WIRE, THE - #491/492 January/February 2025

"On the cover: 2024 Rewind -- The Wire's essential guide to the highs and lows of the last 12 months in underground music and culture, including our Top 50 Releases of the Year and Archive Releases of the Year charts, both compiled from the votes of more than 60 of our critics and contributors. Other features include cultural reflections from our roster of writers, our specialist columnists' charts and analyses from avant rock to noise, and essays on some of 2024's talking points including the revival of the CD, new compositional potentials of noise, and genre naming in the vortex of social media. Elsewhere in the issue: YATTA -- The New York based, Sierra Leone born multidisciplinary artist has just released their latest album Palm Wine via PTP. Five transient, introspective years in the making, it is their most personal release to date, reflecting on their relationship to tradition, family history, story-telling and the idea of home. By Stephanie Philips. Musica Ex Machina: At Lausanne's EPFL Pavilions, the exhibition Musica Ex Machina: Machines Thinking Musically plots a history of algorithmic and computational thought in music from the Middle Ages to the present day citing a range of theories and compositions from Schoenberg to Coltrane, George Lewis to Jennifer Walshe. Robert Barry visits it to ponder the saga of mechanical music. Bridget Hayden: The DIY multi-instrumentalist and singer is known for her involvement with expansive ensembles like Vibracathedral Orchestra and Folklore Tapes as well as duos with Bill Nace and Roy Claire Potter. Todmorden's Basin Rock label will release her new solo album, Cold Blows The Wind, in January. By Lucy Thraves. Plus one page profiles of Oranssi Pazuzu, Sakina Abdou, Stuart Argabright and Everlovin'."