Fujiya & Miyagi concerts 2025

In February 1980, the first phase of Wire ended at the Electric Ballroom, Camden with an infamous performance eventually released as the Document & Eyewitness live album. It saw a band frustrated with the confines and rules of punk and rock orthodoxy challenging themselves and their audience with visual performance, art and none of the songs that the crowd had paid to see. It was the sound both of progress and dissolution.

Three decades later, Wire used fragments of those aborted sketches to produce Change Becomes Us, their most confident sounding album in years, thirteen tracks of classic art pop ferocity. To coincide with the release of the critically–acclaimed LP, Wire curated the initial DRILL : FESTIVAL (DRILL : LONDON), the first instalment in a planned series of multi-venue festivals across the UK and beyond. To date there have been DRILL : FESTIVALS in London and Seattle in 2013, with more to come in 2015 following DRILL : BRIGHTON in December 2014.

The concepts behind DRILL : FESTIVAL are simple: to challenge preconceptions of Wire. To show-case their impact on and relationship with groups and artists from younger generations, to connect with both new and established artists whose work they find inspiring and feel that they have a kinship with. This then opens up opportunities for one-off collaborations – DRILL : BRIGHTON for example will see Wire team up with rock titans SWANS to perform an extended version of the always-mutating Wire track ‘Drill’, as well as the return of the historic 'Pinkflag Guitar Orchestra', which sees Wire joined onstage by members of bands who are involved over the course of the festival, along with local friends, allies and past collaborators, the guitarists then play an extended, improvised version of Wire's ‘Pink Flag’ at high volume.