First: ManU has reached the Champions-League final! Congrats!

For fans of leftfield British pop music Manchester is the place to be this weekend 'cause (one of my all time fav) art-punk bands Wire is exclusivly playing there!

The Futuresonic Urban Festival of Art, Music, and Ideas  will storm through 30+ venues in Manchester, England for its 12th year on May 1-5.
Headlining this year's fest are minimal and best post-punk legends Wire and Wu-Tang mastermind RZA in his Bobby Digital guise, and they're not the half of it. Also playing Futuresonic 2008 are Junior Boys, Dirty Projectors, YACHT, HEALTH, Venetian Snares, Luke Vibert, Flying Lotus, the Chap, Chris Corsano, and Skeletons and the Kings of All Cities, among others.

And RZA and Wire aren't just performing! On May 1, RZA will participate in "An audience with the RZA", "an exclusive Q+A session" discussing "his life, work, and new album." Wire will appear "in coversation" with John Robb on May 3. Art punk pioneers Wire talkabout their legendary gigs and albums from the last 30 years. In conversation with writer, broadcaster and founder of celebrated Manchester punk band Goldblade, John Robb.

"Crawling from the wreckage of punk in the late 70s, Wire emerged with an astounding series of albums and live performances that would change the musical landscape forever. Hailed as a major influence by virtually every indie and alt rock outfit in the 80s, including The Pixies, Blur, REM & The Cure, Wire are now widely regarded as one of the seminal bands of the post punk era. Plus the mind-blowing Brooklyn-based Dirty Projectors, Dadaist disco refuseniks The Chap & Skeletons and The Kings of All Cities whose shimmering melancholia kicks off a festival highlight."

Listen to Wire: http://www.myspace.com/wirehq

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(band))

"...the band look more like a terrorist cell than a veteran rock group" wrote Dave Simpson in his Wire concert review on the Guardian website:

Wire

4 stars Academy 2, Manchester

Dave Simpson
Friday May 9, 2008

guardian.co.uk

Bands generally break up then reform some years later to trot out the hits to fill up their pension funds, but Wire have never played this game. After becoming one of the most influential acts of the punk era with the albums Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154, they have ceased to operate twice, each hiatus (of five and eight years respectively) seeking to renew their creative edge.

Nostalgia is catered for obliquely - at one point they even hired a band to play Pink Flag in its entirety (complete with the exact pauses between songs) before their shows so they could get on with the more challenging job of unveiling new material.

This rare UK appearance is so typically Wire - previewing an album (Object 47) that isn't expected until at least July, and unveiling a major lineup change (Laika's guitarist Margaret Fielder McGinnis replacing founder member Bruce Gilbert) which few people seem to know had happened. With fans shouting for Kidney Bingos - an old song, not a medical complaint - the band pile relentlessly forward, realigning their trademarks (guitars buzzing like bees, repetition and Colin Newman's irritated whine) into a pulverising yet somehow sweet-centred racket, almost a cerebral reinvention of heavy metal.

Clad all in black - with Newman glancing at a laptop - the band look more like a terrorist cell than a veteran rock group, although influencing the likes of Franz Ferdinand and the Futureheads seems to have brought them a new young audience. Perhaps that's why they feel more comfortable with revisiting their past, trotting out oldies from 154's The 15th to Pink Flag's Lowdown in encore after encore, the last delivered in darkness after the lighting man seems to have packed up and gone home. It's a microcosm of a show that manages to be both entertaining and unsettling.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/live/story/0,,2279192,00.html