Released

After post-punk group Wire called time on their first phase in 1980, Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis, guitarist and bassist/vocalist for the group respectively, continued to collaborate, often working within conceptual and modern art settings. With Mzui, they’ve reworked recordings sourced from an audio-visual installation they undertook, joined by artist Russell Mills, in 1981 at London’s Waterloo Gallery. It’s a shifty, tense, slowly unfolding composition. The focal point is often the ambience of the gallery space; loose shuffling around the space, and abstract engagements with sculptures and found objects slowly morph into a distressed, anxious architecture of sound. Their joint capacity for patient construction makes it never less than compelling.

Jon Dale