The "Influential Records" Game Commentary, Part 5

We end the “top ten” with a record that was perfectly situated to point me forward as an artist and emerging experimental musician: Dome 3 by Dome. Dome was a side project of two members of the Art Punk band Wire, so this entry will also serve as a way of paying homage to that band’s influence as well.

I knew Wire first. I remember listening to Pink Flag at The Next house on the day they bought it. We all were amazed at how fast they were playing, especially on the iconic “12XU”. It sounds much slower by today’s standards, but maybe it was the songs brevity, or the ultra-concise lyrics, or the insistent urgency of the guitar tone, that made us hear it as a high speed train. The songs that impress me most from the LP now are the slower, broodier tunes, foremost among them the newsworthy “Reuters”. What an awesome song! “Lowdown” and the title song also were a surprise. It seemed like this was the first Punk album that really lived up to the hype and carved its own musical niche.

I remember liking Chairs Missing and 154 upon their releases also, but as they got better at their instruments and had access to better recording environments, the songs seemed to slip, as a whole, toward a “poutier” perspective. Don’t get me wrong: “I Am The Fly” could be THE Punk anthem (at least lyrically) from the period, and there were definitely some stellar experiments on 154, but I thought I could detect in Colin Newman’s voice a slide toward what would be the noticeable focus of the next grouping of Wire releases in the mid 80s - gooey romanticism. I never was one to tolerate that stance much!

In the meantime, the band took a break to do other projects, and Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis began working as Dome. I was visiting a friend one afternoon who put Dome 3 on the turntable, and I was floored! It sounded like aliens had brought electric instruments to cave people and set them loose to create a totally new form of music, where the lines between vocals and instrumentation were constantly shifting in unexpected ways and the message was conveyed telepathically! This, I could get behind! Unfortunately, it was an extremely rare thing to find a copy, so I didn’t own it until years later when I found the Mute Records reissues 1+2 and 3+4 at the New York record store Other Music. Not only had it held up, it had been a prophesy of sorts.

I also, later, came across the collection of Gilbert/Lewis experiments called 8 Time, and again they seemed to have crafted the perfect noncommercial soundscape for my inner artist. I remember at the time being compelled to create several experimental rhythmic loops to build industrial soundtracks on after hearing this one.

Like I said, I had little interest in what I generally heard of the mid-80s Wire, other than the song “Drill”. But during those years I was immersed up to my ear holes in the radical new music that had finally developed out of that rigid Hardcore phase: Noise Rock, or Acid Punk, or whatever you want to call it. There were certainly some elements of Industrial music that were having a huge impact on me also (before it started veering into commercially viable Dance music), but in any event I wasn’t in the mood for “moody”. I may have to give those records another listen now…

I took my son to see Wire in 2002 when they played at Irving Plaza in New York City. The whole set was new material until their encores, and the material was so great that I bought the CD EPs that they had available on the spot! The angry young men were now angry old men, but no less dedicated to finding urgent, stripped down methods to convey that anger in potent songs. Lately, Bruce Gilbert has quit the group, and Colin Newman once again seems to be taking himself way too seriously. But I still count myself a Wire fan, and a Dome devotee.