whip-smart memoir of life in Greenwich Village immediately after the war. It is written in a deceptively simple prose that is rich in short, epigrammatic paradoxes and self-deprecating wit. The first line I remember reading was this: ‘If it hadn’t been for books, we’d have been completely at the mercy of sex.’ I was hooked. Broyard writes of the Village as others did of Paris in the 20s – indeed, for him and his friends, Greenwich Village was Paris in the 20s: it was the place they migrated to in order to make an artistic, cultural, modern life of ‘high seriousness’ (one of their favourite phrases, he says). Intellectual ideas and the importance of ideas are central themes in this memoir, yet there is nothing po-faced or worthy about it. This is high seriousness done with humour; perhaps even the high seriousness of humour. Fascinated by painting – literature was what Broyard really wanted but the New York school of abstract expressionism was a sort of gateway to high seriousness – Broyard moves in with a woman he calls Sheri Donatti, his first New York lover, an abstract painter and ‘a more radical version of Anais Nin’, whose protégé she had been. …”
A street in Marseille, France, on Sunday.
“
“Don Van Vliet – the late singer-composer-provocateur known as 
“The resurrection of vinyl records is no longer news — according to Pitchfork, more than 14 million records were sold in 2018. It has surpassed a hipster trend, as all the youth began to dig in their parents’ basements for vintage vinyl, turntables and hi-fi systems, realizing the advantages and pleasures of returning to analog over digital. When it comes to records, it’s more about the warmth of the sound and the fact that it’s a tangible medium that makes audiophiles build a massive collection of their favorite records. There are some electronic genres that rely on being obscure and unavailable in the digital world, and only being pressed on vinyl, for example minimal, which keeps the genre underground. And let’s be honest, you actually listen to music, and appreciate it far more when you hold it, remove the record from the sleeve, savor the artwork, and place the record on the player; it is the sum of many senses, an experience lost on digital music. While the reasons may vary from one person to another on why to start building a record collection, the industry is definitely rotating back towards vinyl, as well as cassettes, with CDs basically in the grave. We explored these stores in Cairo, and compiled a list of them that will keep any devoted digger busy. Anything you can think of is there — from the typical jazz, psychedelic and Arabic music to more obscure Pakistani film music, animal recordings, and recordings made in ancient Egyptian temples. SHERRY’S. Located in Zamalek’s Metro Tower, Sherry’s originally began as an antique and collectibles shop, converting to a record store due to the rising demand for vinyl in 2010. Aside from the typical jazz, rock, and classical, Sherry’s has an impressive Arabic collection, ’45s and LPs alike. You can also find a myriad of Greek, Armenian, Turkish and Eastern European ’45s, along with some weird old recordings such as old radio sound effects (cats, for example), which can be manipulated into a unique tool for producers to sample. In addition to their collection of records, vintage turntables, gramophones, tape recorders and other obscure gear, they also sell typewriters and analog cameras for the vintage freaks. The owners are friendly, and will invite you to drink a cup of tea while getting lost in their 5000+ record collection. …”
Vinyl of Fairuz in Baalbeck “Ya amar ana wiyak – Ma fi hada” 1960/Abboudi Bou Jawde collection
“In a bid to teach to satiate the simple appetite of these hungover 21-year-olds, our professor decided to bring music into the equation, simultaneously making it pop culture-friendly while proving how literature and lyrics were so closely intertwined. In this simple game of guessing what song played host to the lyrics onscreen, we all thought the safe familiarity of the year’s indie heroes would be presented to us. Not foolish enough to think pop would be on offer, we waited for Arctic Monkeys, The 1975 or 
“The word ‘hotel’ is cognate with ‘hostel’ and ‘hospital’, and for a few short years in the middle of the 20th century, one Paris establishment functioned as all three. Hôtel Lutetia sits on the city’s Left Bank and exudes a certain nonconformist swagger. Opened in 1910 and built in a style that bobbed between art nouveau and art deco, it soon attracted an artistic and bohemian crowd. Hemingway hung out there in the 1920s, as did Picasso, Matisse and André Gide. James Joyce, resident in the city for 20 years, wrote a chunk of Ulysses sitting at one of its tables. In this outstanding book, which has been shortlisted for the Women’s prize for nonfiction, Jane Rogoyska reports that by the mid-1930s the Lutetia had become headquarters to German political dissidents fleeing Hitler. ‘The Lutetia Crowd’, as the Nazis disdainfully dubbed them, comprised the intellectual cream of the Weimar Republic. Heinrich Mann, novelist brother of the more famous Thomas, was the head of the organising committee that worked to bring down the Nazi regime from a distance. To this end, fake tomato-seed packets were sent into Germany containing a diatribe against the Third Reich and The Communist Manifesto was rebound into classic literature and pumped into the Fatherland. When they weren’t tampering with tomato seeds, these former lawyers, academics and journalists spent their days tramping around the City of Light in increasingly shabby clothing, trying to persuade someone to give them a job, any job. Even this misery, though, was nothing compared with the hellish conditions that arrived with the occupation of Paris in 1940. Under Hitler’s Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) initiative, any émigré or refugee could now be arrested without legal due process. Most of the Lutetia circle found themselves reclassified as stateless aliens, an utterly defenceless position. For those who were Jewish, there was every chance of being sent to concentration camps in the east. Having set up the Lutetia as the focus of her book, Rogoyska then traces a number of individual stories. Some of these have been told many times before. There is Walter Benjamin, who spends all his days at the Bibliotheque Nationale perfecting his life’s work on The Arcades Project, a study of the street life of 19th-century Paris. Then there is Irène Némirovsky, the Ukraine-born author who is secretly writing Suite Française, a novel depicting the fear, desperation and moral compromises of ordinary citizens during the German invasion. Gisèle Freund, a young German photographer and a lesbian, has already taken the precaution of making a mariage blanc to a Frenchman in order to gain citizenship. …”
“Stephen Dedalus is 
Stephen Dedalus has an aesthetic epiphany along 
“Before we recommend the ten best Americana albums of all time, maybe we should define the term. In our mind, 
“DJ Schmolli from Vienna (Austria) has established himself to a fixed size in the DJ business over the years. In his energetic shows musical boundaries are broken and songs from different genres and eras get mixed up to rock every party. Mashup is the magical word to thrill the audience, worldwide. Party goers in Berlin, Moscow and Rio know the score! He produced his first mashups during the time as an active musician in 2000, parallel to this he gained some experience on the turntables. Since 2007 he has devoted himself entirely to DJing. In addition to his role as resident DJ in Munich and Frankfurt he also played DJ sets in Vienna (eg Pratersauna, U4 and Ottakringer brewery), Paris, Berlin, Budapest, Zurich, Moscow, New York, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro, to name just a few. Not to forget the legendary performance in the birthplace of the “Bootie” mashup parties San Francisco where over 1,300 ecstatic fans celebrated with him. At festivals Schmolli is a frequently booked act, such as the Paaspop festival in Holland or the VOLT Festival in Sopron (Hungary). Until now DJ Schmolli has produced over 350 mashups that also get lots of radio airplay, for example on BBC Radio1 or Austria’s biggest station OE3. But above all the internet is the largest platform for his productions. His videos are reaching hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube, making him one of the most successful mashup producers in the world. He easily blended 80s cult hits with current chart toppers, mixes Coldplay with the Beach Boys, Sean Paul with Falco. Or why not taking all the stadium hymns & singalongs and blending them into the ‘Super Bowl Anthem’? Even print media such as the ‘Washington Post’ and the ‘Toronto Star’ have already become aware of him. …”
“… On November 18, 1963, two months after the funeral oration, Coltrane brought his quartet to the studio to record a new song called ‘Alabama,’ a musical memorial for the four murdered girls in Birmingham. (Incidentally, the recording session took place just days before U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated; this was an especially tumultuous time in American history.) Pianist Tyner later recounted the effect of King’s words: ‘The song ‘Alabama’ came from a speech. John said there was a Martin Luther King speech about the four girls getting killed in Alabama. It was in the newspaper—a printed medium. And so John took the rhythmic patterns of his speech and came up with ‘Alabama.’’ Coltrane did not need lyrics to say what was in his mind and heart; he instead imbued the song with the essence of King’s eulogy. King’s words are not heard in ‘Alabama,’ yet they are felt. Coltrane begins and ends the song with aching expressions of grief. In the middle, as observed in JAZZIZ Magazine, ‘like the speech, ‘Alabama’ shifts its tone from one of mourning to one of renewed determination for the struggle against racially motivated crimes.’ One of Coltrane’s most emotional works, “Alabama” was one of two studio-recorded songs on the album Live at Birdland, released to the public on January 9, 1964. …”
“Seminal, genre-blurring records imbued with folk, jazz, and mysticism, including Astral Weeks, Moondance and Veedon Fleece, have long since crowned Van Morrison king of Celtic soul. Yet the artist’s first love was always the blues, and on September 23, 2017, he went back to the blues with his hard-hitting 37th album, Roll With The Punches. As a young man, the Belfast-born icon-to-be had a head start. Having lived in Detroit during the 50s, his father had acquired one of Ulster’s largest record collections, ensuring that Morrison Jr was exposed to artists ranging from jazz greats such as 
“The Hôtel Lutetia (
1960s: Days of Rage
