Wire

Wire formed in London in October 1976 and came out of the punk explosion already looking for the exit. Colin Newman sang and played guitar, Graham Lewis played bass and sang, Bruce Gilbert played guitar and Robert Gotobed drummed, with George Gill on lead guitar at the very start. They turned up on the Roxy London WC2 compilation with the rest of the punk crowd, but Pink Flag, their 1977 debut, was something stranger: songs chopped down to the bone, stopping the instant they'd made their point. "1.2.X.U.", "Reuters", "Mannequin" and "Strange" are all on it, and hardcore punk later took notes.

Chairs Missing in 1978 and 154 in 1979 pushed further, into guitar effects, synthesizers and fog, and Wire became a founding text of post-punk. The late-'80s Wire, on Mute Records, delivered The Ideal Copy in 1987, featuring "Ahead", then A Bell Is a Cup Until It Is Struck, with "Kidney Bingos", in 1988, and It's Beginning to and Back Again, with the maddeningly catchy "Eardrum Buzz", in 1989. The sound was sleeker, even danceable, but the itch to rearrange the rules of a song hadn't gone anywhere.

Gotobed left in 1990 and returned in 1999, Gilbert stayed until 2006, and Matthew Simms took up the guitar in 2010. The Read & Burn 02 EP, with "99.9", showed they could still cut like a razor in 2002.

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