WIRE, THE - #250 December 2004

"The December 2004 edition of The Wire will be the magazines 250th issue. Over the course of those 250 issues, The Wire has developed from a quarterly fanzine covering avant garde jazz and modern composition into an award-winning and widely influential international monthly, with a total average monthly circulation of just under 20,000, that covers a vast array of underground, experimental and alternative music and culture. The December issue of The Wire will carry a special 40 track double CD cover mount, The Wire Tapper 12, the latest volume in The Wires ongoing series of exclusive new music compilations. The CD will be mounted on the cover and given away free with every copy of the issue worldwide. Cover story: The 100 Greatest Riffs Of All Time. From the repetitive, bass driven trance music of North Africa (birthed thousands of years ago, appropriately, in Moroccos Rif Mountains), to the world famous symphonic themes of Beethoven, to the blues hook, jazz head and rock lick, the riff has been a primary tool for injecting music into the memory. As this is a Wire guide to the riff, and not another rock magazine regurgitation of rock n roll clich_ɬ©s, the article will be ignoring the obvious stuff like You Really Got Me, Whole Lotta Love, Smoke On The Water, My Sharona, etc, etc. Instead, it will expand the notion of what a riff is or could be, covering all sorts of nagging repetitive aspects of music, from Techno and HipHop breaks to themes in jazz, avant rock, memorable funk motifs, riffs in world music from Inuit songs to Fela Kuti, Krautrock, lower case and minimalist/systems music, etc, etc. Features: The new finnish underground (starring Avarus, the Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat, Es, Kiila, Paivansade, Hetero Skeleton, Maniacs Dream and more), Joanna Newso, irr. app. (ext.), Greg Davis, My Cat is an Alien, Invisible Jukebox: Marshall Allen." - The Wire.