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Apr 22, 2016Fifteen albums into its career, the band has never sounded more ready to rip up its playbook and forge ahead into new territory.
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Apr 25, 2016This is a return to the stratospherically high standards they've maintained for a remarkable amount of time.
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MojoMay 24, 2016A more austere, exploratory affair. [Jul 2016, p.97]
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May 20, 2016Nocturnal Koreans is a testament to their continued relevance.
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May 4, 2016Nocturnal Koreans, the band’s 15th album, forgoes power for stillness, and manages the unprecedented: It’s the best thing they’ve done in 14 years.
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May 4, 2016This mini album sees Wire once again looking askance at modernity via cryptic cynicism, bassist Graham Lewis's obtuse lyrics reaching new levels of vexatious impenetrability.
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Apr 26, 2016With Nocturnal Koreans Wire have done it again, leaving you with that craving for more: More noise. More weirdness. More bloody Wire.
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Apr 21, 2016Their 15th album hails from the same sessions as last year’s acclaimed Wire, but while that set was taut and direct, the eight songs here are more textured, full of counter-melodies and shifting sonic landscapes.
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Apr 21, 2016Even if Nocturnal Koreans' sound isn't always textbook Wire, its imagery and wit most certainly are, making the album much more than the collection of leftovers its origins might have suggested.
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Apr 21, 2016Aat its best this reassuringly svelte and only occasionally sparse eight-track EP is a thing of beauty.
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May 3, 2016The collection instead represents more of an expansion on their current sound and scope, and finds a band still willing to take risks 40 years into an exalted career--still not caring what we think of it, but daring us to follow them where they lead before the Wire factory goes quiet once again.
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MagnetJun 1, 2016While the current incarnation knows its strengths and weaknesses; Nocturnal Koreans is the latest in a late-career winning streak the band has been on since 2008’s Object 47. [No. 131, p.61]
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May 10, 2016Over its brief 26 minutes the songs crest and fall within a fairly narrow band, and when one feels like it’s about to peak and explode, the group instead will pull back a bit. There are shifts and changes aplenty, and there’s certainly no risk of tedium, but this is a reserved set of songs nonetheless.
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Apr 28, 2016True to that nighttime scene-setter, Nocturnal Koreans ranks among Wire’s most musically relaxed releases, with Newman mostly singing in calm, sometimes hushed tones. But it’s only relaxed in the sense that a sleepless night in your bedroom is relaxed.
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UncutApr 27, 2016The music here remains identifiably and intrinsically Wire. [Jun 2016, p.82]
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Apr 27, 2016They haven't quite carved out new territory here, but if the best moments of Nocturnal Koreans are anything to go by, the wheels have started turning.
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Apr 21, 2016As is the case with most Wire albums, they sure can hit the proverbial mark when they’re willing.
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Apr 21, 2016Despite its shortcomings, Nocturnal Koreans is a decent collection sifted from the excess of an even more solid album, which is certainly enough to keep Wire moving forward.
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Apr 21, 2016Although comprised of re-worked leftovers from last year’s excellent Wire album, Nocturnal Koreans finds the band still managing to find new routes to take away from that tightly-focused project.