For RSD 2025 the influential band will be releasing a new double LP edition of their Nine Sevens box set of 7" records first released in 2018.
Combining the run of early singles with more obscure later period tracks underlines the strength in depth that Wire had. This is pop art as art/pop and an exploration of the blank canvas of pop culture and how far that canvas can be stretched going from three minute constructs to ambient washes. The 7" single was always the ultimate artefact and statement with the A side being the band momentarily paused in time and distilled and freeze-framed into the forever with less than three minutes of electric sound.
These "sevens" released from 1977 to the end of that decade, signpost the band's remarkable development from their brilliantly monochromatic early phase to the textured complexity of the almost psychedelic unzipping of their sound and vision. In some ways the compilation of Nine Sevens onto a double album makes for quite a weird documentation of the band in this period. The first disc, to some extent, follows the script of a singles / greatest hits collection but the second one goes wildly off-piste and ends up somewhere quite far from where the collection started. A conventional Greatest Hits collection, besides being conceptually a bit naff would, if strictly based on charting singles, consist of only one song!
A Best Of is subjective and somewhat pointless in the age of the Spotify playlist that anyone can make. The only thing really that these tracks have in common (besides being by Wire) is that they were released or destined to be released on 7" by Wire in the period 1977-1980. - Nine Sevens is both title & elevator pitch!'
Wire always understood the language of pop and also the artfulness of playing with it, deconstructing it and reassembling it into new and thrilling shapes. Decades later, these adventures into sound are like slices of delicious, perfect pop/noise and hits from a parallel universe.
Track list:
Side A1 Mannequin 2 Feeling Called Love 3 12XU 4 I Am the Fly5 Ex-Lion Tamer 6 Dot Dash *7 Options R *
Side B 8 Outdoor Miner (single version) * 9 Practice Makes Perfect 10 A Question Of Degree * 11 Former Airline *12 Map Ref. 41ºN 93ºW
Side C 1 Go Ahead * 2 Our Swimmer * 3 Midnight Bahnhof Café * 4 Second Length (Our Swimmer) **5 Catapult 30 **
Side D (154 EP) 6 Song 1 * 7 Get Down 1 + 2 * 8 Let's Panic Later *9 Small Electric Piece *
* previously unreleased on vinyl album
** recorded in 1980 but not released until 2014
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