It’s an unlikely marriage, but “Vancouver’s hardcore bar” meets highbrow in this month’s The Wire magazine. The long-running U.K.–based journal of experimental music turns its attention to Vancouver’s lively avant-noise scene in its Global Ear section, using the Cobalt’s Fake Jazz Wednesdays as its starting point.

Penned by local writer and sometime Straight contributor Allan MacInnis (with assistance from local photographer Femke Van Delft), the article focuses on acts such as the Shearing Pinx, Sistrenatus, and Her Jazz Noise Collective. Among those interviewed are Josh Stevenson, formerly of Jackie-O Motherfucker, and currently involved in BCVCO with Black Mountain’s Jeremy Schmidt. Dan Kibke of Ejaculation Death Rattle, meanwhile, holds forth on some of the off-the-grid, spontaneous performance spaces—parking lots and abandoned office buildings among them—that are characteristic of a scene that’s especially sensitive to encroaching development.

Commenting on its interest in Vancouver’s experimental-music community, Wire editor Chris Bohn told the Straight, “It’s always gratifying to hear of a noise scene thriving in the face of economic forces threatening to snuff it out. Despite the antisocial impression noise might present to outsiders, Vancouver’s appears to be as community-driven as elsewhere in the world.”