Pink Flag Vinyl, CD & Tape 7 Items

Wire's first three albums need no introduction. They are the three classic albums on which Wire's reputation is based. Moreover, they are the recordings that minted the post-punk form. This was adopted by other bands, but Wire were there first. These are the definitive re-releases. It has been a number of years since these albums were readily available. The aim with these new vinyl and CD releases is to approximate the original statements as closely as possible, but with remastered audio. The vinyl releases have the same covers and inners as the originals (minus the Harvest logo). The digipack CDs have identical tracklistings to their vinyl counterparts. These versions should be considered Wire's classic 1970s albums, pure and undiluted. Originally released on Harvest in 1977, Pink Flag is perhaps the most original debut album to come out of the first wave of British punk. Exhibiting severe art school damage, Wire care...

Combining the run of early singles with more obscure later period tracks underlines the strength in depth that Wire had. This is pop art as art/pop and an exploration of the blank canvas of pop culture and how far that canvas can be stretched going from three minute constructs to ambient washes. The 7'' single was always the ultimate artefact and statement with the A side being the band momentarily paused in time and distilled and freeze-framed into the forever with less than three minutes of electric sound.

Perhaps the greatest pop band that you may never have heard of, Wire understood this implicitly. They somehow found the sweetest of spots between the post-punk's short sharp shock shapeshifting, art prog's defiant experimental and a disciplined pop touch that pushed the parameters of what a song could be.

These ''sevens'' released from 1977 to the end of that decade signpost the band's remarkable development from their brilliantly monochromatic early phase to the textured complexity of the almost psychedelic unzipping of their sound and vision.

'In some ways the compilation of Nine Sevens onto a double album makes for quite a weird documentation of the band in this period. The first disc, to some extent, follows the script of a singles / greatest hits collection but the second one goes wildly off-piste and ends up somewhere quite far from where the collection started.

A conventional Greatest Hits collection, besides being conceptually a bit naff would, if strictly based on charting singles, consist of only one song! A Best Of is subjective and somewhat pointless in the age of the Spotify playlist that anyone can make. The only thing really that these tracks have in common (besides being by Wire) is that they were released or destined to be released on 7'' by Wire in the period 1977-1980. - Nine Sevens is both title & elevator pitch!'

Wire always understood the language of pop and also the artfulness of playing with it, deconstructing it and reassembling it into new and thrilling shapes. Decades later, these adventures into sound are like slices of delicious, perfect pop/noise and hits from a parallel universe. Side A 1 Mannequin 2 Feeling Called Love 3 12xu 4 I Am the Fly 5 Ex-Lion Tamer 6 Dot Dash * 7 Options R *

Side B 8 Outdoor Miner (single version) * 9 Practice Makes Perfect 10 A Question Of Degree * 11 Former Airline * 12 Map Ref. 41?N 93?W

Side C 1 Go Ahead * 2 Our Swimmer * 3 Midnight Bahnhof Cafe * 4 Second Length (Our Swimmer) ** 5 Catapult 30 **

Side D (154 EP) 6 Song 1 * 7 Get Down 1 + 2 * 8 Let's Panic Later * 9 Small Electric Piece *

* previously unreleased on vinyl album ** recorded in 1980 but not released until 2014

Wire's first three albums need no introduction. They are the three classic albums on which Wire's reputation is based. Moreover, they are the recordings that minted the post-punk form. This was adopted by other bands, but Wire were there first. These are the definitive re-releases. It has been a number of years since these albums were readily available. The aim with these new vinyl and CD releases is to approximate the original statements as closely as possible, but with remastered audio. The vinyl releases have the same covers and inners as the originals (minus the Harvest logo). The digipack CDs have identical tracklistings to their vinyl counterparts. These versions should be considered Wire's classic 1970s albums, pure and undiluted. With its Eno-esque synth textures, the 1978 released "Chairs...

Following the departure of Wire's drummer Robert Grey in 1990 WIR had risen phoenix like from the ashes of the acclaimed UK post-punk band after and were created to fulfil the final phase of Wire's Mute Records contract.With a more sequence based sound, WIR saw the band breaking all their own rules by creating a new sparse electronic music with Graham Lewis singing most of the vocals and even cannibalising their own catalogue by sometimes sampling their own older material. WIR was, however, not a long-term project and besides completing their only album, The First Letter, their only other activities were a very small number of gigs and two multi-artist "conceptual happenings" under the name I Saw You.One of these was in Clapham in April 1992 on election night and the other in Vienna in Feb 1993. On that Vienna trip, in addition to playing the gig, the band recorded a radio session for the Austrian national broadcaster ORF which was organised by Peter Rehberg - later the person behind MEGO & sadly no longer with us. This was released in 1996 by Touch on CD and consisted of two long tracks with a running time of almost 25 minutes. Once the short run of CDs had sold out, the rights technically fell to the band, and pinkflag released it - digital only - in 2007 and now released on vinyl for the first time.The remastered 2025 vinyl / CD / digital edition adds a newly recorded, Taylor Swift style re-recording of what is undoubtedly WIR's most pop moment, the dark brooding shadows of So and Slow. The version released here is based on how the band played it live, so, inspite of being instantly recognisable, it does not follow the arrangement of any previously released version.

Limited Edition for Record Store Day 2022.