7/10

It may have only been five months since they released their brilliant seventeenth studio album 'Mind Hive', but London's shoegaze heroes Wire are far from finished when it comes to sharing new music for this year. As an act that have always turned to their live performances as an influence in trialing new ideas, their work has since taken on this evolved sense of direction, meaning that in most cases, the songs that they start out creating in the studio are not always the ones we get on the final record. And so they have unveiled this collection of "strays" as a way to showcase material that never quite made that final cut or ones that have developed over time.

Although don't expect this new collection to be a current endeavour as '10:20' plays itself as a far more retrospective affair. Opening up with 'Boiling Boy', a track that originally appeared on 1988’s 'A Bell is a Cup... Until it is Struck', we get to hear how they prefer to play it now more than 30 years later. In a way, this new record is a way for their fans to appreciate how times have changed since they first released these songs, and how they have constantly moved with the times in order to keep their catalogue as fresh as possible, giving us an insight into the fluid approach they bring to their back catalogue.

Although some of this material was written decades apart, the cohesive nature of their sound has allowed them to create a far more succinct vision than we originally thought and makes '10:20' sound as exciting and vibrant today more than ever. Fans may already be familiar with these offerings already, but this new release aims to breathe life into their older material, setting it in a far more contemporary guise.