Vien +
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. They were created to fulfill 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. Graham Lewis sang most of the vocals and they even cannibalized their own catalog by sometimes sampling their own older material.
WIR was not a long-term project. 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 organized by Peter Rehberg - later the person behind MEGO and 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 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 recognizable, it does not follow the arrangement of any previously released version.
Vien +
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. They were created to fulfill 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. Graham Lewis sang most of the vocals and they even cannibalized their own catalog by sometimes sampling their own older material.
WIR was not a long-term project. 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 organized by Peter Rehberg - later the person behind MEGO and 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 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 recognizable, it does not follow the arrangement of any previously released version.
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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. They were created to fulfill 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. Graham Lewis sang most of the vocals and they even cannibalized their own catalog by sometimes sampling their own older material.
WIR was not a long-term project. 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 organized by Peter Rehberg - later the person behind MEGO and 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 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 recognizable, it does not follow the arrangement of any previously released version.
