The Masthead

The trouble with modernists is their stubborn refusal to give up on the world. Their resistance is not so much rooted in the deluded belief that they can save it, as in a desire to find new ways of holding a mirror up to it. This month’s Invisible Jukebox candidate Daniel Miller launched Mute Records more than 30 years ago with the car-crash sex of The Normal’s “Warm Leatherette”, a wittily sick reduction of JG Ballard’s Crash into a handful of speech bubble lines, numbly intoned and repeated in a staccato voice that rhythmically interlocks with gear-crunching stabs of raw synth to drive the song to its climax. Its matching of weird sex and mechanismo grind might have made it a no-tongues kissing cousin to the synth pop that came to dominate the early part of the 1980s. But “Warm Leatherette” eschewed early synth pop’s cliched equation of ‘electronics equals alienation’. If not exactly joyous, the song gleefully re-enacted the bare bones of Ballard’s plot as a stillborn dance craze. Shortly after, through Silicon Teens, Miller fantasised three minutes into the future as a time when teenagers wanting to start a group would quite naturally turn to electronics as first-choice instruments. And right on cue, Depeche Mode stepped into the frame. The success of Depeche Mode and, later, Vince Clarke’s Yazoo and Erasure, enabled Mute to continue releasing the noise of Boyd Rice’s NON, Diamanda Galás’s extended song cycle documentaries about holocaust cover-ups and AIDS death, and, through the label’s Grey Area Of Mute subsidiary, reclaimed Industrial waste by Throbbing Gristle, and more.

But the Mute operation never clearly divided along strictly commercial or art lines. What’s great about the label is the dialogue it has kept up between the margins and the mainstream. The outcome of such dialogues was as audible as it was visible in mid-1980s Depeche Mode. When they still looked like the ditzy Basildon boys they never really were, they went to record an album in West Berlin, where Mute connections exposed them to the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten. And they returned to the UK a much darker perv-pop unit singing songs about masters and servants and wage slavery over sweaty, humid bunker electronics mined from still potent myths of Berlin in ruins. 1980s Depeche Mode enacted a modernist electro tango with the world, simultaneously sexing it up and keeping it at a distance, clinging on desperately as they critiqued it. In the process, they Trojan-horsed uncomfortable ideas picked up from the cultural fringe into the hearts and minds of their large popular audience.

In the Jukebox, upon being played a contemporary track clearly steeped in 1980s synth pop by Washed Out, Miller admits to feeling more nostalgic than he’d like to be. Unless it is bio-fed and bulked out by an excess of sentiment that threatens to overwhelm the here and now, personally I have never understood the need to apologise for remembering the past, or the sense of loss that fuels the modernist urge to devise new ways of revealing the world for what it is. Chris Bohn

Distribution

News stands

UK, Europe & Rest of World (excl USA) COMAG Specialist Division Tavistock Works, Tavistock Road West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7QX Tel +44 (0)1895 433800 steven.ohara@comag.co.uk

USA IPD (Source Interlink Fulfillment Div) 27500 Riverview Center Blvd Suite 400, Bonita Springs, FL 34134 Tel 239 949 4450 rsonnenberg@ucsinc.com

Bookshops

Worldwide Central Books (Magazine Dept) 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN Tel +44 (0)20 8986 4854 sasha@centralbooks.com

Independent record shops

UK & Europe Shellshock, 23A Collingwood Road London N15 4EL Tel +44 (0)20 8800 8110 Fax +44 (0)20 8800 8140 info@shellshock.co.uk

USA Forced Exposure 219 Medford St Malden, MA 02148-7301 Fax 781 321 0321 fe@forcedexposure.com

Rest of World Contact The Wire direct Tel +44 (0)20 7422 5022 Fax +44 (0)20 7422 5011 subs@thewire.co.uk

NB The Wire can also supply record shops in Europe direct

4 | The Wire | Masthead

Subscriptions

Print Subscription

12 issues UK £40 Europe £56 USA/Canada US$90/£56 Rest of the World (Air) £66

Digital Subscription

12 months Worldwide £30

See page 96 for full details

The Wire is published 12 times a year by The Wire Magazine Ltd. Printed by Wyndeham Heron Ltd.

The Wire was founded in 1982 by Anthony Wood. Between 1984–2000 it was part of Naim Attallah’s Namara Group. In December 2000 it was purchased in a management buy-out by the magazine’s staff. It continues to publish as a 100 per cent independent operation.

The views expressed in The Wire are those of the respective contributors and are not necessarily shared by the magazine or its staff. The Wire assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, illustrations or promotional items. Copyright in the UK and abroad is held by the publisher or by freelance contributors. Unauthorised reproduction of any item is forbidden.

Issue 327 May 2011 £4 ISSN 0952-0680

The Wire 23 Jack’s Place, 6 Corbet Place, London E1 6NN, UK Tel +44 (0)20 7422 5010 Fax +44 (0)20 7422 5011 thewire.co.uk

Publisher Tony Herrington tony@thewire.co.uk

Editor Chris Bohn chris@thewire.co.uk Deputy Editor Anne Hilde Neset anne@thewire.co.uk Reviews Editor Derek Walmsley derek@thewire.co.uk News/Live Editor Lisa Blanning lisa@thewire.co.uk Editor-at-Large Rob Young rob@thewire.co.uk

Art Direction & Design Ben Weaver art@thewire.co.uk Design & Layout Patrick Ward patrick@thewire.co.uk

Advertising Manager Andy Tait andy@thewire.co.uk Licensing Manager & Advertising Sales Shane Woolman shane@thewire.co.uk Subscriptions, Circulation & Administration Ben House ben@thewire.co.uk Irene Revell irene@thewire.co.uk

Online Editors Nathan Budzinski nathan@thewire.co.uk Jennifer Lucy Allan jennifer@thewire.co.uk

Assistant Online Editor Katie Gibbons katie@thewire.co.uk

Archivist Edwin Pouncey edwin@thewire.co.uk

Intern Daisy Hyde

Words Steve Barker, Mike Barnes, Clive Bell, Marcus Boon, Michael Bracewell, Nick Cain, Philip Clark, Byron Coley, Julian Cowley, Alan Cummings, Sam Davies, Brian Dillon, Phil England, Kodwo Eshun, Mark Fisher, Phil Freeman, Louise Gray, Andy Hamilton, Adam Harper, Jim Haynes, Richard Henderson, Ken Hollings, Hua Hsu, David Keenan, Rahma Khazam, Biba Kopf, Alan Licht, Dave Mandl, Marc Masters, Bill Meyer, Keith Moliné, Will Montgomery, Brian Morton, Joe Muggs, Alex Neilson, Andrew Nosnitsky, Ian Penman, Richard Pinnell, Edwin Pouncey, Nina Power, Simon Reynolds, Nick Richardson, Tom Ridge, Bruce Russell, Peter Shapiro, Chris Sharp, Philip Sherburne, Nick Southgate, Daniel Spicer, Joseph Stannard, David Stubbs, Dave Tompkins, David Toop, Dan Warburton, Val Wilmer, Barry Witherden, Matthew Wuethrich

Images Thomas Adank, Sébastien Agnetti, Sam Ashley, Jon Baker, Will Bankhead, Jonathan Birch, Florian Braun, Leon Chew, Tara Darby, Roger Deckker, Glen Erler, Nicholas Haggard, Estelle Hanania, Jessica Haye & Clark Hsiao, Brad Harris, Pieter Hugo, Tom Hunter, Drew Jarrett, Jak Kilby, Cameron Krone, Armin Linke, Mark Mahaney, Joss McKinley, Donald Milne, Chris Mottalini, Manfred Naescher, Niall O’Brien, Fergus Padel, Leonie Purchas, Shawn Records, Szymon Roginski, Beth Rooney, Savage Pencil, Michael Schmelling, Mathew Scott, Na Seung, Bryan Sheffield, Will Sweeney, Olaf Unverzart, Daniëlle van Ark, Eva Vermandel, Muir Vidler, Kai von Rabenau, Jake Walters, Jeremy & Claire Weiss, Henk Wildschut, Winni Wintermeyer 05.2011

www.editionsmego.com www.spectrumspools.com eMEGO 117 Mark McGuire A Young Persons Guide 2CD / Download eMEGO 118 Hecker Speculative Solution CD + Book eMEGO 108 Bruce Gilbert The Shivering Man 25th Anniversary Edition CD / 2LP (with This Way) / Download eMEGO 116 Mark Fell Manitutshu 2x12” / Download

SP 003 FORMA FORMA LP / Download

SP 004 Mist House 2LP / Download

THE ALBUM out 18th APRIL on CD / LP / DOWNLOAD featuring PAT THOMAS, ALEXIS TAYLOR of HOT CHIP,

CHARLES HAYWARD of THIS HEAT & JOHN COXON of SPRING HEEL JACK Also available ‘YOU’RE NO GOOD’ 12” SINGLE

www.aboutgroup.blogspot.com www.dominorecordco.com