Bruce Gilbert

Were his pioneering art punk work as the most experimentally inclined member of Wire Bruce Gilbert's only claim to fame, he would still be an important figure in the avant-pop world. Gilbert's work outside of that group, however, is at least as intriguing. Born in 1946, Gilbert was already 30 when Wire formed, a former art school student with a background in the British avant-garde music underground of the late '60s. This atypical interest is an enormous part of what made Wire so unlike the other bands of the first wave of U.K. punk, as the esoteric leanings of guitarist Gilbert and bassist Graham Lewis meshed with the somewhat more straightforward style of singer Colin Newman and drummer Robert Gotobed. Over their brilliant first three albums, Wire expanded the sonic boundaries of not just punk, but rock music in general. Wire's final release in their initial incarnation was "Crazy About Love," a 15-minute drone that pointed the way toward Gilbert's next projects. Partnering with Lewis in the duo Dome, Gilbert released several increasingly experimental albums between 1981 and Wire's reformation in 1986. The partnership's pinnacle was 1982's MZUI/Waterloo Gallery, a combination of ambient music and found sound that's among the most unusual and absorbing records of Gilbert's career. During Wire's second incarnation (1986-1991), Gilbert actively pursued a solo career; as this edition of Wire moved more and more into a skewed but subversively commercial pop direction, scoring college and alternative radio hits like "Kidney Bingos" along the way, Gilbert's solo records completely dropped all pretense of pop music. 1984's This Way contains Gilbert's first score for the avant-garde Michael Clark Dance Company and a pair of lengthy minimalist electronic pieces akin to Steve...