Bruce Gilbert - The Shivering Man

Bruce Gilbert was always an odd fish, even in Wire, the oddest punk band of them all. Already 30 when they formed, he seemed more like a college professor than a band member. When he later began to release music under his own name it was apparent that he was more at home in electroacoustic and noise music territory than in anything resembling pop.

Gilbert released a flood of material, starting in 1980. Together with co-conspirator Graham Lewis, he recorded four albums as Dome, their lo-fi music sounding like tape scrapings from Wire sessions, odd vocal exercises, frustration devices, aversion therapies.

A 12" as Cupol combined an almost pop rant on one side with an extended ethnic forgery noise field on the other. Credited to BC Gilbert & G Lewis, the album 3R4 contains two excellent noise ambient soundscapes with shorter tracks. Together with the single "Ends With The Sea", these formed the CD compilation 8 Time.

After seven releases in two years Gilbert showed no signs of slacking. The random noises that formed gallery installation MZUI stormed the charts (not!) in 1982. Gilbert then teamed with Lewis and Mute label boss Daniel Miller for Duet Emmo, who issued the excellent Or So It Seems and companion 12" in 1983. That same year he was in the band P'o, featured on this blog last June.

The two albums Gilbert released on Mute following this unorthodox period of music-making are likely more palatable. Commissioned by choreographer Michael Clark, "Do You Me? I Did", filled 30 minutes of the album "This Way", issued on Mute in August 1984. This is currently available on Austrian label Editions Mego, remastered and with new artwork. This piece is one of the absolute highlights of the Gilbert canon.

Conceived by Angela Conway, whose own musical career we have profiled, the dance "The Shivering Man" provided the title for the follow-up album. Released on vinyl by Mute in April 1987, the record is full of insistent pulses and fragmented instruments. One can hear guitar, bass, drums and vocals but their spectra are not used in conventional ways, nor in conventional structures. The album begins with "Angelfood", which goes through several distinct musical stages, as though replicating Gilbert's oeuvre in toto. It is one of his best pieces.

Following this, the title track sounds like cartoon characters slowly getting dragged under the earth to be buried alive. "Net in the Feather" welds bagpipes to a skipping CD, later to be jeered and whooped. "There Are" starts with something like Frippertronics until Gilbert's toneless voice begins a recitation. Then, unexpectedly, the machinic enters this organic realm. "Hommage" [sic] might be Throbbing Gristle while "Eline Cout II" sets the template for the solo AC Marias record: girl-next-door ambient vocals over insistent pulsing loop. Finally, "Epitaph For Henran Brenlar" evolves out of a dark shambles into something resembling a pop song. Graham Lewis appears half-way through and sounds great.

The Shivering Man has only been issued on CD as part of a limited three disk set in Japan. In the UK four of the seven tracks found their way to the compilation This Way To The Shivering Man. As that is also out of print, we are bringing you the record in full, restored to its original running order.

P.S. A video excerpt of "The Shivering Man", danced by Michael Clark, Julie Hood and Ian Longmuir, may be found on YouTube. Hood is also the dancer in the brilliant A.C. Marias video "One Of Our Girls Has Gone Missing".

-- Second Chameleon

The Shivering Man

A1 Angel Food
A2 The Shivering Man
A3 Net In The Feather
B1 There Are
B2 Hommage
B3 Eline Cout II
B4 Epitaph For Henran Brenlar

LP UK: Mute [STUMM 39] April 1987

Rarities From A.C. Marias

When it's ebbing for them
it's waving for me.

Since we gave you the fantastic A.C. Marias album One Of Our Girls (Has Gone Missing) we have been hot on the trail of her more obscure items. Now we can offer eight tracks that trace the arc of her musical output from the very origins.



Which means Dome, the Gilbert & Lewis project that came about in 1980 as the first incarnation of Wire broke up. This is the purest art formulation of these musicians' many disguises and is perhaps best appreciated in a gallery setting. Listening to the ebb and flow of the muted sounds from CD can be a tiring experience, although there are joys as well to be found in the four albums they issued in rapid succession on their own Dome label. These have been reissued by the wonderful Mute label with titles two per CD, as Dome 1/2 and Dome 3/4 (although the last album was originally not called Dome 4 but Will You Speak This Word).

The second track on the first Dome record is "Cruel When Complete," written and sung by A.M.C., as she was then credited. All the characteristics of her later work are already in place here. We have included this as her most characteristic contribution to Dome. She cropped up again on Dome 3, which is really one extended riff and never that interesting to me. Their final album was a much superior effort. Give it a try if you think that rarified rumblings and ramblings are your kettle of eels. Just don't expect pop music or guitars.



Shortly after, in 1981, the debut A.C. Marias record was issued as DOM 45.1. Two tracks, "Drop" and "So" initiated her penchant for one word titles. Given how similar these were to her Dome contribution, it would have been reasonable to assume this was a one-off project, yet another zany outing from the Wire boyos.



The not dissimilar "The Whispered Year" found its way onto the obscure Touch cassette "Meridians 1," which I bought in 1983. Touch was in the habit of including postcards, art inserts and all sorts of intriguing design elements into their compilations, which mixed every kind of pop and art music together with phonography and enthological forgeries. These tapes are long out of print and will not be reissued, since the rights cannot be cleared. Nonetheless it is evident from the detailed history on the Touch site that they are appreciated for their place in music culture.

By this time A.C.M. was in the group P'O with Gilbert, Lewis, David Tidball and Peter Price. They issued one album, Whilst Climbing Thieves Vie For Attention, an item so obscure even I didn't own it until WMO (Wire Mail Order) re-issued the CD in 1998. Discogs has a hilarious picture of the lads. They look like a post-punk band or something.



Conway wrote and sang one track on the Bruce Gilbert album The Shivering Man, a collection of work he had done for dance (which is how the two first met, I assume). When the record was combined with This Way to form the CD This Way To The Shivering Man Mute dropped several tracks, including the now rare "Eline Cout II." With its sequenced patternings and insistent rhythm, this was a distinct move into a more palatable sound. In fact it's quite lovely, and a template for what was to follow. As a side note, Conway also provided the cover art for these Gilbert albums.



That same year, 1986, the single "Just Talk" crept out on Mute. Two years later followed "Time Was," the Canned Heat cover you already have as a bonus addition to her one and only album. Here we provide "Some Thing," a great mix of "Sometime" from the album. The production on this solo work is a distinct step up from the low-fi sounds she had previously been dealing with.



Conway's final release was the single "One Of Our Girls Has Gone Missing" which came in an alternate mix. The b-side, "Vicious," is a long and not entirely satisfying cover of the Lou Reed song (from Transformer), with David Rogers on bass and Steve Wright on guitar.

In addition to these entries in the discography, you will definitely want to buy the He Said album Hail, a phenomenal work that includes Angela Conway vocals on "Pump" and "I Fall Into Your Arms."

A.C. Marias Rarities

01 Cruel When Complete [Dome] (3:15)
02 Drop (4:33)
03 So (2:31)
04 The Whispered Year (3:41)
05 Eline Cout II [Bruce Gilbert] (4:42)
06 Some Thing (4:12)
07 One Of Our Girls Has Gone Missing [single version] (3:17)
08 Vicious (8:45)

Thanks to the various sites and sources from which we compiled together this collection.

-- Second Chameleon