Julian Cowley

April 2025 Listen to the music we played to Alvin Curran during his Invisible Jukebox interview in The Wire 495 Each month in the magazine we play an artist or group a series of tracks which they are asked to comment on – with no prior knowledge of what they are about to hear. In The Wire 495 it is the turn of composer and Musica Elettronica Viva co-founder Alvin Curran.

In his “Anecdote of the Jar,” poet Wallace Stevens wrote of an object which, when placed on a hill in Tennessee, became an active focal point, imposing perceptual order upon the surrounding countryside. Imagine such an effective centre for attention being projected through time, rather than simply imposed upon a spatialized moment, and you can grasp the impact of the sustained E-bow tones that extend through these two pieces for solo piano.

March 2025 Subscribers: read this issue online. Subscribe to the magazine. Buy issue 493. Inside our brand new issue: Masma Dream World: Devi Mambouka channels the voices of the spirits on new album PLEASE COME TO ME. By Emily Pothast Louis Laurain: The French cornettist cooks up fresh brass constructions on new album C(or)N(e)T. By Clive Bell Caxtrinho: The Brazilian guitarist maps Rio’s outer regions through his dense, cubist songwriting.