Wire are doing a live session on Marc Riley's 6Music show next Monday (10/01/11), the guests normally do three songs live, and record a bonus one for Gideon Coe's show (which follows at nine, the bonus track isn't normally played until around 11.40pm).
The show starts at 7pm, and should be available to listen again for seven days afterwards.
I'm looking forward to it, I'm patiently waiting for my vinyl version of "Red Barked Tree".
The last time Wire were on Marc Riley's 6 Music show there was a delay in putting the play-again show onto the website... because Graham accidently/on purpose swore live on air.
Thoroughly enjoyed Wire's 3-song set on 6Music tonight. They played the mellower songs from Red Barked Tree: Clay, Adapt and Please Take (minus expletive!) And an entertaining conversation with Mr Riley as well. Apparently they're all over 6Music tomorrow (like a rash, according to Colin).
UK viewers can find it on BBC iPlayer here until 18 Jan (please support Marc Riley and 6Music by visiting the site, after all they are big supporters of Wire)
and everyone else can find it here on this grubby, ad-infested corner of the interweb here where I have ahem, accidentally left my C90 cassette copy. Quick, while nobody is looking.
It's the 12th studio album because Send Ultimate is a special edition. All the others are counted by Wire as studio albums these days (including The First Letter).
These things change over time. Ultimately, we had to make some decisions when building this site, regarding what items should be included in the various categories. Initially, we separated Wir, but then realised there wasn't really much point (something now further validated by Bruce's departure and the band not calling itself Ire, or whatever). Drill could be an EP, but it's really long and Mute's original catalogue had it down as a 'proper' album. IBTABA could be a live album, but it's no more cleaned in the studio than some other live releases, which have ProTools clean-up magic applied and the odd edit here and there.
I guess all this is kind of arbitrary, but I'm happy enough with what we've ended up with.