The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music

Strange stuff, music; a lot of it is highly suspect, I should say.

- Derek Bailey, in an interview for The Wire

Verso Books recently teamed up with The Wire to put together what they hope will be the definitive guide to modern music. The Wire Primers consists mostly of articles which originally appeared in The Wire – 19 articles published between 1996 and 2007 as well as three new pieces to complement an already dense collection of thoughts on modern music.

The book is divided into four sections: Avant Rock; Funk, Hiphop & Beyond; Jazz & Improvisation; and Modern Composition. There are no introductions for the various sections and so the uninitiated might find it difficult at first to find commonalities between musicians such as Luciano Berio, John Lurie and Merzbow.

“The book’s searchlight ranges far and wide, both geographically and historically,” says Rob Young, editor of The Wire Primers. “It’s a Primer’s job to unpick and lay bare these tangled and occasionally esoteric histories and extend a friendly, critically engaged guiding hand.”

And that is where The Wire Primers is truly successful.

Mike Barnes opens the Avant Rock section with a critical analysis of Captain Beefheart’s discography (kudos for including the often underrated Clearspot). The second chapter celebrates the supposed genius of The Fall’s Mark E. Smith. Nick Cain then focuses on Noise Music whereas Alan Licht discusses the No Wave sound of Glenn Branca and James White, to name but a few. This section of the book also includes chapters on the avant-garde pop of Tropicalia, the dissonant rock of Sonic Youth and the mutating sound of Frank Zappa (this last chapter, despite its merits, feels like a filler piece here).

Peter Shapiro kicks off the Funk, Hiphop & Beyond section with an article on James Brown. Other chapters deal with Grime, Dubstep and Fela Kuti. Shapiro closes the section with a survey of turntablism. The author overlooks the contributions of early innovators (Hindemith, Toch and Varèse) but this is of minor importance. Shapiro cannot go wrong, especially when he brings together, under one umbrella, Grandmaster Flash, Herbie Hancock, Christian Marclay and Martin Tétreault.

The Wire Primers then takes the reader through the world of jazz and improvisation with succinct, yet informative, chapters on AMM, Derek Bailey, and Ornette Coleman. There is also a chapter on “Fire Music” which celebrates the politically and socially conscious jazz of Ayler, Shepp and others. The section ends with John Szwed’s excellent piece on Sun Ra (I did not expect otherwise from the author of Space is the Place).

The final portion of The Wire Primers focuses on Cage, Feldman, Stockhausen and Xenakis. A fifth chapter by Art Lange presents Musique Concrète & Early Electronic Music in a nutshell.

At that point in the book, the reader might succumb to information overload. That is why The Wire Primers should be used as it was meant to be: a guide on how to buy modern music.

Where The Wire Primers fails is in offering little to the people that make up the magazine’s readership and assuming that those new to the topic are equipped to synthesize the information presented by the 16 contributors. Adding opening and closing chapters for each of the four sections would have helped provide new perspectives on the Primers while furthering the aim of this book.

There are also considerable omissions (sub-genres and individual artists) but one must not forget that mapping the entirety of modern music in a few hundred pages is an impossible task.

In the end, The Wire Primers fulfills its main goal which is to help music enthusiasts navigate through today’s “aural wilderness.” Get your own copy and start filling those gaps in your record collection before another series of Primers hits the shelves.

AVANT ROCK
Captain Beefheart – dropout boogie
Merzbow – bardo song

FUNK, HIPHOP & BEYOND
Fela Kuti – no agreement
Tétreault, Lussier & Côté – leurs personnalités

JAZZ & IMPROVISATION
Sun Ra – there is a change in the air
AMM – later during a flaming riviera sunset

MODERN COMPOSITION
Iannis Xenakis – orient occident
Karlheinz Stockhausen – teil 1