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The Masthead With their brutality, greed, performance enhancing drugs and links to traumatic brain injury and crime, it’s not easy to defend boxing or other combat sports. So it might seem odd that fighting is on the agenda in this month’s issue. Cult keyboardist Garrett Saracho describes a life growing up around boxing rings in Los Angeles with Latin music booming out around them. Californian Oxbow and Buñuel vocalist Eugene S Robinson, a sometime mixed martial artist who had “been getting into fights in the streets forever”, found community as a teenage loner in the gyms where he worked and trained. Maybe they just breed them tough over in California. But, for those intrigued by realtime improvisation outside of The Wire’s musical remit, it’s easy to get bitten by the bug of fight sports, particularly boxing. Boxing, like jazz or improvised music, requires participants to have a laser-focused concentration on what is happening in the moment. Like a gig, it’s a three dimensional performance, where players work in a confined space with other bodies to find a telling angle. Maybe it’s no surprise that Charlie Morrow and Carles Santos’s archival recording The Heavyweight Sound Fight! takes the lighthearted form of a boxing match, in which they entered the ring in a sound showdown, with Sten Hanson as referee. Wadada Leo Smith’s recent Fire Illuminations namechecks Foreman and Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle. Of course, the principles of humanism and solidarity at the heart of much music in The Wire are largely antithetical to any type of violence. But there are other unexpected echoes between the music scene and the culture of combat sports. Boxing has an ethos where amateurs and pros often train alongside each other; gyms are rare places in the hyper-commercialised world of modern sports that are open to the public and anyone who wants to learn. The Boston gym of Sal Bartolo Jr provides the setting for a new film by Naomi Yang (Galaxy 500/Damon & Naomi), Never Be A Punching Bag For Nobody, using that location to demonstrate how gentrification threatens communities and the threads that bind disparate generations together. But conflict can manifest in different ways. Saracho’s competitive spirit later translated into musical contests: “We used to have a lot of battle of the bands with a lot of great musicians at that time,” he says. “We would hang around and we used to play and compete and all that stuff.” Robinson, who had to suffer confrontations and misapprehensions as a young Black kid at hardcore punk shows, now uses his skills as a writer to slap down bigotry and call out hypocrisy in regular newsletter dispatches. When a musician friend recently swung by Leytonstone in East London, we took the time to check out some music landmarks. In the basement of the family home of grime artist Jammer, the most skilful MCs of the early 2000s battled each other to drop the hottest rhymes. Despite a shiny plaque outside, it still seems remarkable that this quiet house in a leafy road was the red-hot crucible that forged a whole music genre. Here, aggression was channelled within the structure of a fair contest, and as many in the boxing world would argue, that’s better for everyone than it running riot outside. Derek Walmsley Issue 473 July 2023 £5.95 ISSN 0952-0686 The Wire William Pitt Room, New Wing, Somerset House, London WC2R 1LA, UK Tel +44 (0)20 7422 5010 fax +44 (0)20 7422 5011 thewire.co.uk @thewiremagazine Subscriptions subs@thewire.co.uk Events listings listings@thewire.co.uk Publisher/Director Tony Herrington tony@thewire.co.uk Editor-in-Chief/Director Chris Bohn chris@thewire.co.uk Editor Derek Walmsley derek@thewire.co.uk Deputy Editors Emily Bick emily@thewire.co.uk Joseph Stannard joe@thewire.co.uk Advertising & Licensing Manager Shane Woolman shane@thewire.co.uk Advertising Sales James Gormley james@thewire.co.uk Online Editor Meg Woof meg@thewire.co.uk Listings Editor Phil England phil@thewire.co.uk Newsletter Editor Kay Grant kay@thewire.co.uk Subscriptions & online shop Misha Farrant subs@thewire.co.uk Art Direction Guillaume Chuard (ard.works) guillaume@thewire.co.uk Design Gareth Lindsay gareth@thewire.co.uk Sean Charlton White design@thewire.co.uk Photo Editor Amy Gwatkin amy@thewire.co.uk Subscriptions & Systems Consultant Ben House ben@thewire.co.uk Online Development Dorian Fraser Moore dorian@thewire.co.uk Distribution News stands UK, Europe & Rest of World (excl USA) Seymour Distribution Tel +44 (0)20 7429 4000 UK Vicky.Waterland@ seymour.co.uk Export Kerrie.Callow@ seymour.co.uk > USA ANC Tel 1 866 466 7231 Bookshops Worldwide Central Books Tel +44 (0)20 8986 4854 sasha@centralbooks.com Independent record shops UK Shellshock Tel +44 (0)1603 626221 neil@shellshock.co.uk Europe state51 Tel +44 (0)20 7729 4343 matt.ashworth@state51.com USA Forced Exposure Fax 781 321 0321 AVisser@forcedexposure. com Rest of World Contact The Wire direct Tel +44 (0)20 7422 5022 Fax +44 (0)20 7422 5011 publisher@thewire.co.uk Subscriptions Print Subscription 12 issues UK £56 Europe £80 Rest of World (Air) £94 Digital Subscription 12 months Worldwide £36 See page 104 for details, or go to thewire.co.uk/subscribe The Wire is published 12 times a year by The Wire Magazine Ltd. Printed in the UK by PCP. Typeset in Unica77 (Lineto.com) 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 workers’ buy-out by the magazine’s then current 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. Words Yewande Adeniran, Vanessa Ague, Jennifer Lucy Allan, Steve Barker, Mike Barnes, Dan Barrow, Robert Barry, Tristan Bath, Clive Bell, Claire Biddles, Abi Bliss, Gabriel Bristow, Britt Brown, Madeleine Byrne, Helena Celle, Philip Clark, Byron Coley, Lara C Cory, Julian Cowley, Raymond Cummings, Laina Dawes, Josh Feola, Phil Freeman, Noel Gardner, Michael A Gonzales, Francis Gooding, Kurt Gottschalk, Louise Gray, George Grella, James Hadfield, Andy Hamilton, Adam Harper, Jim Haynes, Ken Hollings, Miloš Hroch, Jo Hutton, Leah Kardos, Kek-W, Joshua Minsoo Kim, Biba Kopf, Matt Krefting, Steph Kretowicz, Neil Kulkarni, Chloe Lula, Dave Mandl, Howard Mandel, Peter Margasak, Marc Masters, Ryan Meehan, Noel Meek, Bill Meyer, Frances Morgan, John Morrison, Brian Morton, Joe Muggs, Deborah Nash, Daniel Neofetou, Louis Pattison, Hannah Pezzack, Stephanie Phillips, Antonio Poscic, Emily Pothast, Edwin Pouncey, Chal Ravens, Mosi Reeves, Tony Rettman, Simon Reynolds, Mariam Rezaei, Ilia Rogatchevski, Bruce Russell, Sukhdev Sandhu, Claire Sawers, Dave Segal, Stewart Smith, Rosie Esther Solomon, Daniel Spicer, Richard Stacey, Richard Thomas, Dave Tompkins, Spenser Tomson, David Toop, Rob Turner, Zakia Uddin, Gabriel Jermaine VanlandinghamDunn, Val Wilmer Images Nicholas Albrecht, Wendy Huynh, Ekaterina Lukoshkova, Aleksey Kondratyev, Harris Mizrahi, Harry Moore, Matt Moran, Lindsay Perryman, Justin Sariñana The Wire / Masthead 4
page 5
Get even deeper into music. Take out an annual subscription to The Wire When you subscribe to The Wire for one year* you receive: The next 12 issues of the print magazine Adventures in Sound and Music 12 months’ free membership of the magazine’s online library containing PDFs of every issue of The Wire ever published 9 7 7 0 9 5 2 0 6 8 1 2 0 0 7 £ 5 . 9 5 The Wire 473 July 2023 O YAMA O Michael Allen Z Prime Nappy Nina Plant music Cafe Oto on disc Garrett Saracho Amy Cutler Shapednoise AR Kane Ahmed Abdullah FM Einheit Phill Niblock Ale Hop From Oxbow to Buñuel the struggle continues Eugene S Robinson The next 12 issues of the digital edition of the magazine Totally Wire-d! As five former members of The Fall reunite in House Of All, over the next 20 pages Wire writers survey the expansive world of Mark E Smith and the group Illustrations by Savage Pencil 29 Glam Racket By Claire Biddles 28 Futures and Pasts By Kek-W 30 The Wonderful and Frightening World By Bruce Russell 34 Green Eyed Loco-Man By Eugene S Robinson 34 Solicitor in Studio By Jo Hutton 35 Papal Visit By Richard Thomas 36 Fibre Book Troll By Graham Duff 37 Dedication not Medication By Craig Leon 37 Carry Bag Man By Michael Fenton 31 Lost in Music By Brian Turner 31 Athlete Cured By Dave Segal The Wire / Totally Wire-d The Wire / Totally Wire-d 32 Hip Priest By Esi Eshun 26 26 33 Dead Beat Descendants By Leah Kardos 38 North West Fashion Show By Spenser Tomson 38 He Pep! By Stewart Lee 27 27 39 Tuff Life Boogie By Louise Gray 40 House Of All By Tessa Norton The Wire / Totally Wire-d The Wire / Totally Wire-d The next three volumes of The Wire Tapper on CD and DL, and the next four volumes of Below The Radar as DLs + 12 months’ free access to The Wire’s audio archive where you can download more than 80 albums put together by members of Wire staff The Wire Tapper 61 i n e Li t C r e d © thewire.co.uk/subscribe / +44 (0)20 7422 5022 / subs@thewire.co.uk The Wire / Subscribe 5 5 * Six months, two years and digital-only subscriptions also available The Wire / Epiphanies

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The Masthead

With their brutality, greed, performance enhancing drugs and links to traumatic brain injury and crime, it’s not easy to defend boxing or other combat sports. So it might seem odd that fighting is on the agenda in this month’s issue. Cult keyboardist Garrett Saracho describes a life growing up around boxing rings in Los Angeles with Latin music booming out around them. Californian Oxbow and Buñuel vocalist Eugene S Robinson, a sometime mixed martial artist who had “been getting into fights in the streets forever”, found community as a teenage loner in the gyms where he worked and trained.

Maybe they just breed them tough over in California. But, for those intrigued by realtime improvisation outside of The Wire’s musical remit, it’s easy to get bitten by the bug of fight sports, particularly boxing.

Boxing, like jazz or improvised music, requires participants to have a laser-focused concentration on what is happening in the moment. Like a gig, it’s a three dimensional performance, where players work in a confined space with other bodies to find a telling angle. Maybe it’s no surprise that Charlie Morrow and Carles Santos’s archival recording The Heavyweight Sound Fight! takes the lighthearted form of a boxing match, in which they entered the ring in a sound showdown, with Sten Hanson as referee. Wadada Leo Smith’s recent Fire Illuminations namechecks Foreman and Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle.

Of course, the principles of humanism and solidarity at the heart of much music in The Wire are largely antithetical to any type of violence. But there are other unexpected echoes between the music scene and the culture of combat sports. Boxing has an ethos where amateurs and pros often train alongside each other; gyms are rare places in the hyper-commercialised world of modern sports that are open to the public and anyone who wants to learn. The Boston gym of Sal Bartolo Jr provides the setting for a new film by Naomi Yang (Galaxy 500/Damon & Naomi), Never Be A Punching Bag For Nobody, using that location to demonstrate how gentrification threatens communities and the threads that bind disparate generations together.

But conflict can manifest in different ways. Saracho’s competitive spirit later translated into musical contests: “We used to have a lot of battle of the bands with a lot of great musicians at that time,” he says. “We would hang around and we used to play and compete and all that stuff.” Robinson, who had to suffer confrontations and misapprehensions as a young Black kid at hardcore punk shows, now uses his skills as a writer to slap down bigotry and call out hypocrisy in regular newsletter dispatches.

When a musician friend recently swung by Leytonstone in East London, we took the time to check out some music landmarks. In the basement of the family home of grime artist Jammer, the most skilful MCs of the early 2000s battled each other to drop the hottest rhymes. Despite a shiny plaque outside, it still seems remarkable that this quiet house in a leafy road was the red-hot crucible that forged a whole music genre. Here, aggression was channelled within the structure of a fair contest, and as many in the boxing world would argue, that’s better for everyone than it running riot outside. Derek Walmsley

Issue 473 July 2023 £5.95 ISSN 0952-0686

The Wire William Pitt Room, New Wing, Somerset House, London WC2R 1LA, UK Tel +44 (0)20 7422 5010 fax +44 (0)20 7422 5011 thewire.co.uk @thewiremagazine Subscriptions subs@thewire.co.uk Events listings listings@thewire.co.uk

Publisher/Director Tony Herrington tony@thewire.co.uk Editor-in-Chief/Director Chris Bohn chris@thewire.co.uk

Editor Derek Walmsley derek@thewire.co.uk Deputy Editors Emily Bick emily@thewire.co.uk Joseph Stannard joe@thewire.co.uk

Advertising & Licensing Manager Shane Woolman shane@thewire.co.uk Advertising Sales James Gormley james@thewire.co.uk

Online Editor Meg Woof meg@thewire.co.uk

Listings Editor Phil England phil@thewire.co.uk

Newsletter Editor Kay Grant kay@thewire.co.uk

Subscriptions & online shop Misha Farrant subs@thewire.co.uk

Art Direction Guillaume Chuard (ard.works) guillaume@thewire.co.uk Design Gareth Lindsay gareth@thewire.co.uk Sean Charlton White design@thewire.co.uk

Photo Editor Amy Gwatkin amy@thewire.co.uk

Subscriptions & Systems Consultant Ben House ben@thewire.co.uk Online Development Dorian Fraser Moore dorian@thewire.co.uk

Distribution

News stands UK, Europe & Rest of World (excl USA) Seymour Distribution Tel +44 (0)20 7429 4000 UK Vicky.Waterland@ seymour.co.uk Export Kerrie.Callow@ seymour.co.uk > USA ANC Tel 1 866 466 7231

Bookshops Worldwide Central Books Tel +44 (0)20 8986 4854 sasha@centralbooks.com

Independent record shops UK Shellshock Tel +44 (0)1603 626221 neil@shellshock.co.uk Europe state51 Tel +44 (0)20 7729 4343 matt.ashworth@state51.com USA Forced Exposure Fax 781 321 0321 AVisser@forcedexposure. com Rest of World Contact The Wire direct Tel +44 (0)20 7422 5022 Fax +44 (0)20 7422 5011 publisher@thewire.co.uk

Subscriptions

Print Subscription 12 issues UK £56 Europe £80 Rest of World (Air) £94

Digital Subscription 12 months Worldwide £36 See page 104 for details, or go to thewire.co.uk/subscribe

The Wire is published 12 times a year by The Wire Magazine Ltd. Printed in the UK by PCP. Typeset in Unica77 (Lineto.com) 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 workers’ buy-out by the magazine’s then current 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.

Words Yewande Adeniran, Vanessa Ague, Jennifer Lucy Allan, Steve Barker, Mike Barnes, Dan Barrow, Robert Barry, Tristan Bath, Clive Bell, Claire Biddles, Abi Bliss, Gabriel Bristow, Britt Brown, Madeleine Byrne, Helena Celle, Philip Clark, Byron Coley, Lara C Cory, Julian Cowley, Raymond Cummings, Laina Dawes, Josh Feola, Phil Freeman, Noel Gardner, Michael A Gonzales, Francis Gooding, Kurt Gottschalk, Louise Gray, George Grella, James Hadfield, Andy Hamilton, Adam Harper, Jim Haynes, Ken Hollings, Miloš Hroch, Jo Hutton, Leah Kardos, Kek-W, Joshua Minsoo Kim, Biba Kopf, Matt Krefting, Steph Kretowicz, Neil Kulkarni, Chloe Lula, Dave Mandl, Howard Mandel, Peter Margasak, Marc Masters, Ryan Meehan, Noel Meek, Bill Meyer, Frances Morgan, John Morrison, Brian Morton, Joe Muggs, Deborah Nash, Daniel Neofetou, Louis Pattison, Hannah Pezzack, Stephanie Phillips, Antonio Poscic, Emily Pothast, Edwin Pouncey, Chal Ravens, Mosi Reeves, Tony Rettman, Simon Reynolds, Mariam Rezaei, Ilia Rogatchevski, Bruce Russell, Sukhdev Sandhu, Claire Sawers, Dave Segal, Stewart Smith, Rosie Esther Solomon, Daniel Spicer, Richard Stacey, Richard Thomas, Dave Tompkins, Spenser Tomson, David Toop, Rob Turner, Zakia Uddin, Gabriel Jermaine VanlandinghamDunn, Val Wilmer

Images Nicholas Albrecht, Wendy Huynh, Ekaterina Lukoshkova, Aleksey Kondratyev, Harris Mizrahi, Harry Moore, Matt Moran, Lindsay Perryman, Justin Sariñana

The Wire / Masthead

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