Frequency Variation

This is the earliest music we’ve yet been able to hear by ex-Wire member Bruce Gilbert. It was recorded in 1974, when he was working at Watford School of Art; collaborating with Ron West, Gilbert experimented with oscillators on loan from the Science department, and reel-to-reel tape recorders, to create two primitive audio sculptures. It can feel, at first blush, as more of a historical curio than a listening experience, but give it patience. You can already hear Gilbert’s fondness for patient development and curious systems, and there’s something in the tangle of tones, and the pared-back focus, that means it settled very nicely on the Finnish label Sähkö when finally released in the late ’90s — after all, Sähkö was the first home for reductionist electronica duo, Pan Sonic.