December’s drawing ever closer and with it comes the bracingly, lay-me-down-in-a-darkened-room-good line-up of DRILL: BRIGHTON festival, curated by Wire and local promoters One Inch Badge, running from December 4-7. On the bill are Swan, Grumbling Fur, East India Youth, Savages, and of course Wire themselves, and a host of recent additions including The Wedding Present, Blood Red Shoes, Rose Elinor Dougall, Verity Susman, Gemma Ray and more.
They’ve also assembled a fine lot of extracurricular activity on Saturday 6 December on the Quietus-run Basement stage, featuring a screening of the Wire live video ‘The Scottish Play’, onstage interviews with Michael Gira of Swans and Claudio Simonetti of Goblin and Swans’ mighty percussionist Thor Harris, reading from his new book and his lists (such as this one), all of which gets preceded by Sharp Spark Seaview, "an afternoon of freely improvised electronics", featuring Verity Susman, Wire’s Edvard Graham Lewis and Matthew Sims (also of It Hugs Back), Steve Beresford and Thighpaulsandra. Tickets and full details are here, while they’ve just released the festival’s full schedule today. Before all that though, Wire’s Colin Newman has done us a primer in the form of a 14-track mix of featured artists and bands – wrap your ears around that below:
Wire’s Colin Newman – Mix for The Quietus & DRILL: BRIGHTON by The Quietus on Mixcloud