With his flat cap and specs, Graham Lewis looks every bit the English chap abroad. These markers of his origins belie the three decades he has spent living in Sweden – a country that, by now, could claim him as a cultural icon of their own.
The Englishman among them started making music as the bassist for Wire. An art-school band that wasn’t formed at art school, Wire are one of the most influential acts to emerge from the 1970s. They were post-punk while punk was still a thing and have staunchly resisted categorisation for four decades. Either together with the band’s original guitarist, Bruce Gilbert, or on his own, Lewis has never been contained by the borders of the band: his experimental and leftfield output has freely branched as a counterpoint to Wire’s commercial success.
As we have previously noted:
Edvard Graham Lewis has appeared in a variety of guises since his first days with Wire. As one half of Dome, he erected a tent inside a recording studio. As one-third of Duet Emmo, he voiced the most achingly beautiful single ever written. As four-quarters of He Said, Lewis reimagined pop as an intellectual pursuit. The list of fractions and factions takes us through P’o, 27#11, Halo, Hox, Ocsid – a fluid combination of characters, both musical and typographic, dissolving and reforming. The unifying thread is a shifting tension between the lyrical and experimental; music that sometimes approaches commercial pop but draws away just in time. You can’t always dance to it, but you’ll have fun trying.
10. Wire – I Should Have Known Better
Although most vocals in Wire are handled by Colin Newman, it is hard to imagine the band without Lewis’ own contributions. The most iconic of Wire songs, “Pink Flag,” wouldn’t be the same without his deep tones insistently calling back to Newman, “How many?”
One of the most powerful Wire songs, “I Should Have Known Better,” finds Lewis taking the lead on the vocals to great effect. With intelligent lyrics, showing psychological insights beyond the wit of the usual post-punk band, the track hasn’t aged a day since Lewis crafted and executed it forty years ago.
9. Dome – To Speak
Starting in 1980, Lewis and Bruce Gilbert, Wire’s guitarist and surreal lyricist, went into Blackwing Studios to play the room as an instrument. For one album, they erected a red tent in the main sound room and explored what noises they could make inside and outside of it.
This project yielded several albums as Dome, including one recorded with the help of Vince Clarke, who was in residence at Blackwing with his Fairlight CMI. Clarke’s partner at the time, Deb Danahay, ended up being sampled on the Fairlight and included in this track.
8. Cupol – Kluba Copol
The B-side to the 12″ single, “It’s Been Like This for Ages,” “Kluba Kupol” is effectively one side of an LP. Clocking in at 20:28, the track is an ambient track based on a rhythmic groove.
It’s the kind of impossibly cool track that DJs will drop if they are really brave, but it is best enjoyed with headphones with the lights down. Lewis is working with Gilbert again here.
7. UUUU
An experimental project undertaken by Lewis with Valentina Magaletti (Tomaga, Vanishing Twin), Thighpaulsandra (Coil) and Matt Simms (Bruce Gilbert’s take-out in Wire), UUUU have to date released two records on Editions Mego.
Their self-titled album combined rhythms with touches of jazz, musique concrete, Krautrock and improvised electronica.
6. Edvard Graham Lewis – We’ve Lost Your Mind
Lewis released two albums on Editions Mego in 2014. The highlight for us was this track. As we said at the time:
It’s unmistakably Lewis material, with an almost conventional start that ultimately dissolves into fractals of noise. Immense.
5. 27#11
Lewis collaborated with Thomas Öberg (Bob Hund) and Marcus Turnkey on a single in 2006. Covering The Monks’ “Oh How to Do Now,” they leaned on Carl Michael von Hauswolff – another Lewis collaborator – for the artwork.
4. H-A-L-O – Two Too State
Recorded with Örjan Örnkloo, the H-A-L-O project saw Lewis in great form. The name was taken from the military tactic of dropping scuba divers from high altitude, which is as postmodern a concept as the music.
3. HOX – Icon of I Can
Andreas Karperyd joined Lewis for an album as HOX in 1999, and fifteen years later again. The duo made something closer to pop than Lewis’ normal experimental output, hinting at the commercial possibilities latent in the latter’s work.
2. Duet Emmo – Or So It Seems
A collaboration with Daniel Miller (The Normal, Silicon Teens, Sunroof!), Duet Emmo is an anagram of the words, Mute and Dome. For this project, Gilbert and Lewis were joined by North London’s best one-finger composer for an album of experimental material that somehow yielded a devastatingly beautiful single.
“Or So It Seems,” the title track, is a love song without peer. It has lyrics to melt the heart of any woman, sung hauntingly by Lewis over sequences melded from waveforms far ahead of their time.
1. He Said – Pump
Lewis’ solo work as He Said inspired the sound of Nine Inch Nails. The story goes that Trent Reznor sought to record at Blackwing Studios in Southwark and engage engineer John Fryer after listening to the He Said recordings. Reznor got what he wanted but neglected to credit his inspiration.
The quality of the He Said songs is very high. Several singles from the two albums that Lewis released under this name have become permanent fixtures in alternative DJ sets: “Only One I” and “Pump.” The latter has a funkiness that only a bassist could have conceived, together with a leftfield feel that only a member of Wire would have added.
“Grass,” as Lewis intones, “doesn’t grow on busy streets.” It might be a statement of the obvious, but it takes a poet to point it out.
A set of covers by Lexxy from Norway, The Outsider EP shows off her unique ability to focus the essence and sound of electronic music.
There was a long gap between Familjen‘s previous album in 2012 and this year’s release. It had something to do with concern about the growth of mainstream fascism in Hässleholm, but in the interval Johan T Karlsson found a way to give voice to the stories of Syrian refugees and insurgent women.
There are, in this world, a lot of dicks who steal instruments from musicians. It’s happened to most artists at some point – gear left in vans can disappear with the vehicle, but even keyboards left on stage can vanish in the dark of a concert venue.
Robert Rental was one of those quiet souls who made big noises. When he toured with The Normal, at the end of the 1970s, he made such a racket that it was impossible to tell what he was shouting over the industrial maelstrom the two created.
John Fryer’s Black Needle Noise project is the spiritual successor to This Mortal Coil, and each release reveals a little more of the DNA that spawned that legendary enterprise.
Tomaga is an experimental project, but it yields excellent results.
Psyche and No More are two of the most influential dark wave acts, and putting them together for a collaboration was a great idea.
Dubstar‘s dreampop had an obvious home in the 1990s. It was as English as a cucumber sandwich eaten on a lay-by in the rain on a trip with your parents, but it was also subversive. They made pencil cases do things.
What started as a collaboration for a (still forthcoming) album of Fad Gadget songs led Jean-Marc Lederman (The Weathermen, Kid Montana) and Jean-Luc De Meyer (Front 242) to work together for a full album of Eleven Grinding Songs.
Iceland’s best dance music export, Gus Gus, returned with an excellent album in 2018. By now, the template of modular synths, effects units and dynamic vocals is easily recognisable, but they still haven’t exhausted its possibilities.
Sweden’s famous Romo Night might not be with us, but it lives on through Romo Records.
Sweden has produced its shared of EBM bands over the years. There must be something in the Viking blood that draws them to 16-step sequencers and electronic drum pads.
It has been more than thirty years since the Gristle ceased to throb, but Chris Carter continues to plow a unique furrow of experimental electronics. The creator of some of the most romantic electronic music of all time, Carter remains an industrial original.
A surprise on its release, Zanti‘s first album is elegant and deep. Made by the duo of Anni Hogan and Simple Minds’ bass man, Derek Forbes, it more than made up for a year of half-hearted releases and Soundcloud flotsam elsewhere.
The best album in years from one of Europe’s go-to party bands, Destination Amour built on a combination of space disco and Europop influences. “Toute la nuit” buzzed with killer saws, Els Pyloo’s ethereal vocals and a pulsing rhythm section lifted straight from 1977.
The really mad thing about Robert Görl is his ability to wrestle emotion from synthesizers. Although best known for his heavy rhythm work in DAF, an early solo single, “Mit Dir,” demonstrated that with a limited set of equipment (and a limited number of words) he could produce works of fragile and enduring beauty.
Sweden’s original poptronica act came to London to show off their new material in October. Page brought with them a very limited run of CDs featuring versions of some of the songs on their Start EP, and the first forty people through the door at their show received a copy courtesy of Cold War Night Life. Needless to say, their appearance at the sold out show was warmly received by an international crowd, and the CDs quickly became collector’s items.
America is the home of several of the world’s most iconic synthesizer manufacturers, but it has failed to produce many world class artists who really put the instrument to work. Many have dabbled, but few have taken the step of replacing guitars with keyboards as European artists did.
Norway’s Pieces of Juno released not one but two albums this year. Tacenda and Kalopsia each would have made our list on their own, but together they demonstrate the vitality of Norway’s most promising young artist.
An electronic super-group to rival The Traveling Wilburys, Black Line has a core team in Douglas J. McCarthy (Nitzer Ebb, Fixmer/McCarthy, DJM REX) and Cyrusrex (DJM/REX), and it draws in a long list of collaborators: Bon Harris (Nitzer Ebb), Jason Payne (Nitzer Ebb), Ken ‘hiwatt’ Marshall (Skinny Puppy, DJM/REX), Paul Barker (Ministry/Revolting Cocks), Jon Bates (Big Black Delta), Zack Meyers (Fear of Ghosts), Brad Apodaca (Fear of Ghosts), Anthony Baldino and Michael prophei Dietel (Annodalleb).
Goldfrapp’s performance at Glastonbury was the kind of jaw dropping event that students discuss between classes the next day.
Finland’s Lau Nau is one of Europe’s most interesting artists. She crosses bridges between folk, experimentation and chamber music with ease, and her output is a dream for movie makers.
Sweden’s poptronica pioneers started as a singles band, but after three decades of work have honed the album format to perfection.
The Curse of 2016 took a lot of artists from us. The year opened with Lemmy’s passing fresh in everyone’s minds, and the roll call of musicians claimed by the Grim Reaper kicked off from there: David Bowie, Prince and Vanity, Leonard Cohen, Pierre Boulez, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake, Gisela May, Craig Gill (Inspiral Carpets), Pete Burns, Caroline Crawley, James Woolley (Nine Inch Nails), Alan Vega (Suicide), Steven Young (M/A/R/R/S and Colourbox) and Richard Lyons (Negativland) all shuffled off this mortal coil. We’ve often said at 
As the half of Psyche who handled the keyboards, Stephen Huss was a legend of Canadian alternative music. His spiky hair and hook-laden synth lines were instantly recognisable, and Psyche’s style became the template for a dozen imitators.
Sarah Badr’s FRKTL project matured in 2016 with a proper second album. The first release from the Anglo-Egyptian digital pioneer was Atom, back in 2011: an electro-acoustic marvel that stretched sounds beyond recognition. Qualia, named for the psychological and philosophical categories of qualities that are always experienced but hard to explain, went further and incorporated Badr’s voice and world rhythms suitable for the dance club into mixes that were both exotic and intriguing.
There are signs that Covenant, the Swedish darkwave legends, are slowly, collectively, morphing into Brian Eno. It’s certainly hard to avoid that conclusion when a feature of their new album is the sound of the sea and engines being focused by a parabolic sound mirror; particularly as they were attracted to it as a sonic and historical metaphor for Europe’s response to the Mediterranean refugee crisis. The Blinding Dark puts some of the experimentation that was reserved for the bonus disc on Leaving Babylon in the foreground, even as it showcases the band’s continuing deftness with energetic rhythms.
Nash the Slash is sorely missed. A true Canadian original, he is known outside of his home and native land mainly for his early work with Gary Numan and an album produced by Steve Hillage. However, Nash was also a composer of soundtracks to surrealist films (“Un Chien Andolou”) and – so we argue – the inventor of the sounds that became signatures for The Orb and System 7.
Are we allowed to blow our own trumpet? Well, we’re going to, because the Heresy compilation blew many minds in 2016. A tribute to Rational Youth, it gathers no less than nineteen artists, including the Canadian electro-pioneers and two former members of the band, into three vinyl platters. There is a CD bundled into the package, but no downloads. There is no way not to touch the vinyl in order to play the material. You can almost hear Super Hans saying: “No downloads.”
Speaking of Rational Youth, they made 2016 better with a new album up their sheer black sleeves, in the form of Future Past Tense. The first studio album from RY since To the Goddess Electricity, it proved that the Canadian pioneers have lost none of their sense of melody or political angst. The lead single, “This Side of the Border,” is influenced by Canadian nationalism, social democracy, nostalgia and The Who – a heady cocktail made more potent by the addition of Gaenor Howe’s vocals.
It is hard to believe that Vile Electrodes are only on their second studio album. Britain’s best synth band stunned with The Future Through a Lens, which established a benchmark for the island’s electronic scene with tracks like “Proximity” and “Nothing.” Now that the island has decided to sink into the Atlantic, rather than accept European influences, the Viles are setting the bar again in a less pop-oriented vein.
Pole position for 2016 didn’t go to an obvious choice with a hipster following on Facebook. Eric Random has come and gone from the music scene over the years, but is most closely associated with Cabaret Voltaire and its Doublevision label. Random’s return in 2016 with Words Made Flesh kept some of the indie-industrial vibe from his earlier recordings, but was notable for repositioning dance music as something with character and texture. With influences drawn from world music, Random breathed new life into electronica, as this stand-out track demonstrates.
