Ellington

WIRE are set to release WIRE: THE SCOTTISH PLAY: 2004, a film based on the live performance by the avant-garde art rock band at Scotland's 2004 Triptych Festival. Their concert, honed to a fine performance edge from earlier live forays in Europe in 2004, is a fierce, high-velocity set based around the quartet's highly successful 2003 album Send. Their first full-length release in over a decade, Send marked a return to their trademark gimlet, shivved, short-sharp-shocked writing style.

Filmed and directed by visual artist Tom Gidley in forensic detail, WIRE: THE SCOTTISH PLAY: 2004 provides the viewer with the closest of contact and showcases a completely visceral set by a band often misrepresented as enigmatic, cold and distant.

A bonus selection captured by Observation Camera #1 in the second half of WIRE's April 2003 Flag: Burning performance/installation at the Only Connect Festival at The Barbican, London is also included on the disc.

The set design by avante-stage designer Es Devlin was specifically commissioned by WIRE for this one-off performance.

track listing
1. 99.9
2. Germ Ship
3. Mr. Marx's Table
4. 1st Fast
5. Read & Burn
6. The Agfers of Kodack
7. Comet
8. In the Art of Stopping
9. Spent
10. I Don't Understand
11. Strange
12. 106 Beats That
13. Surgeon's Girl
14. Pink Flag
15. 1st Fast*
16. Comet *
17. Spent *
18. Don't Understand *

* = excerpts from Observation Camera #1 of Es Devlin's Installation/Set Design for WIRE's Flag: Burning performance at The Barbican, Main Hall, London 26th April 2003.