I recently dug out the HOX Itness album
from 1999 for a spin. Sometimes when listening to music, a certain logic of
choice for subsequent listening suggests itself within the music. One track on
Itness with a rather long, unchanging and insistent rhythm (and little else),
made me think of Graham’s earlier 4-track pieces from 1983, collectively
gathered on the 1996 WMO release, pre>He. Billed with a sticker on the CD
cover as “Previously unreleased archive recordings from ex-WIRE man”, locating
it squarely within second Wire hiatus. He would now be post-He and WIRE man, as
an active member of that thriving unit, given fresh life with the tranfusion of
young blood into the ranks.
This body of work, coming with the customary ‘archive
sound’ warning, due to the raw and basic nature of the recording, is immensely
satisfying for me, and is something I keep returning to. In fact the very
nature of the recording is an inescapably essential part of the very fabric of
the music, and the elemental nature of its articulation and atmosphere.
Sometimes it fizzes like electricity, raw and volatile, as on the coruscating,
flayed and relentless Dolass Violphin, and He Said “Argh...”. Other times it
lurks and hums threateningly, as in the magnificent, stately slow ritual march
of Lying In State, originally produced for the MU:ZE:UM Traces installation for
MOMA Oxford, with Bruce Gilbert and Russell Mills. My first introduction to the
work on the compilation came via an early Touch cassette, Meridians 1 (1983),
which featured the He Said “Argh...” track. This piece presented such an
utterly alien yet intriguing and highly individual soundworld that drew me
right in. I was hooked.
Shortly
after this I started artschool and a friend introduced me to the music of Dome,
and this alien soundworld opened out further and well and truly got its
tentacles deep into me. After revisiting the pre>He album, later in the day
I felt like drilling down further in time and farther back in the back
catalogue and spun Dome 3 and 4. Shortly after Dome 4 finished, and the short
Atlas track ended proceedings, I happened across that very word in the book I
was reading, in the same paragraph as the word halo, as it happened. Years ago
I usen’t to know what to make of these synchronicities, thinking perhaps a
strange pattern lay behind them, or a sign was being manifested, but now I look
upon them with bemused detachment, thinking in this instance, ‘that was a good
strike rate..’
The
evening’s listening ended with 3R4, a particularly outstanding and durable
piece of work, and like all of Dome’s output it conjures a particularly unique
soundworld which seems to stand outside of regular time and inhabit a
transitory, liminal space, an audio derive - a soundtrack of restless
exploration, cinema for the ear. Like all the best and most original music, it
sounds like nothing else. Only Dome could have made this music.
3,4 is a
fine example of mounting tension and creeping unease, signalled by the backwash
of a slow, breath-like sound, which gives way to intermittent foghorn type
noises, guitar slashes, percussive forays and a deep, groaning bass that
slithers thickly like a conger eel. Not unconnected, perhaps with the previous
track’s intriguing title, Barge Calm - a slow trawl through murky depths is
suggested. R unfolds with a slowed guitar loop that bristles with a visceral
sense of the very machinery of its making; amplified wound steel strings
scraped with hard plastic. Like enlarging a photographic image and repeating
it, certain details are thrown into relief and patterns emerge. When this
eventually fades, a more glacial calm descends with elongated vocal drones and
intermittent sounds lending it a more widescreen feel.
