WIR (Wire) – Vien

This item is a special RECORD STORE DAY 2025 release and cannot be pre-ordered.
Available to buy in-store at Black Circle Records in Leighton Buzzard from 8am on Saturday, 12/04/2025 (Record Store Day).
Remaining copies will be available to buy online from 8pm on Monday 14/04/2025.

First time availabe on vinyl, previously only a limited CD release in 1996.

Following the departure of Wire’s drummer Robert Grey in 1990 WIR had risen phoenix like from the ashes of the acclaimed UK post-punk band after and were created to fulfil the final phase of Wire’s Mute Records contract

With a more sequence based sound, WIR saw the band breaking all their own rules by creating a new sparse electronic music with Graham Lewis singing most of the vocals and even cannibalising their own catalogue by sometimes sampling their own older material

WIR was, however, not a long-term project and besides completing their only album, The First Letter, their only other activities were 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 Feb 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 & sadly no longer with us.This was released in 1996 by Touch on CD and consisted of two long tracks with 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 and now released on vinyl for the first time.

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, so, in spite of being instantly recognisable, it does not follow the arrangement of any previously released version