From: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org (idealcopy-digest) To: idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Subject: idealcopy-digest V3 #264 Reply-To: idealcopy@smoe.org Sender: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk idealcopy-digest Monday, August 28 2000 Volume 03 : Number 264 Today's Subjects: ----------------- The Rest of WMO [=?iso-8859-1?q?Graeme=20Rowland?= Subject: The Rest of WMO 6. Wire - Turns and Strokes* Whilst this was a welcome release of long lost Wire songs from 79-80, it must be said that some of the recordings are unavoidably of very lo-fi bootleg quality. Some of the songs are obviously works in progress too and some of them would perhaps have been scrapped or certainly radically reworked if Wire had recorded them for a studio album. I point this out because I'd probably have played this a hell of a lot more if the sound quality was better, not just to gripe. Anyway, the versions of Safe and Lorries that open the collection are of excellent sound quality and the long and odd Panamanian Craze sounds fine too, and the two studio recordings that round things off, Second Length and Catapult 30, are a must. 7. Edvard Graham Lewis - pre>He* Rough and raw rhythmic experimental electronic recordings from 83 (and even if the sound is brutally lo-fi, that just adds to the atmosphere) which sometimes play the idea to death but these are demos that were never intended for release so the fact that former installation Dolass Violphin goes on and on rather nicely shouldn't deter anyone who dug Kluba Cupol. Anyway I much prefer this to the rather cluttered and overproduced He Said 'Hail' album. "It's purer isn't it?" He Said, "Simpler. Hail suffered from the fact that it was something that I wanted to do for a long time. A piece of technology which I'd dreamt of actually appeared and then John Fryer and I simply used it as much as we could. So consequently it might be a LITTLE overworked! Basically there was too much on it. It could have been six records really. I didn't know if I'd get another chance and I suppose I was a little bit greedy really." 8. P'o - Whilst Climbing Thieves Vie for Attention. Like the Dome albums this sounds like it was a lot of fun to record. Rather than the eclectic soundscape approach of Dome, P'o created mostly short songs and monologues on which Gilbert & Lewis were joined by Angela Conway and others, expanding to a full band, the idea being that they'd all play instruments they weren't overly familier with. Anyway P'o wasn't a massive departure from Dome, and this disc will certainly appeal to those who like Dome's more song orientated material. At least it certainly leans more towards Dome oddness than the more refined avant pop of AC Marias or He Said's later albums. Perversely my favourite track is one of the bonus cuts, an instrumental out-take from the P'o recording sessions. 9. Dugga Dugga Dugga. Masterfully mixed together by Mark Gage, this various artists Drilling thing is a better proposition than one might think, and aside from a couple of dated eighties style house-trance bores in the middle, it's quite an eclectic and interesting listen. It's perhaps not quite as varied as Wire's own 'Drill' mixes oddly enough but then again some of the Dugga tracks are very different. The last three are my favourites - Scaredy Cat, Ibrahim and the Ex-Lion Tamers actually moving away from the straight Pink Flag covers they're known for with a fast and furious 12xu-Drill hybrid that rocks. Didn't Ibrahim used to post to the Ideal Copy? 10. Desmond Simmons - Alone on Penguin Island* On which Lewis and Gilbert got the chance to do some production work and decided that they really wanted to make a Dome album. The results are variable and recommended to anyone whose favourite album is Dome1, although it must be said that if they'd really taken over completely and Graham Lewis had ousted Simmons from the mic then the vocals would have been better! But that would've been a bit cruel really. Got this out to give it a spin for the first time in years and found it sounded a lot better than I remember - idiosyncratic to say the least! Occasional echoes of Simmons time playing with Colin Newman poke through, and surely Wire recycled the title 'They Fly Information' as the lyric 'lies fly information' on 'A Public Place'? Shshsh... don't tell Elastica! 11. Whore* At one point wasn't this was the best seller on the label?! Maybe it still is? What's up with that? Perhaps it's down to the novelty value of the thing but also probably the fact that it includes the last public exposure of My Bloody Valentine, doing a pleasant but vastly inferior (to the original and their own songs) version of Map Ref. That's the problem here really - although a few artists bring a new perspective to the songs they cover, nothing comes close to eclipsing the originals. Then again, how could they? The best thing about this disc was that it introduced me to Laika, whose albums I like quite a bit but not as much as their sexy cover of 'German Shepherds' which is a definite 'Whore' highlight. Other standouts were Band of Susans cheeky 'Ahead' and Main's 'Used To' which retains the original's regretful menace but shifts the song into a very different droneframe. I quite often program the best five or six cuts or those which I've forgotten but have probably only listened to Whore all the way through three or four times, although only 3 cuts are unlistenably awful - Lush's twee waste of space, a stupid pseudo-opera attempt on the life of A Mutual Friend and some other best forgotten quasi-baggy band spoiling Being Sucked In Again. Longer reviews of the discs marked * can be found appending the Bruce Gilbert and Colin Newman interviews on the CM website http://www.webinfo.co.uk/crackedmachine Reviews of the others will be added eventually... Fibro Messi ____________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.co.uk address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk or your free @yahoo.ie address at http://mail.yahoo.ie ------------------------------ End of idealcopy-digest V3 #264 *******************************