Subscriber Special: Below The Radar Volume 1

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With next month’s September issue, The Wire launches Below The Radar, a major new series of free download compilations that will be made available exclusively to all the magazine’s subscribers worldwide

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Compiled and produced by The Wire staff, each volume of Below The Radar will act as a showcase for all manner of underground, outsider and experimental sounds.

The first volume in the series will be released to subscribers on 6 August to coincide with the publication of next month’s September issue. Subsequent volumes will be issued on a quarterly basis.

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Here’s how it will work... All subscribers will be issued with a url for a dedicated Below The Radar webpage, plus a user name and password. Once logged in to the webpage, they will be able to download all the tracks on the compilation. The webpage will also include a set of sleevenotes that will contain biographies and images, links and contact information for all the featured musicians. Logged in subscribers will be able to view the sleevenotes online and/or download them as a pdf file.

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To make sure you get access to the first volume of Below The Radar, subscribe now: thewire.co.uk/subscribe

NB the second volume of Below The Radar will be made available to subscribers on 10 December to coincide with the publication of the January 2010 issue of The Wire .

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Below The Radar Volume 1 features new or exclusive tracks by:

▲ James Ferraro

▲ Ghédalia Tazartès

Volume 1

▲ Skull Defekts

▲ Brian Morant

▲ Seymour Wright

▲ Richard Skelton

▲ Sudden Infant

▲ Mark Wastell

▲ Uton

▲ Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides

▲ Gareth Davis & Steven R Smith

▲ Harappian Night Recordings

▲ Dredd Foole & Ed Yazijian

▲ Starving Weirdos

▲ Valerio Cosi

▲ LSD March

▲ The Hunter Gracchus

▲ Concern

■ and more... Inside The Wire 306 | August 2009

Madlib photographed by Jeremy & Claire Weiss

The Masthead 4

Letters 6

Bitstream 8 News and more from below the radar

Trip Or Squeek 9 Cartoon strip by Savage Pencil

Bites 10 A Chinese experimental music anthology, farewell to Sky Saxon, lathe cuts

Charts 48

Out There 90 Festivals, concerts, gigs and club listings

Back Issues 94

Subscriptions 95

Reviews Index 49

Soundcheck 50 This month’s selected CDs, vinyl and downloads, including Polwechsel & John Tilbury, GES, Bizzy B and more. Plus avant rock, critical beats, dub, electronica, hiphop, jazz & Improv, modern composition, outer limits, unusual formats and reissues

The Inner Sleeve 73 DJ Spooky on Alex Steinweiss, pioneer of the illustrated LP sleeve

Print Run 74 New music books: Faber/Domino’s Loops journal, Richard Williams’s Kind Of Blue moment, a Paul Panhuysen monograph, a history of music venues and more

On Screen 76 Central Bazaar and Sun Ra Arkestra on DVD; plus vintage Cecil Taylor and Stockhausen documentaries re-screened

On Site 77 Gallery and mixed media events, including the Rock-Paper-Scissors exhibition in Graz and a multimedia Varèse performance in Amsterdam

On Location 78 Festival and concert reviews including Meltdown, Primavera Sound 09, Mutek, Equinox, Synch, Cut & Splice and more

Diana Rogerson 12 Nick Richardson laps up the whiplash wit and Kaliinspired wisdom of Chrystal Belle Scrodd

Nisennenmondai 14 The all-female Tokyo power trio’s monolithic motorik is gaining them a worldwide following. By David Hickey

Andrea Parkins 16 Exploring sonority from squeezebox Improv to invented ‘funky machines’. By David Stubbs

Global Ear Belize 18 David Crosbie negotiates the complex hybrid musics of a developing Central American nation

Cross Platform Rolf Julius 20 The Berlin sound artist on amplifying the inner life of stones and the music of colours. By David Keenan

Invisible Jukebox Sleazy Peter Christopherson 22 The co-founder of Throbbing Gristle and Coil member stands on the threshold of identifying The Wire’s mystery record selection. Tested by Mike Barnes

Hypnagogic pop 26 How James Ferraro, Spencer Clark, Pocahaunted, Emeralds, et al are floating beyond Noise to a dreampop hallucination of the 1980s. By David Keenan

Madlib 32 The ‘human record crate’ behind Quasimoto, Yesterdays New Quintet and Beat Konducta tells Lisa Blanning about ancient grooves and future hiphop

The Primer British visionary jazz 40 A user’s guide to the golden age of UK post-bop and elastic rock 1964–76, featuring John Surman, Mike Westbrook, Nucleus and more. By Rob Young

Epiphanies 98 Graphic novelist Warren Ellis on musical communion with a sense of place with Sigur Rós and Julian Cope