The Waveform #013: Music for Waiting Rooms

Three hours in a tyre fitter's waiting room on Tuesday, and the radio played the same nine songs twice through. By the second lap I could hear the join where the ad break had been spliced in. Nobody in that building chose that music: it was fitted like the chairs, sized to the space, and built to leave no mark on anyone who sat there. Everything in this issue was made by people who care, in a few cases unreasonably, about where their sound ends up.

Music for Waiting Rooms

Wire Mix 013 is an hour assembled for exactly that sort of room, on the assumption that somebody might actually listen. Eight tracks, most of them barely moving, sequenced so the gaps do as much work as the notes. It went out to Studio Pass members last month and has since become the most requested thing in the Wire Radio overnight slot, which is either a compliment or a diagnosis.

Also this week

• The Interview: DJ Provenance on Digging, Data, and Dying Formats. Every record in the collection has been logged in the same spreadsheet since 2004, and the conversation turns into a serious argument about metadata as a form of memory.
• The Last Record Pressing Plant on the Baltic Coast. Three retired engineers, one press with no supplier left for its parts, and a queue of small labels who have nowhere else to go; members only.

One more thing

A question, and I would genuinely like answers. What is the best record you have ever heard in the worst possible room for it? The bar here is a dub reissue played at unreasonable volume in a laundrette with a broken extractor fan, which improved the record and ruined the laundry. Reply to this email with yours, keep it to a few lines, and I will run the good ones in a future issue.

Back Friday. Ada