A live Wire performance is always an exciting prospect. In this video, taken in London in 1985, the band is in one of its transitional phases; recreating itself on stage like a snake shedding its skin.
At this time, Wire were part of Mute Records, and their recordings were made with the help of the same producers who worked with acts like Depeche Mode. On stage, however, they were free to make their own sound, and they subverted pop conventions at every turn.
John Tilbury, the pianist and collaborator of Cornelius Cardew, once wrote an article with the title, “John Cage: Ghost or Monster?”
On the current news from Mute, the answer is both: the influence of Cage’s work, “4’33’,” is the motivating force behind a new box set in the label’s fortieth year; and there will be no less than fifty Mute artists featured in the collection.
STUMM433 follows the label’s catalogue numbering scheme while paying tribute to the notorious work. The key to the joke is that the artist’s role in “4’33′” is not to play for that specified length of time. Fans of Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb should not, therefore, be looking forward to new material.
“4’33′” is not about silence; rather, it turns the focus onto the ambience of the concert hall and the reaction of the audience by musicians not playing their instruments. Expect very different takes, therefore, from The Normal and Simon Fisher Turner, or Laibach and Polly Scattergood.
They can take some comfort in the news that the net profits from the project will go to help sufferers of tinnitus and musicians needing mental health support.
Artists featured include:
A Certain Ratio, A.C. Marias, ADULT., The Afghan Whigs, Alexander Balanescu, Barry Adamson, Ben Frost, Bruce Gilbert, Cabaret Voltaire, Carter Tutti Void, Chris Carter, Chris Liebing, Cold Specks, Daniel Blumberg, Depeche Mode, Duet Emmo, Echoboy, Einstürzende Neubauten, Erasure, Fad Gadget (tribute), Goldfrapp, He Said, Irmin Schmidt, Josh T. Pearson, K Á R Y Y N, Komputer, Laibach, Land Observations, Lee Ranaldo, Liars, Looper, Lost Under Heaven, Maps, Mark Stewart, Michael Gira, Mick Harvey, Miranda Sex Garden, Moby, Modey Lemon, Mountaineers, New Order, Nitzer Ebb, NON, Nonpareils, The Normal, onDeadWaves, Phew, Pink Grease, Pole, Polly Scattergood, Renegade Soundwave, Richard Hawley, ShadowParty, Silicon Teens, Simon Fisher Turner, The Warlocks, Wire, Yann Tiersen
Mute note:
The box set will be released in May 2019 with more details being shared over the coming months. To register interest in STUMM433 and be first in line to pre-order and receive exclusive updates on the contributions, sign up at http://mute.com/stumm-433
After the loss of so many artists in 2016, it was a pleasure to see some of the original synthpop heroes back on the release trail. OMD, Alison Moyet, Erasure and Blancmange were among those with new albums to perform, and they all stuck to what they do best.
Against that backdrop, Depeche Mode‘s effort, Spirit, seemed a tired and forced attempt at American blues-rock.
Depeche Mode used to sing about danger, but there was nothing particularly risky about Spirit. Against a backdrop of nuclear threats, environmental disaster and grinding poverty, the millionaires from Basildon put on beards and taunted their neighbours for letting them down (again?).
The album contained many of the band’s familiar sounds, but fans complained that it lacked the magic of earlier works. We probably won’t see another Depeche Mode album until 2021, so we can only hope that by then Trump will be gone and Martin Gore will have rediscovered the joys of moody electronic pop.
In contrast, this year’s list is packed with risk-takers. From industrial pioneers to Finnish librarians who dabble in experimental soundtracks; from middle-aged Swedish dark electro songwriters to Belgian conceptual artists – 2017 was the year in which those who dared won.
It’s a reissue, but Mute’s release of Throbbing Gristle’s first album is a reminder of how potent the capital-I Industrial quartet were in the second half of the 1970s.
In those days, entertainment for many English youths consisted of shooting fireworks at each other or gobbing on pub rock bands playing at high speed. Synthesizers were the devil’s handiwork, and anyone putting them on stage was a Rick Wakeman effigy waiting to be hung from the nearest faux-Tudor beams.
Throbbing Gristle didn’t care. They liked ABBA and built their own kit. The audience could throw all the chairs they liked – they were going to play on.
The unconventional, deconstructed sound of TG started riots, wound up the press and opened the doors to post-punk experimentation. Second Annual Report turned forty this year, but even in middle age it stands head and shoulders above anything in Pitchfork’s playlist.
Web site: Industrial Records
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.
We were treated first to Kalopsia, the “red” piece, which has been nominated for a national prize in Norway. Tacenda, the “blue” piece, followed later in the year. The songs on both albums had been written at the same time, but were sorted by Juno into different releases based upon their feel, setting up a duality that is reflected in their artwork and in Juno’s wigs.
In any event, both albums feel as smooth as stockings being drawn along shaven skin. Not that we would know anything about that, but Juno’s jazzy, trip-hopping sound is both sensual and seductive. The voice of Anana on a cover of Elysian Fields’ “Black Acres,” intoning, “I need to have this little death” – you know the French saying – just adds layers to this picture.
Juno calls her style “Northern Noir,” and it is as good a way as any to describe the sound coming from the speakers. Somewhere between Portishead and Nick Cave, with minor key images emerging from the darkness, with these releases Pieces of Juno has crafted a magical sonic diptych.
Web site: Pieces of Juno
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).
The first album from Black Line is completely funked up. “Shut It Down” provides a growling, groovy slice of EBM with McCarthy’s voice scraping like a strop razor over a stomping beat. It out-hammers Nine Inch Nails.
“Changed” comes as a mix from Venetian Snares, adding a touch of Prairie grit. There is plenty of experimental and industrial styling on Treason, Sedition and Subversive Activities, and it is great to hear McCarthy in a fighting mood again.
Black Line are opening for Depeche Mode on the next leg of the European Spirit tour.
Web site: Black Line
Parralox‘s seasonal collections are always heavily anticipated, and the release of Holiday ’17 more than lives up to expectations.
John von Ahlen has a gifted ear for classic synth sounds, and his choice of material is always speaker candy for electronic music fans.
Holiday ’17 comes with covers of The Assembly’s “Stop/Start,” Human League’s “The Dignity of Labour” and Depeche Mode’s “Shine” and “Fools.” Even Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” gets a Parralox makeover.
The real treat is a subversive version of the traditional Christmas song, “O Tannenbaum,” with Katja Kassel guesting. Kassel’s breathy German vocals recall Marlene Dietrich, while von Ahlen’s electronics are playful; toying with the classic to emphasise Kassel’s poise.
Web site: Parralox
Goldfrapp’s performance at Glastonbury was the kind of jaw dropping event that students discuss between classes the next day.
“Did you see…?”
“Yes! She was amazing!”
Alison Goldfrapp still has one of the best voices in Britain – up there with Jane Caley, for sure – and the show was a mad masterclass in stagecraft. If Madonna was watching, she would have bitten through her lower lip.
What Goldfrapp did live and on the new album, Silver Eye, was avoid the trap of rehashing Kraftwerk or early Human League styles that many synthpop heroes fell into. The results have been outstanding.
Web site: Goldfrapp
One of the surprises of 2017 was the arrival of Sweden’s Anna Öberg. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, Öberg stunned the electronic music scene with a cutting-edge release designer-made for alternative dancefloors.
Tracks like “Sin mamma” [EN: “Their Mother”] channeled the spirit of Danielle Dax, while “5 minuter” [EN: “5 Minutes”] and “Allt är ägt” [EN: “Everything Is Owned”] went in a harder direction.
“Härsknar” means “rancid” in Swedish, but this was an album with a fresh feel. Produced by Öberg with Charles Storm, it breathed some life back into dark wave in 2017.
Web site: Anna Öberg on Bandcamp
A sonic supergroup, formed from artists connected to Coil, Wire, Dome and Tomaga? Yes, please.
UUUU is the combination of Edvard Graham Lewis, Thighpaulsandra, Matthew Simms and Valentina Magaletti. Their self-titled debut album is a bonkers mixture of krautrock, experimentation, antipop and improvisation.
There must be a trend for songs over 15 minutes – see Frogmore, below – but we’re not arguing for stricter time limits when the material is as interesting as “Five Gates.” The piece we were really struck by, however, is “Verlagerung, Verlagerung, Verlagerung,” a track that could have been mapped out in Conny Plan’s kitchen.
UUUU have live shows coming up in 2018 and we can’t wait.
Web site: Editions Mego
Wire never fail to disappoint, and they opened the year with another compelling release.
Silver/Lead is Wire’s fifteenth studio album. In our review, we noted that it comes an adult lifetime after their initial outing:
Forty years later, Silver/Lead shows Wire emerging from the lab on the front foot, turning out the kind of material that the dream-pop set can only dream about. From the delightfully retro sleeve to the cleverer-than-a-chemist lyrics, Wire continue to hold their ground. Over their four decades as a combo, they haven’t blown with the trends of the times, nor have they been stopped by line-up changes, time apart and a near-fatal experiment with drum machines. The new album continues the pattern by drawing on the strands of psychedelia that were hinted at on last year’s Nocturnal Koreans mini-album and infusing them with a sense of groove.
Because Wire are at their most awesome live, we’ve dug out this clip from KEXP with some of the new material:
Web site: Pink Flag
Frogmore didn’t get the attention it deserved, but we predict that the first solo album from Rico Conning will be a slow burner.
You will recognise Conning from his work as a producer and engineer at Guerilla Studios and for Mute Records (Martin Gore, Frank Tovey, Laibach – it’s a long list), but he knows how to make stunningly creative material of his own.
We were taken by songs like “Fluxus” and “Mercury” that were too long for commercial radio but we didn’t want to end. Frogmore is an album of dream-like grooves that carry you along with them like leaves in the current, and the journey is as interesting as the destination.
Web site: Rico's Reel (blog)
We didn’t finish our review of The Space Between Worlds earlier this year – sorry – but from the moment the boxed CD came through the letterbox it has been a regular feature at CWNL HQ.
When it comes on, there is always a moment of, “Who is that?” Rediscovering Jean-Marc Lederman’s latest album is a joy, because it sounds fresh every time. From the buzzing electronic arc of “Enter the Dragonette,” through the whimsical “Map of the World,” and on to the reverb-heavy touch of “A Darker Snare,” it is an album filled with an exciting experimental spirit.
The Space Between Worlds is Sunday night music: just right to listen to with a snifter and headphones while the world sits still.
Web site: Jean-Marc Lederman on Bandcamp
The original EBM godfathers, DAF, reissued a selection of four albums in a deluxe format this year.
The set included Die Kleinen und die Bösen, Alles ist Gut, Gold und Liebe and Für Immer – all albums that a DAF fan already owns and adores. However, even if they have listened to “Kebabträume” and “Goldenes Spielzeug” a million times before, there is nothing bad about refreshing the vinyl and adding a slip mat to the collection.
The real treat, however, was a 12” of new mixes from Giorgio Moroder and Boys Noize and a 7″ single with unreleased tracks. They might not have change lives, but their arrival certainly lifted moods.
We spotted DAF’s Robert Görl in one of the year’s most interesting films – the biography of Conny Plank. The scenes he shot with the famous producer and engineer’s son were particularly poignant. This trailer has a short clip with Görl at 1:01 that fans will appreciate:
Web site: Groenland
A new Psyche release is always welcome, but we were very happy when “Youth of Tomorrow” landed. It was heralded by a video that played on a series of 1980s music and television tropes: double-breasted shirts, Michael Jackson gangs and Tony Scott lighting among them.
The 80s have become a cultural archive to be excavated by synthwave enthusiasts and Netflix thrillers. It is fitting, therefore, that one of the original dark wave artists should dig themselves out first.
“Youth of Tomorrow” is great fun, but the flip comes with a serious message. “Truth or Consequence” is about the surveillance state and its discontents. Take it from Darrin:
Your life is on trial
There’s a price on your head
You’re gonna have to pay
For all you’ve given away
The security is all in your mind
You know the safety in numbers
Is making us blind
Your life is on trial
Don’t stand a chance
Web site: Psyche
Rein announced that she is taking 2018 off, following a driving tour schedule to promote Freedoom.
We will miss the Stockholm-based chanteuse, because she has single-handedly reinvigorated the EBM genre.
The Freedoom EP won’t be matched by Rein’s contemporaries anytime soon. With tracks like “Missfit” and the chantable spelling song, “C.A.P.I.T.A.L.I.S.M.,” Rein gave us something to think about as well as dance to.
Come back soon, Rein – music needs your kick up the backside.
John Fryer relocated from Oslo to LA this year, but the move to a warmer climate didn’t interrupt the flow of excellent releases from his Black Needle Noise project.
Lost in Reflections, BNN’s most recent collection, continues the pattern of excellent and mind-bending collaborations between Fryer and a long list of accomplished vocalists.
We’ve said before that BNN is the spiritual successor to This Mortal Coil, and Fryer has consistently proven the point.
What makes BNN interesting is the spin that the singers bring to the project. Take the alternately soothing and soaring vocals of Kite Base’s Kendra Frost on “Warning Sign.” Frost’s voice is simply stunning, while Fryer’s instrumentation and production are both elegant and dynamic. Ivo might have retired to live in the desert, while 4AD has become just another hit-seeking label, but Fryer is keeping the true flame of This Mortal Coil alive by letting the human voice have a space of its own.
We love the contribution of Jennie Vee on “Heaven.” Vee recently joined The Eagles of Death Metal as their bassist, but she also has a history of making dreampop material of exceptional quality. “Heaven” finds her in a darker, very personal space, and the results are magnificent.
There are also contributions from Front Line Assembly’s Bill Leeb, Andrea Kerr, Delerium collaborator Mimi Page, Omniflux, Zialand, Ana Breton and Sivert Høyem. Each has its own, distinctive qualities, but the collection is held together by Fryer’s sublime production.
Web site: Black Needle Noise on Bandcamp
Kite Base is as close as you can get to the pulse of London’s alternative sound.
Throbbing basslines, rhythms that tense and release like muscles, vocals both sapphic and seraphic – this is music from the core. Pity the finger-snapping hipsters from the suburbs who are trying to impress each other with clones of Phoebe from Friends.
After seeing the band live, it was no surprise to find that Latent Whispers is a mighty debut album. Dueling bassists, a drum machine and one of the strongest vocalists we’ve heard combine to perform sturdy tracks with a deep sense of groove. It’s like indie-funk fuelled by Irn Bru.
Web site: Kite Base
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.
Poseidon is Lau Nau’s follow up to Hem. Någonstans, the soundtrack to the eponymous film. It’s an antipodean partner to that album, filled with sounds and feelings drawn from warmer days. We found that the best musical signposts were somewhere between Virginia Astley, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Sigur Rós, but Lau Nau’s sound is both original and daring.
We expect that this will end up in a Hollywood music consultant’s bag of surprises sooner rather than later.
Web site: Lau Nau
Sweden’s poptronica pioneers started as a singles band, but after three decades of work have honed the album format to perfection.
Det Är Ingen Vacker Värld… is Page’s meisterwerk. Eddie Bengtsson’s compositions out-Numan Numan with Moog filters and angular phrasing, but the secret to the album’s success is its pop intentions.
“Tid För En Kyss” is knock-out poptronica. No one else is writing songs like “Lägger Av.” Page’s formula is one part integrity and two parts audacity, and the combination puts the band streets ahead of its competitors.
Known as Sweden’s Vince Clarke, Bengtsson is fearless in his pursuit of pure poptronica. There is no auto-tune on any of the vocals. No concessions are made to the demands of hit radio. All of the tracks are made with authentic Moogs. The sounds are crafted without presets and reach straight for your hips.
You don’t have to dance, but if you don’t then you’ll have missed all the fun.
Web site: Hot Stuff
Wire were always sonic alchemists, turning rock’s basic materials into art-pop with distinctive properties. The band’s mercurial songcraft has transformed the resonance of guitar strings and the knock of wood against mylar into a million different textures since their 1977 debut.
Forty years later, Silver/Lead shows Wire emerging from the lab on the front foot, turning out the kind of material that the dream-pop set can only dream about. From the delightfully retro sleeve to the cleverer-than-a-chemist lyrics, Wire continue to hold their ground. Over their four decades as a combo, they haven’t blown with the trends of the times, nor have they been stopped by line-up changes, time apart and a near-fatal experiment with drum machines. The new album continues the pattern by drawing on the strands of psychedelia that were hinted at on last year’s Nocturnal Koreans mini-album and infusing them with a sense of groove.
If you start at the beginning, the album kicks off with “Playing Hard for the Fishes.” Bassist Graham Lewis takes vocal duties, stepping through a surreal poem while guitars swarm around him. “It’s hard to pretend,” he declaims, and that must be true given Wire’s consistent authenticity.
Jumping ahead, “Diamonds in Cups” was the obvious choice for a single release. It has a summer haze about it, as well as a rhythm that lifts it into the upper tiers of Wire’s pantheon. XTC, a band with which singer Colin Newman shares regional roots, also moved into a trippier place as they matured, and there is the warmth of a Salisbury Plain midsummer in the production of this track. Hippies Wire certainly are not, but they can expand minds even when they are moving feet.
On “This Time,” Lewis takes the microphone to tell us, “Some folks believe in magic.” There is strong evidence for that outlook, based on the quality of the material assembled here: from the propulsion of “Short Elevated Period” to the airiness of “Sleep on the Wing,” Wire are at their grooviest in years.
Colin Newman has always been played up as Wire’s straight man. While Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces, both within the band and their assorted side projects (Cupol, Dome, Duet Emmo, etc.), to explore performance art or the potential of the studio as an instrument, Newman – or so goes the story – wrote songs with commercial potential, developed production skills and explored the practical side of the music industry. There is a grain of truth in this narrative, particularly as Newman’s solo material tacks closer to Wire’s sound than that of his colleagues, but his creative output is sufficiently varied to subvert it.
Whether making dance music (Immersion, Oracle), doing indie (Githead) or producing other artists (Minimal Compact, Virgin Prunes, Parade Ground), Newman has always demonstrated a knack for balancing the commercial with the experimental. Nowhere is this tension as evident as in the three solo albums that he recorded for Beggar’s Banquet and 4AD during Wire’s first hiatus, between 1980 and 1982. Thanks to Newman’s efforts, this troika has been remastered and reissued by Sentient Sonics, together with additional material in the CD versions.
The elements of A-Z, Newman’s first solo album, took shape at the same time as Wire’s 154. Properly regarded as the pinnacle of Wire’s first period, 154 was supposed to launch the band into the stratosphere; instead, after Bruce Gilbert panicked at the idea of commercial success, they adjourned sine die and let the moment pass them by. While Lewis and Gilbert retired to Blackwing Studios to record loops and drones, Newman was able to develop the material that was left behind into a formidable album of alternative pop. Although “Alone” became the best-known track from A-Z, after it was used in the soundtrack for Silence of the Lambs, the album is also notable for the original version of “Not Me,” which was covered on the first This Mortal Coil album. It also features “&Jury,” the kind of track that would keep teenaged Canadian kids awake all night listening to Brave New Waves.
Produced by Mike Thorne, A-Z retains much of the sonic flavour of the trio of Wire albums that appeared on Harvest/EMI. The CD version of the new release includes a set of demos and alternative versions that reveal Newman’s more primitive aural aesthetic, including demos recorded at Riverside Studios. These help to explain why there arose a disagreement between Newman and Thorne over production styles, and why Newman did eventually feel the pull to develop his own studio skills.
For his second solo album, Newman veered into more conceptual territory, drawing upon his prog rock roots. Provisionally entitled the singing fish eschewed distinctive song titles in favour of a series of consecutively numbered “fish” tracks. Recorded entirely by Newman as instrumentals, albeit with some engineering help, PETSF owes something to Brian Eno’s ambient offerings, and the result was ostensibly described by 4AD’s Ivo Watts-Russell as an album waiting for the technology to catch up with it. The additional tracks on the CD release don’t add much to the canon but will suit completists; particularly those who have been hunting for “Here Come the Fleeing Rabbits.”
The third solo release from Newman, Not To, returned to more traditional terrain. “Remove for Improvement” is one of those tracks that can’t be called “lost” because it never went away but always deserved a wider airing. There are also reworkings of songs developed with Lewis or Gilbert, including “We Meet Under Tables.” Not To is half-way to being a Wire album, and it features not only the crisp drumming of Robert Grey throughout but also a guest appearance by Gilbert.
A scant 22 (!) bonus tracks accompany the CD version, including a surprisingly reggae-based version of “Greensleeves” and an excellent alternative version of “123 beep beep beep.” This CD is one to explore more deeply, as it broods, bops and jams with levels of intensity and simplicity that are sometimes at odds with the main album.
Newman has more solo albums to his credit, which were released during his Brussels period or after he launched the swim~ label. Hopefully, these will also see a reissue in the near future.
Wire‘s residency in Islington last year, as headliners for the DRILL:Lexington festival, showed off the songs sculpted into their eponymous, fourteenth studio album. Hewn from sonic granite, Wire was a unique out-take from the art-rock outfit’s forty-year career; but then, each of the preceding releases has followed a different course. Change Becomes Us, said the title of the thirteenth studio album, and change is the only constant in the band’s trajectory. Even if there is a distinctive Wire sound and they inhabit the same planet as the rest of us, they follow a less predictable orbit and make better use of space.
The proof is in the pressing: Nocturnal Koreans, the fifteenth studio album, is a breezy set, floating on gentle whispers and propelled by more insistent gusts. There are folk-psychedelic airs blowing through the vents of “Dead Weight,” on which vocal tasks are shared by Colin Newman and Graham Lewis, and the material is far from the post-industrial urgency of their Send-era tracks. There might be echoes of Newman’s Wiltshire upbringing in the studio work, as even the fuzz of “Still” opens up into plains as wide as a cloudless English sky.
The songs on Nocturnal Koreans started life as songs left over from the Wire sessions, but they were subjected to revision in the studio until they emerged from their hard-drive chrysalis. Newman explains:
The WIRE album was quite respectful of the band, and Nocturnal Koreans is less respectful of the band—or, more accurately, it’s the band being less respectful to itself—in that it’s more created in the studio, rather than recorded basically as the band played it, which was mostly the case with WIRE. A general rule for this record was: any trickery is fair game, if it makes it sound better.
As heard in songs like “Pilgrim Trade,” the studio wizardry that Newman has mastered in his years as a producer is spell-binding. There are dreampop artists who can only imagine the spectral conjuring that Wire are capable of. At 25:57, Nocturnal Koreans is the briefest of trips, but it bears repeated listening to appreciate the subtle shades of psychedelia embedded in “Fishes Bones” alone.
WIRE
DRILL:Lexington Festival
London, 15 and 16 April 2015
The fellow shouting “Kidney Bingos” between songs hasn’t been to a lot of Wire shows. The art-rock ensemble confound expectations, delight and bemuse, but they don’t play requests called out from the floor. When it comes to song selections, they send and the audience receives. Sometimes, the reaction is a plea for a favourite song, but usually it’s the bobbing of heads and appreciative cheers: Wire fans don’t expect a greatest hits tour, so are open to shows that evolve organically.
A week of Wire at the DRILL:Lexington festival gives fans a chance to see the band in a number of permutations. The main constant, on the second and third nights, is a set dominated by the eponymous new album. It’s had positive write-ups all over, and The Guardian has put its weight behind it for mainstream liberals. The festival is taking place in N1, within hipster cycling distance of the newspaper’s main offices, so it’s a combination of broadsheet readers and loyal fans who assemble for craft beer and feedback. By the third night, the newly-released album has been digested and welcomed into the Wire body of work, so that references to eBay, Manchester and Paul the Octopus draw smiles of recognition from new and old fans alike.
Drummer Robert Grey barely opens his eyes during the set, and then only to take cues amidst the processed feedback. His expression is as taught as his rhythms: Grey provides Wire’s backbone, holding Graham Lewis’ frantic bass grooves in step with Matt Simms’ lead guitar. Lead singer and rhythm guitarist, Colin Newman, manages some smiles between songs, but his performance is serious business through the newer material.
The band break and return for short sets of classic tracks: Two People in a Room and Used To are treats at the Tuesday show; the next day’s reward includes Comet and reprises Used To. The line between these tracks and the new album isn’t a straight one: there are some prog rock zigs and punky zags involved. The point of Wire isn’t consistency of style; it’s consistency of quality. You can call out “Kidney Bingos” all you like, but their idea of rock isn’t to be your human iPod.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]When John Fryer knocked on the doors of Blackwing Studios in South London, looking for a job, he didn’t know that he was walking onto history’s stage. On his first day of work, Daniel Miller was using the space to record covers of rock standards for his Silicon Teens project. As Miller found more artists for his Mute Records label, Blackwing became his go-to studio and Fryer graduated from engineer (usually alongside studio boss Eric Radcliffe) to producer. Look closely at the credits for Depeche Mode’s Speak & Spell and A Broken Frame, Fad Gadget’s first three albums or Yazoo’s Upstairs at Eric’s – Fryer’s name is there. He wrote and performed on the seminal Fad Gadget album, Under the Flag, and provided the definitive mixes for numerous Depeche Mode recordings.
4AD, another independent label that played a key role in shaping the styles of the 1980s, also found its way to Blackwing and Fryer. While often given assignments to produce artists like Cocteau Twins, Lush (to whom he introduced the magic of distortion) and Clan of Xymox, Fryer was also one of only two permanent members of the 4AD house project, This Mortal Coil, together with label founder Ivo Watts-Russell. They redefined the sound of late night listening, fusing romanticism and darkness in a way that made love and pain part of the same sonic palette. The Mortal Coil project drew in key figures from 4AD’s roster, recast and reimagined its own songs or cover versions, and could be said to have been the label’s heartbeat.
Fryer’s work attracted the attention of Trent Reznor, who picked him out for production work on Pretty Hate Machine, the album that launched Nine Inch Nails. Other artists followed, from Vancouver’s Moev (who spawned the Nettwerk label, home to Skinny Puppy and Sarah McLachlan) to Sweden’s Ashbury Heights, looking for a touch of the studio magic that had made Fryer’s previous work so successful.
Fryer hasn’t stopped producing, but these days he’s also involved with some musical projects of his own. In 2011, he released Noise in My Head, an album with vocalist Rebecca Coseboom, as Dark Drive Clinic, which included the contagious “Silhouette.” His new project, Silver Ghost Shimmer, a duo with Pinky Turzo, has released two videos with songs infused with ultra-retro stylings.
Muricidae, a collaboration with Louise Fraser, offers a tantalising refresh of the chorus-and-delay sound that made This Mortal Coil and The Hope Blister so intriguing. The visuals for Muricidae were developed by Roxx of San Francisco-based 2spirit Tattoo. The choice of a tattoo artist over a commercial artist reflects the maverick spirit that Fryer brings to his creative work.
He is also working with Chrysta Bell, who has previously collaborated with David Lynch. A recent series of shows by the Czech cult band, Vanessa, found Fryer rocking out on stage, as well.
John Fryer is presenting a rare DJ set, covering his work for Mute and 4AD, at the upcoming event, A Secret Wish (London, 19 April 2015).
Fryer worked on the first two Depeche Mode albums, together with Eric Radcliffe, and provided mixing support on several later releases. Speak & Spell was the record that made them a global force, propelled by Vince Clarke’s infectious pop songs and a distinctive sound that distinguished them from the po-faced stoicism of Ballard’s synthetic children, John Foxx and Gary Numan. One of his distinguished credits is for the second single from Speak & Spell, which has become an 80s icon in its own right.
Fryer produced two albums for Fad Gadget. Under the Flag, which came out in 1982, refined the instrumentation to keyboards, drum machine and voices, creating an organic sound that tied together a string of classic songs, including “Love Parasite,” “For Whom the Bells Toll” and this track, which Fryer co-wrote with Frank Tovey.
It’s not Fryer’s fault that Elizabeth Fraser sounds like she’s singing the line, “Sugar hiccup my Cheerios.” Her vocal style, while beautiful, can also be impenetrable. Apparently, the correct line is, “Suggar Hiccup, on she reels,” inspired by a racehorse of that name. In any event, the ethereal, misty guitar drones and soaring lead lines of Cocteau Twins owe a lot to Fryer’s studio craft.
The story is sometimes told that, among Wire’s members, Colin Newman was the conventional one balancing the uncommercial artistic experiments of Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert. That is a little too neat a description, which is probably based upon a comparison of Newman’s solo material to some of the Lewis-Gilbert releases as Dome, Kluba Kupol and P’o. The truth is that the three musicians are equally capable of recordings that fit pop structures, but they all resist conventions to different degrees at different times.
Of the group, Graham Lewis’ place along the continuum has most consistently been at the balancing point between beauty and obscurity. This single, released in 1986 as a He Said project, leans more to the former. With Angela Conway providing backing vocals (see AC Marias, below), “Pump” is a sophisticated but unpretentious pop track. Fryer’s studio work gives the song both warmth and room to breath.
Dark electro warriors Clan of Xymox were an important signing for 4AD, but it was through John Fryer’s remix work on two tracks – “A Day” and “Stranger” – in 1985 that the Dutch band found their way into the alternative dance clubs. Layered with sampled and processed choral lines and propelled by a rhythm track that is never tiring, “Stranger” is like “Blue Monday” for Goths.
As singer Ronny Moorings remembered for Unruhr, at the time of Xymox’s Best Of compilation:
The mixes were done in London’s Blackwing studios with John Fryer being a co-producer. These studios had already then a name for having bands like Depeche Mode and Erasure always recording their albums there. Nine Inch Nails even wanted to record with John Fryer after listening to our records!
As a mixing engineer, Fryer has helped to shape the sound of many iconic records, from M/A/R/R/S’ “Pump Up the Volume” to Pete Murphy’s “Final Solution.” These two tracks show off Wire’s live sound and were released as part of a limited 12″ single to accompany “Eardrum Buzz” in 1989.
AC Marias was the short-lived project of Alison Conway, who recorded a single album for Mute, together with her then-boyfriend, Bruce Gilbert of Wire. The production credit for the album is given to a super-group of John Fryer, Paul Kendall, Gareth Jones and Bruce Gilbert. The roles aren’t elaborated, but Paul Kendall recalled to Wireviews:
One of my favorite records of all time. I was a bit sad that I didn’t get involved in the mixing process, but I think John Fryer did an absolutely marvelous job. The pecking order of involvement, if you discount Bruce, was Fryer, me and then Gareth Jones. I did a lot of recording and experimentation with the sound and Fryer just pulled the whole thing together. He also did all the vocal recording.
Gilbert was himself a significant influence on Fryer, and they worked on a number of iconic recordings together, including those of Dome and Duet Emmo. Fryer was also in the chair for the soundtrack commissioned from Gilbert by dancer Michael Clark, The Shivering Man.
Conway went on to focus on videography, making music videos for Mute and other artists, but she left behind a sterling sonic legacy of her own.
With LA-based Louise Fraser on vocals, Fryer has refreshed the atmospherics of This Mortal Coil and The Hope Blister for a new project, Muricidae. Named after the rock snails that leave behind complex and attractive shells for interior designers to find, an EP is on the way in the spring. As this early release hints, there is more space(echo) to be explored.
The strength of Fryer’s own songwriting comes through clearly in another of his current projects, Silver Ghost Shimmer. Another California singer, Pinky Turzo, provides the vocals for SGS. “Soft Landing” was the first release for SGS, and it combines elements of The Shangri-Las with decayed glamour in a smudged-lipstick kind of way.
Originally recorded by Tim Buckley, “Song to the Siren” in its This Mortal Coil incarnation is widely regarded as one of the most perfect pop songs ever released. Featuring Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins on vocals, the pain and poignancy of the original is lifted to serene heights in Fryer’s hands. It is immaculate iciness incarnate.
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Colin Newman describes himself as the spotty boy at school, who had trouble with the local Wiltshire bullies. His escapes were listening to Todd Rundgren’s “A Wizard, a True Star” in his bedroom and close-reading of the weekly NME with Desmond Simmons. Together with Simmons, he started a duo that never performed outside of his friend’s living room but gave him the confidence to start a life in music.
Newman left Salisbury for art school in Watford, where he fell in with a band led by George Gill. One day, the band had to rehearse without Gill, who had broken his leg, and discovered that they sounded a lot better without their principal songwriter. Gill’s leg recovered but his musical standing didn’t, so the band went on to become Wire (and, for a time, Wir). Newman’s role in the band has evolved from rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist to include production duties, leveraging the skills that he has honed working with other artists and making solo recordings during Wire’s periodic hiatuses.
Wire has never been a monoline undertaking. Although originally pigeon-holed as a punk/new wave act by the press, the band’s intellectual genealogy owes as much to Marcel Duchamp as Malcolm McLaren: its art school roots occasionally break through the surface as experimental composition and performance art. However, while other band members tested the limits of sound and the subversion of expectations, Newman often found himself exploring the practical side of the industry, including independent distribution (Post Everything), recording (Swim~) and performance (Drill Festivals). Besides Wire, Newman maintains a separate recording project, Githead, together with his partner, Malka Spigel (ex-Minimal Compact), composer Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) and Max Franken (also ex-Minimal Compact).
Newman’s “Alone,” a track from his first solo album, 1980’s A-Z, made a high-profile appearance in the movie, Silence of the Lambs, where it served to set the atmosphere for a scene showing the house occupied by the crazed Buffalo Bill. The brooding, dark tone of the song was drawn out for a cover on This Mortal Coil’s Filigree & Shadow, but the original track still sets the bar for nervous anxiety.
Written together with Graham Lewis, “Dot Dash” captures Wire’s early aesthetic: short, sometimes snarled, but entirely infectious and hovering on the border between pop and punk. Released as a single in 1978, its chorus is a Morse code message from the future. The single filled the gap between the Pink Flag and Chairs Missing albums, acting as a bridge between the taught, Spartan style of the former and more open, expansive leanings of the latter.
Newman’s solo work yielded three albums between 1980 and 1983. The first of these, A-Z, has been characterised as the Wire album that would have followed 154, but for Bruce Gilbert putting the band on ice. While Newman’s songs could have slotted into the Wire groove, there is a question whether the band could have agreed on them. 154 reflected a growing tension within the group, reinforced by the need to subvert expectations, and the songs on A-Z are leftfield art/pop held within a relatively conventional framework. They remain strong compositions – much stronger than some of the material on 154 – and there is something to be said for them having been aired in Newman’s own space.
Newman helmed Parade Ground’s “Moans,” and the sound of this track clearly owes something to his studio performance. Part of the Brussels scene of the 1980s, in which Newman became immersed, Parade Ground crossed Joy Division with Fad Gadget, maintaining a po-faced look and sound that contrasted with the commercial excesses of the times. Newman adds vocals, keyboards and guitars here, and the result is a certified indietronica gem.
After Wire hit the wall, following a disastrous tour supporting Roxy Music in 1979, Newman turned to his solo work, but the lure of production and the need to make a living led him into a studio chair for the first album from Virgin Prunes. Rough Trade had talent-spotted the Irish post-punk outfit and wanted something quite specific and quite general: “A pop record,” is what Rough Trade boss Geoff Travis asked of Newman. He found the task challenging, as the Prunes were desperate to avoid any comparisons to another Dublin outfit then gaining attention: U2. It didn’t help that one of the guitarists was The Edge’s brother. Newman described himself “bludgeoning” the Prunes into releasing “Baby Turns Blue” as a single, but the song he has expressed the most appreciation for was “Decline and Fall,” an album track.
Poor Suzanne Summers didn’t know what had hit her when Wire performed on NBC’s The Tonight Show in 1987. The most Establishment entertainment programme on American television was usually hosted by the comedian, Johnny Carson. On the night Wire played a musical slot, Summers was in the host’s chair and Wire were touring “Drill” – so that’s what they played. Based on a riff from early punk-tinged hit, “12XU,” which had been abstracted into a repetitive framework that could stretch to 30 minutes in performance, a key vocal element was the onomatopoeic, “Dugga dugga dugga.” Summers was complimentary, but she would have known that the audience at home, watching from their Sealy Posturepedic beds, must have thought that the band had landed from outer space.
Brussels has played an interesting role as the cradle for a lot of alternative music. For a long time the home to Tuxedomoon, the birthplace of New Beat and the centre for many EBM artists, such as Front 242, the city was also the base for the Crammed record label. Minimal Compact were part of that scene when they wrote off to Newman – legend has it, at the suggestion of Daniel Miller of Mute Records – to ask him to produce them. They had already hit the US college radio sweet spot with “Next One Is Real,” and Newman found he had a number of shared interests with the band. One thing led to another, as they say, and Malka Spigel became his life and musical partner.
The Githead project was intended as a one-off live arrangement, for the tenth anniversary of Newman’s Swim~ label, but it sparked an interest that has kept it going for four albums. Although part of its work will sit comfortably to Wire fans, Githead has its own sound and feel, and the sense of familiarity comes from Newman’s voice rather than from a derivative style.
In the 1990s, Newman became interested in the prospects of electronic dance music and home recording. One of his projects was Immersion, which became an avenue for exploring ambient and dancefloor-oriented tracks together with Malka Spigel. The time spent working on this material helped to refine his recording skills, which led to a critical reappraisal of the production of Wire’s 1980s recordings and set the stage for Newman to exercise greater control over the band’s future studio sound.
If Wire has a signature song, it is “Pink Flag.” The title track from their first album is an apocalyptic vision for the New World, rendered in two chords, with lyrics that read like a late-twentieth century Book of Relevations. Like a club track, it breaks down and builds up to an ecstatic release, but one that is delayed for as long as the band keep hitting E. “Pink Flag” has been performed as a minimalist composition and a wall-of-sound with a massed guitar collective, but the anchor is always Newman’s vocal contribution, imbued with more determination than menace.
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Art/pop stalwarts, Wire, have announced a new album. Simply called Wire, the first eponymous release and the thirteenth studio album from the band is expected on 13 April 2015. That event will launch the DRILL:LEXINGTON festival, which takes place at The Lexington in Islington from 14 through 18 April 2015. The line-up for the festival is still to be announced, but Wire will be headlining each night.
We don’t reprint press releases, as a rule, but all we have to go on about the album, at the moment, is a preview at Vice and the following information from the official pinkflag.com Web site:
Their 13th studio album – simply titled Wire – comprises material that was written with the album in mind, but toured extensively first, as well as songs that Newman introduced to the group in the studio just prior to recording. The idea was to get the most spontaneous reaction possible from the musicians, and far from the rough and ready results one might expect from such a tack, Wire is full of swooning pop melodies with a 60s tinge and an irresistible, near motorik rhythmic momentum. One can recognise certain melodic inflections, guitar and bass motifs, and drum rhythms from Wire’s idiosyncratic vocabulary but it has a remarkable freshness.
The basic tracks were recorded at Rockfield Studios near Monmouth, with overdubs added at Brighton Electric last December following the group’s DRILL : BRIGHTON Festival. The 11 tracks selected for release were the ones that came together most naturally.
From the outset Wire was an alliance between four very different characters and continues today with the addition, in 2012, of It Hugs Back guitarist Matthew Simms, who is around thirty years younger than the other group members. “With Matt there was a really new dynamic that had appeared in the group’s sound and that was something we wanted to capture, utilise and be creative with,” says Lewis.
Wire is the first album where Simms has been involved in formulating the material from the ground up, but when the group’s particular chemistry starts working he is now very much part of the process.
“With ‘Sleepwalking’, I don’t think we even ran all the way through it before we recorded it.” Newman says. “Wire do this thing so well and there’s instant atmosphere. There’s my rhythm guitar, Matt playing lap steel, Graham (Lewis) playing bass with effects – there’s as much effects as bass – and Rob’s tolling drumming. It was already almost sustainable for six minutes with just that.”
Lewis also provides most of the lyrics for the album, their subject matter encompassing love songs, cryptic narratives and coded messages. One time, Newman asked Lewis to send over some unfinished, unformatted text so he wouldn’t be bound by what to use for the chorus. This material spawned two songs written on the same day, ‘Split Your Ends’ and the droll ‘In Manchester’. The latter has one of the album’s loveliest melodies, but it’s no coded paean to the city in its Baggy heyday. Instead this process led to the disorientating and rather absurd situation of having “In Manchester” as a soaring chorus, when the song is not about Manchester beyond a single line in the lyric.
As the album progresses, some of the sunlit pop tunes become more shadowy and it ultimately plunges into the musical black hole of ‘Harpooned’, eight churning minutes of the group’s darkest, most abrasive music to date, and a favourite in live performances since 2013.
Big money offers have been made to Wire to become part of the Heritage Rock industry, to get the original line-up back together and play only 70s music. These have all been unequivocally turned down. Fun though that might be, why plant yourself firmly back in the past when you are making new music this potent with the promise of more in the future?
“The point where our personal narratives meet is all about change – moving on and keeping it interesting for ourselves,” says Newman. “We’re in it for the long haul and this is a one-way trip.”
We’d note in passing that A Secret Wish, the Cold War Night Life-curated alternative music event, happens at the same venue as DRILL:LEXINGTON just a day later. It features the legendary producer and engineer, John Fryer, who has worked with Graham Lewis of Wire.
Wire official site: pinkflag.com
DRILL:LEXINGTON: Tickets
