The Wire magazine celebrates 40 years of sound and music with a mini-festival at the Cube

Independent music magazine The Wire celebrates four decades of adventures in sound and music with a suitably eclectic weekend of film, performance and discussion at Bristol’s equally independent Cube cinema.

Running from July 1-3, the programme’s highlight is a preview screening of poet and rapper Saul Williams’s directorial debut, Neptune Frost, which industry journal the Hollywood Reporter has hailed as “the future of black film”.  Co-directed with Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman and billed as an ‘Afrofuturist vision’ and a ‘sci-fi punk musical’, the film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi.

A scene from Neptune Frost. Pic: Kino Lorber

Here, the official synopsis tells us, “a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region’s natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry . . .”

Neptune Frost director Saul Williams. Pic: Kino Lorber

The Cube’s event also includes a rare Bristol performance by award-winning Trinidadian poet and musician Anthony Joseph, performing work from his latest album The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running For Their Lives.

Vicki Bennett

“I was hoping to capture some of the diversity and independent spirit of the magazine’s coverage,” the mini-festival’s Bristol-based programmer Phil England tells us. He’s certainly achieved that. The weekend opens with An Evening with People Like Us, which promises “surreal, psychedelic sound and image mash-ups” from Vicki Bennett. A programme of Vicki’s rarely-seen short films is followed by a Q&A with The Wire‘s deputy editor Emily Bick, and a live performance to a new film by the madcap trio of Bennett, Ergo Phizmiz and Yeah You’s Gwilly Edmondez.

Ugandan documentary Buganda Royal Music Revival charts a mission to restore a musical tradition dating back to the 14th century. The screening is followed by a director Q&A with Wire writer Francis Gooding, and a pre-recorded performance by Albert Bisaso Ssempeke.

Éliane Radigue

The work of nonagenarian French electronic music composer Éliane Radigue is celebrated in a matinee event. A screening of the recently made Echos, featuring an interview with Radigue, will be followed by a performance of her Occam IV by the viola player it was written for, Julia Eckhardt. Wire writer Louise Gray will then discuss the composer’s work with Eckhardt.

The closing event revisits the 1960s experiment in democratic ensemble music making that was known as the Scratch Orchestra. Turner-Prize winning director Luke Fowler’s experimental film Pilgrimage >From Scattered Points will be screened. Former SO member Stefan Szczelkun then takes part in a discussion with Wire writer Philip Clark. The evening concludes with performance of the Scratch Orchestra’s Improvisation Rites by local improvisers.

At a time when many mainstream music magazines have folded, The Wire‘s continued success is a remarkable achievement. “The strapline on the first issue was ‘Jazz, Improvised Music, And…’, but very quickly our remit broadened to cover the vast realm of sonic creation that exists beyond the mainstream,” reflects Phil. “The fact that The Wire is still here after 40 years is a testament to people’s hunger for informed, critical engagement with what’s happening in the worlds of sound and music.”

Go here for the full programme. A limited number of weekend tickets are available here.

Main pic from Neptune Frost: Kino Lorber. Other images supplied by The Wire, except where individually credited.