Fjord Festival Locks Its 2027 Lineup — and It's All Unsigned Acts
All 42 acts on next June's bill are unsigned or self-released, and the festival says the rule is now permanent.
Music, Noise, and Everything in Between.
How records get made, where they get played, and why no two rooms sound the same. Seven writers, seven cities, no scores out of ten.
Start with Issue 06 — Bloom or the latest Wire Mix.
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Minidisc Sales Just Outpaced CDs for the First Time Since 1998
Independent retailers moved more minidiscs than CDs in the second quarter, and three quarters of them were blanks.
Tbilisi's Substation Club Reopens After Two-Year Silence
The Tbilisi club returns on 19 September at a reduced 380 capacity, with Barometric and DJ Provenance on the opening bill.
The Loudness Wars Are Over. The Quiet Wars Have Begun.
Streaming normalisation ended the fight over volume. It did not end the fight. Three Wire writers spent a month with the mastering engineers, playlist editors and bar owners now deciding what a record has to survive.
Velvet Static's 'Half Light' Is Shoegaze for the Server Room
Recorded over eleven days in a decommissioned data hall with the cooling still running, 'Half Light' is the most detailed headphone record of the year and completely useless on a motorway. Both facts come from the same decision.
'I Record Everything at 4 A.M.': A Conversation With Vera Lune
Vera Lune has never played a show outside her own city and records only between four and seven in the morning. We climbed five flights of stairs at an unreasonable hour to ask why.
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Vera Lune played "Glasshouse" once, at 4:40 in
Live Session: Vera Lune Performs 'Glasshouse' on Our Roof
One pump organ, two microphones, no second take. Vera Lune played 'Glasshouse' on our roof at twenty to five in the morning and let the city play the other half.
Scene Report: Tbilisi's Basement Techno Renaissance
Substation has been dark for two years. In the wine cellars, car parks and stairwells of Tbilisi, the crews who kept the city dancing have built something they may not want to hand back.
Wire Mix 014: Slow Motion for Fast Times
An hour for the walk between two things you are already late for: half-tempo, delay-heavy, and stubbornly unhurried. Mixed by Ada Kwon.
Low Ceiling's Debut Makes Small Rooms Sound Infinite
A band who will not play a room licensed for more than two hundred people made a record in a rehearsal space with a 2.3 metre ceiling. The rule is not marketing attached to the album. It is how the album was built.
Liner Notes: In Defense of the Skip Button
Labels watch skip rates the way hospitals watch infection rates. But skipping takes attention, and forty minutes was a manufacturing limit, not a covenant.
Kilo Nova's 'Attenuation' Turns Club Music Inside Out
Eleven tracks built from the way a club sounds once everyone has gone home. The kick keeps walking out of the room and the reverb keeps the whole thing standing up.
Issue 05 — Echo
9 PostsWhat survives a scene: labels, festivals and the venues we lose.
Issue 06 — Bloom
8 PostsLoud again, on purpose. Summer 2026.
Issue 03 — Drift
6 PostsAmbient music, empty buildings and the sound of cities at rest.
Issue 04 — Pulse
8 PostsRhythm as engineering: machines, storms and small rooms.
Issue 01 — Signal
6 PostsWhere the magazine starts: first principles, first records, first rooms.
Issue 02 — Static
7 PostsTape hiss, dead formats and the noise we choose to keep.
Frequencies
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'I Record Everything at 4 A.M.': A Conversation With Vera Lune
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The Interview: DJ Provenance on Digging, Data, and Dying Formats
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Studio Visit: Inside Koji Marlowe's Basement of Broken Amps
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'Silence Is a Rhythm Too': Elif Duran on Scoring Empty Spaces
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Five Questions for Barometric, the Duo Turning Weather Data Into Techno
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Mixing Desk Confessions: Sam Okereke on the Loudness Wars
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Minidisc Sales Just Outpaced CDs for the First Time Since 1998
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The $80 Mic That Refuses to Die
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Studio Visit: Inside Koji Marlowe's Basement of Broken Amps
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Hands On With the Grain Mk II, a Sampler the Size of a Passport
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Building a Studio in a Van, One Rattle at a Time
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Why Musicians Are Falling Back in Love With Minidisc
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