You may have spotted that Wire released two vinyl albums for this year’s Record Store Day: a double 12" edition of the Nine Sevens 7" box set and a first-ever vinyl release of Wir’s obscure 1997 EP Vien, now expanded with an extra track and entitled Vien +.
Record Store Day being what it is, we’ve had to allow shops time to sell their stock. But now we can offer these vinyl releases for immediate sale to anyone who couldn’t visit a record store on the day. We’re also kicking off CD pre-orders (release date: 6 June) for both releases.
Nine Sevens (pf28 LP/CD)
Press release by John Robb
Combining the run of early singles with more obscure
later period tracks underlines the strength in depth that Wire had. This is pop
art as art/pop and an exploration of the blank canvas of pop culture – and
how far that canvas can be stretched, going from three-minute constructs to
ambient washes. The 7” single was always the ultimate artefact and
statement with the A side being the band momentarily paused in time and
distilled and freeze-framed into the forever with less than three minutes of
electric sound.
Perhaps the greatest pop band that you may never have heard of, Wire understood
this implicitly. They somehow found the sweetest of spots between
post-punk’s short, sharp, shock shapeshifting, art prog’s
defiant experimentalism and a disciplined pop touch that pushed the parameters
of what a song could be.
These ‘sevens’ released from 1977 to the end of that decade signpost
the band’s remarkable development from their brilliantly monochromatic
early phase to the textured complexity of the almost psychedelic unzipping of
their sound and vision.
In some ways, the compilation of Nine Sevens on to a double album makes for
quite a weird documentation of the band in this period. The first disc, to some
extent, follows the script of a singles/greatest hits collection but the second
one goes wildly off-piste and ends up somewhere quite far from where the
collection started.
A conventional Greatest Hits collection, besides being conceptually a bit naff,
would, if strictly based on charting singles, consist of only one song! A Best
Of is subjective and somewhat pointless in the age of the Spotify playlist that
anyone can make. The only thing really that these tracks have in common (besides
being by Wire) is that they were released (or destined to be released) on
7” by Wire in the period 1977–1980. Nine Sevens is both title and
elevator pitch!
Wire always understood the language of pop and also the artfulness of playing
with it, deconstructing it and reassembling it into new and thrilling shapes.
Decades later, these adventures into sound are like slices of delicious, perfect
pop/noise and hits from a parallel universe.
Track listing
Side A
1 Mannequin
2 Feeling Called Love
3 12XU
4 I Am the Fly
5 Ex-Lion Tamer
6 Dot Dash *
7 Options R *
Side B
8 Outdoor Miner (single version) *
9 Practice Makes Perfect
10 A Question Of Degree *
11 Former Airline *
12 Map Ref. 41ºN 93ºW
Side C
1 Go Ahead *
2 Our Swimmer *
3 Midnight Bahnhof Café *
4 Second Length (Our Swimmer) **
5 Catapult 30 **
Side D (154 EP)
6 Song 1 *
7 Get Down 1 + 2 *
8 Let's Panic Later *
9 Small Electric Piece *
* previously unreleased on vinyl album
** recorded in 1980 but not released until 2014
Wir - Vien + (pf15 LP/CD)
Press release by John Robb
Wir had risen phoenix-like from the ashes of acclaimed UK
post-punk band Wire after drummer Robert Grey left in 1990 and were created to
fulfil the final phase of Wire’s Mute Records contract.
With a more sequence-based sound, Wir broke all their own rules by creating a
new sparse electronic music with Graham Lewis singing most of the vocals and the
band even cannibalising their own catalogue by sometimes sampling their own
older material. Wir was, however, not a long-term project. Besides completing
their only album, The First Letter, Wir activities comprised a very small number
of gigs and two multi-artist ‘conceptual happenings’ under the name
I Saw You.
One of these was in Clapham in April 1992 on election night and the other in
Vienna in February 1993. On that Vienna trip, in addition to playing the gig,
the band recorded a radio session for the Austrian national broadcaster ORF
which was organised by Peter Rehberg – later the person behind Mego and
sadly no longer with us. This was released in 1996 by Touch on CD, consisted of
two long tracks and had a running time of almost 25 minutes. Once the short run
of CDs had sold out, the rights technically fell to the band, and pinkflag
released it – digital only – in 2007.
It has never been released on vinyl before now.
The remastered 2025 vinyl/CD/digital edition adds a newly recorded, Taylor
Swift-style re-recording of what is undoubtedly WIR’s most pop moment, the
dark brooding shadows of So and Slow. The version released here is based on how
the band played it live and so, in spite of being instantly recognisable, it
does not follow the arrangement of any previously released version.
Track listing
Side A
The First Letter (2025 re-master)
Side B
Sexy & Rich (Janet) (2025 re-master)
So & Slow (2024)
A new addition to our T-shirt range! Printed on eco/vegan Continental Earth Posi shirts. Available to pre-order in the following sizes: small, medium, large, XL, 2XL, 3XL and 4XL. Those last two sizes are available in very small quantities and so get in quick!
Restocks
Dealing with physical stock is a complex business especially in regard to the notion of if an item is in our out of stock. An item can be out of stock in one location but not be elsewhere, it may be out of stock entirely or a small number may be discovered in an unexpected place! Staying on top of what stock is where is not always easy. But the bottom line here is that some items which are sometimes marked as being out of stock on pinkflag (& incidentally swim ~’s) mail order shops which just need re-stocking. So below is a list of items which are in the process of being re-stocked. They may be marked “pre-order” for now but as soon they arrive in the warehouse orders can be filled.
Send Ultimate (CD Double Album) // 10:20 (CD Album) // Nocturnal Koreans (12" Vinyl Mini Album) // Pink Flag (CD Album) // Change Becomes Us (CD Album) // Change Becomes Us (12" Vinyl Album) // Chairs Missing (CD Album) // Read & Burn 03 (CD EP) // Change Becomes Us SE (Limited qty) // Silver Lead SE (Limited Qty)
We have also found a very small quantity of Special Editions of Chairs Missing & 154. These are shop returns, with stickers & without shrink-wrap, which we are selling at a reduced price - sold as seen. Hand on heart, these are the very last copies of these we have available to the best of our knowledge. It is unlikely they will ever be rereleased in this format. We are now actually sold out of Document & Eyewitness on CD but have some CDR promos.
Wire socials
As well as Wire's longstanding Facebook facebook.com/WIRE.pinkflag and Instagram instagram.com/wirehq/ pages, Wire now has a Bluesky page wirehq.bsky.social. Wir also now has a facebook page facebook.com/WirHQ2024