Bruce Gilbert

Bruce Clifford Gilbert (born 18 May 1946) is an English musician. One of the founding members of the influential and experimental art punk band Wire, he branched out into electronic music, performance art, music production, and DJing during the band's extended periods of inactivity. He left Wire in 2004, and has since been focusing on solo work and collaborations with visual artists and fellow experimental musicians.

Education and early career Gilbert studied graphic design at Leicester Polytechnic until 1971; he then became an abstract painter, taking on part-time jobs to help support himself. In 1975, he was hired as an audio-visual aids technician and slide-photography librarian at Watford College of Art and Design.

Gilbert, who always considered Wire a living sculpture rather than a musical project, fondly recalls early punk gigs as events where the audience, far from being mere consumers, became part of a shared dynamic experience: "I viewed it as a bit of a laboratory, not musically but culturally, because the people were experimenting with themselves: with their behaviour, their appearance and their clothes. Everything was up for grabs."

Wire released three albums between 1976 and 1979, Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154, before temporarily disbanding after a show at London's Electric Ballroom at the start of 1980. At this time, Gilbert formed a series of bands/projects with Wire's bassist, Graham Lewis, including Cupol, Dome, P'o, and Duet Emmo. Dome performed at art galleries with visual displays that allowed audience interactivity. Gilbert and Lewis performed with tubes made of paper over their heads, thus restricting their vision. Artist Russell Mills frequently collaborated with Dome. In 1980, Gilbert and Lewis produced The The's debut single "Black & White/Controversial Subject" for 4AD, as well as the single "Drop/So" by A.C. Marias for their own Dome label. Between 8 and 31 August 1981, Gilbert, Lewis, and Mills 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, Gilbert's experimental piece "Children", released in 1983 by Touch, features his parents talking about significant events from their childhood.

Later career Between 1984 and 1991, Gilbert was commissioned to create music for a variety of film and modern dance projects, with excerpts appearing on his albums This Way (1984), The Shivering Man (1987) (both combined on CD as This Way to the Shivering Man), Insiding (1991) and Music for Fruit (1991). and Gilbert contributed sounds, lyrics, and occasional vocals to the various albums, EPs, and singles released by the band between November 1986 and February 1993.

Since the 1990s, Gilbert has appeared at London techno clubs under the name DJ Beekeeper, often deejaying inside a garden shed above the dancefloor. – such projects include remixing "National Grid Pt 1 and 2" by the group Disinformation for their double CD Antiphony released on Ash International in 1997.

In March 1996, he released Ab Ovo, his first solo album not to result from external dance or film commissions. It was described in The Wire as "a forceful piece of work which sounds like nothing else around."

Wire reconvened in London for a one-off performance of "Drill" to celebrate Gilbert's 50th birthday in May 1996. Wire entered their third incarnation on 26 February 2000 with a performance at the Royal Festival Hall. In 2002, Gilbert wrote and recorded the soundtrack for "London Orbital", a film by Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair based on Sinclair's psychogeographical exploration of the M25 motorway. As part of the project, Gilbert and Wire performed live at the premiere of the film and Sinclair's book at the Barbican on 25 October 2002. Gilbert left Wire in 2004, after the release of the Send album, pursuing solo projects and collaborations with visual and sound artists ever since.

Gilbert's 2004 album Ordier is a collection of excerpts from a 1996 live performance. 2006 saw him contribute to Susan Stenger's Soundtrack for an Exhibition within the eponymous project curated by Mathieu Coupland that brought together artists from the realms of music, fine art, and film at the Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon. In 2009, Gilbert released Oblivio Agitatum, which he recorded entirely at home. In a review for Brainwashed, music journalist Creaig Dunton concluded that "even with his long silence, Bruce Gilbert is still an expert at shaping mini dramas and landscapes out of the raw clay of electronic music."

Revisiting his collaboration with Pan Sonic as IBM in 2001, Gilbert paired up with Mika Vainio in May 2011 at the Netaudio London festival for an exclusively commissioned live performance. His 2011 recording, "Monad", was published by Touch as a vinyl-only 7-inch single on 8 August.

In October 2011, Gilbert's short story "Sliding Off the World", first released as a spoken-word piece set to atmospheric noise on the CD Touch 25 in June 2006, was published in the anthology Murmurations by Nicholas Royle (Two Ravens Press, ).

Gilbert's latest release, Diluvial, was launched at Beaconsfield Art Works in London on 13 September 2013. A collaboration between Gilbert and BAW (sound and visual artists Naomi Siderfin and David Crawforth), Diluvial is a seven-piece reflection on climate change and creation stories.

Selected discography with Wire See: Wire discography

with Cupol Like This For Ages EP (1980), 4AD

Gilbert and Lewis "Ends with the Sea" (1980), 4AD

with Dome Dome 1 (1980), Dome Records Dome 2 (1981), Dome Records Dome 3 (1981), Dome Records Will You Speak This Word (1982), Unition Yclept (1999), WMO

Compilations & reissues DOME 1-4+5, 5-LP box set (December 2011), Editions Mego

with A.C. Marias "Drop/So", single (1980), Dome Records "Just Talk/No Talk", 12" single (1986), Mute "Time Was/Some Thing", 12" single (1989), Mute One of Our Girls (Has Gone Missing), album (1989), Mute "One of Our Girls/Vicious", 12" single (1990), Mute

Gilbert, Lewis and Mills Mzui (Waterloo Gallery) (1982), Cherry Red Pacific/Specific (1995), WMO

with Duet Emmo "Or So It Seems", single (1982), Mute Or So It Seems, album (1983), Mute

with P'o Whilst Climbing Thieves Vie for Attention, album (1983), Court

Gilbert/Hampson/Kendall Orr, album (1996), Mute (Parallel Series)

with Iain Sinclair Downriver, CD (1998), King Mob

Bruce Gilbert – Ron West "frequency variation", 12" single (1998), Sähkö Recordings

with rude mechanic rude mechanic, 2 x CD, (recorded 1996, released 1999), Piano

gilbertpossstenger manchesterlondon, album (2000), WMO

with IBM The Oval Recording, album + 7" single (2001), Mego

with Souls on Board Souls on Board, cassette (2009), The Tapeworm

with Meltaot Souls on Board, vinyl LP (2010), Ash International

with BAW (Naomi Siderfin and David Crawforth) Diluvial, CD (2013) Touch Music RRR 500, LP (1998), RRRecords Antitrade, CD (1999), Ash International Audible Light, CD (2000), Education and Exhibition Dept. at The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. This Way (25th Anniversary Reissue) (2009), Editions Mego The Shivering Man (Enhanced) (2011), Editions Mego

Singles "Instant Shed Vol. 1" (1995), Sub Pop "Instant Shed Vol. 2" (1996), Ash International "Monad" (2011), Touch