From: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Newsgroups: rec.music.industrial
Subject: Under the Big Dome, continued....
Date: 14 Sep 92 10:43:49 GMT
Reply-To: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Organization: Heurikon Corporation, Madison, WI

karty@cs.washington.edu (Richard Karty) writes:
>As a Dome fan from the very beginning, I was skeptical about the
>reviews just recently posted of Dome 1 - 4. I think there are people
>out there who would really, really like Dome. Very few people, mind
>you; but I wonder if they would even bother based on the reviews.

Well, if you merely post in r.m.i., I'd say you're indulging in a large
bit of "preaching to the choir." Fact is that Al's readership is a bit
broader than that, and I've found that the response to the Dome stuff -
even from folks who claim to really *really* like Wire - pretty much
approaches Al's caveats. Just  taking a look at the crossposts might
help here. On the other hand, Al *will* probably get a couple of people
to listen to SPK's "Zamia Lehmani" for the same reasons that they might
steer clear of the Dome work [I played a large hunk of it last night on
my program between some Messaien and Robert Palmer's cover of "The
Silver Gun" [the Pakistani title of it escapes me at the moment] to good
effect. Your usual "but I didn't think I liked anything Industrial" call]. 
A part of the effect really stems from the fact that anyone reading here
for any length of time has a feel for Al's sensibilities. He's also 
careful to signpost his biases, I think. But the big point is that he's
a) writing the reviews and b) crossposting outside of the usual r.m.i.
poseurland in the hope that someone else might listen to something outside
of her/his little circle of Current Light. In my view, this is a good
idea. I'd rather run across just one thing like this than the couple of
dozen LollaPaLoser diatribes about sod-tossing that usually festoon
this sleepy backwater.

>(OK OK I should have posted my own reviews, I know...)
Yep. That's the best corrective, and the best way to have the experience
of having the same said of *your* work....

>There are many more records by the people behind Dome and Duet Emmo
>(i.e. Gilbert and Lewis from the band Wire)...
>
>We're talking roughly six to eight LPs and EPs under the names
>"Gilbert/Lewis", "Cupol" and "Po". These are from the early- or
>mid-eighties; all are UK releases only.

Interested parties might wish to see if they can locate a copy of the
4AD release "8Time" [CAD 16 CD]. It contains the Gilbert and Lewis
releases 'Cupol' [released originally as BAD 9], 'Ends With The Sea'
[released originally as CAD 16], and  '3R4' [released originally as
AD 106] on one CD. I'd place these recordings on the scale of "slightly
more ambient and accessible and of a more homogeneous whole" than the
work on the Dome LPs. 

It does occur to me that there's still a problem explaining exactly
what happened with this work to someone who simply assumed that Wire(1)
or Wire(2) is all that the members of the band ever aspired to.

>More recently, there have been some more records released by the band
>"He Said" and by Bruce Gilbert (solo). These were released in the US by
>affiliates of Mute. 

Ah, but the hardcore Gilbert and Lewis fan will perhaps be more easily
seduced by the B.C. Gilbert disc "This Way to the Shivering Man" ,
which again combines two earlier releases onto a single CD. More early
dance work [Do You Me? I Did/The Shivering Man/Angelfood] for his
usual crop of commissioners, but it's more transitional work - closer
to the Dome era stuff. The issue number is Mute CD STUMM 39.

>If there's interest, I could put together a discography. However,
>since buying all this stuff in the mid-eighties, I have never, ever
>seen it again in stores! I'm open to tape swaps, though. 

Gee. There's a copy of the Gilbert and Lewis/Russell Mills [yeah, the
guy who does all that cover art for Eno and David Sylvian] gallery
show for found stuff and noise "Mzui" in the bins just down the road
down the way. Someone here must be getting rid of theirs.

--
A machine plays many pianos at once and the music holds them aloft, a different
tune for each ship. Freedom has nothing to do with control and control nothing
to do with my weak heart lonely for its birthday and the excitement of pure
sunlight and of snow parting into countless buoyant shapes over the airfield.