B. C. Gilbert & G. Lewis - Hung Up To Dry Whilst Building An Arch (1983)

Bruce Clifford Gilbert and Graham Lewis were founder members of the legendary post-punk band Wire, and were therefore partly responsible for their three ground-breaking albums, 'Pink Flag', 'Chairs Missing' and '154'. The band famously broke up after a show at London's Electric Ballroom at the start of 1980, and this was the start of a new career for guitarist Gilbert and bassist Lewis, who started to experiment with avant garde musical forms, involving repetition, ambient sound, and krautrock-like drones. The duo went under many aliases apart from the B.C. Gilbert/G. Lewis moniker, releasing material under the names Cupol, Dome, P'o, and Duet Emmo. Dome released a number of albums, and often performed at art galleries with visual displays that allowed audience interactivity, and Gilbert and Lewis often performed with tubes made of paper over their heads, thus restricting their vision. Artist Russell Mills frequently collaborated with Dome, and in 1981 the three of them took over London's Waterloo Gallery and produced MZUI, an interactive audio-visual installation where visitors were encouraged to play a number of instruments created by the artists from objects found on the site. The MZUI album, released by Cherry Red in May 1982, contains two untitled pieces based on recordings from the venue, finishing with the looped and distorted voice of Marcel Duchamp, whom Gilbert considers a key influence. 
Cupol only released the one 12" single, with a concise four-minute song on the A-side and a ambient 20-minute piece on the flip. When they teamed up with Mute Records' Daniel MIller for Duet Emmo (named from an anagram of Dome and Mute), he took them into a much more rhythmic electronic direction, and their album is one of my faves. P'o added three more members, but still produced a harsh electronic sound, which was an amalgamation of the rhythmic side of Duet Emmo and the experimentaton of Dome. Much of the music released by the bands was on 7" or 12" singles, and a lot was not included on their albums, other than for P'o, where no singles were extracted from the album, but two bonus tracks were added to the 1998 re-issue. I've therefore gathered up all of these oddments, from their only single as Gilbert/Lewis in 1981, to the Cupol 12", the b-side to the excellent Duet Emmo 12", three tracks from a 1980 John Peel session, and a rare track from a 1980 compilation cassette called 'From Brussels With Love'. I'll be the first to admit that their music is very much an acquired taste, and not an easy listen, but it appealed enough to me that I still have all the vinyl singles that I bought at the time. Fans of Wire should hear it at least once, but be warned that there is very little comparison between this music and the Wire that we know and love. It's a fairly long album, mostly because of that Cupol b-side, but if you're into experimental electronic music then there's much to savour here. 

Track listing

B.C. Gilbert - G. Lewis
01 Ends With The Sea (single 1981)
02 Hung Up To Dry Whilst Building An Arch (b-side of 'Ends With The Sea')
Cupol
03 Like This For Ages (12" single 1980)
04 Kluba Cupol (b-side of 'Like This For Ages')
Graham Lewis & B.C. Gilbert
05 Twist Up (from the 1980 cassette compilation 'From Brussels With Love')
G Lewis & B C Gilbert
06 Anchors (John Peel session 1980)
07 Norse (John Peel session 1980)
08 Quicken Your Step (John Peel session 1980)
Duet Emmo (with Daniel Miller)
09 Heart Of Hearts (Or So It Seems) (b-side of 'Or So It Seems' 1982)
P'o (with Angela Conway, David Tidball and Peter Price)
10 Only One I (bonus track 1983)
11 Zinc Lasoo (Noose) (bonus track 1983)