Genre spawning post-punk innovators, Wire return to the west coast after 2015's Us tour and 2013's The Drill: Seattle. The latter was then the first of their domestic recreations of the The Drill: London festival, with collaborative performances with regional artists which included Earth, Chastity Belt, and Helmet in their amassed Pink Flag Guitar Orchestra. Three days of music capped with a performance of the totality of 1991's, "The Drill". Following on The Drill: Seattle, the festival's next iteration was held as The Drill: Chicago featuring an extended lineup and collaborations with Tim Hecker, Ken Vandermark and Disappears. Drill Fest returns this weekend with the band's 40th Anniversary performances initiating the first of April's west coast dates beginning at The Drill: Los Angeles. Released in short succession following 2016's "Nocturnal Koreans", their 15th and newest album titled, "Silver/Lead" is both a stripped down representation of their core elements as well as an expansion on the sonic path pursued by their most recent iteration. A phase initiated with a new lineup and recordings in 2002 with the release of the "Read & Burn" series. This totality representing Wire's mission to innovate, warp, mutate and play with rock and pop music's parameters. Beginning four decades past, their occupying of the friction-filled space between pop accessibility, punk, and experimentation produced 1977's "Pink Flag" and 1978's "Chairs Missing". It was into this new as-yet named and genreless zone that they spun post-punk and experimental fusions, like that of 1979's "154" and such striking amalgamations of electronic and rock as heard on 1987's "The Ideal Copy". With later efforts capped by the the gorgeously lush orchestrations of "A Bell is a Cup" and the electronic hybrids of the "So and Slow It Grows" EP, with LFO and The Orb. Coming back around to the present day, Wire returned as a rocking trio who's first album proper was 2003's, "Send". All the while producing a substantial body of quality solo works spanning those same decades. Like that of Graham Lewis' mid-1980s venture into synthpop as He Said, and Bruce Gilbert's numerous soundtrack commissions such as the brilliant, "Music for Fruit". The same period also producing Colin Newman's formula-subverting solo forays into songwriting like those heard on the recently reissued "A - Z". As well as collaborative efforts between core Wire members, like the Dada inspired experimental pop-concrete of Dome. Their's is a legacy that's beyond quantification or easy summation in it's influence. It's safe to say there would be no opening of the floodgates of the math/post-rock revolution like we saw in the 1990's without the groundwork laid down the decade before by Newman, Lewis, Gilbert and Gotobed. Perhaps NPR's Barry Walters says it best; "If you hear the occasional imprint of subsequent musicians (My Bloody Valentine's layered buzz, Blur's quaint Britpop, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's monumental drones, Radiohead's electronic rock assemblies), that's because those are among the many bands this one birthed. The 99.9 percent might not yet know it, but it's a Wire world after all."
