Boutique is an offshoot label from the industrious and always fascinating LTM, dedicated to specialising in experimental ventures and exotic one-offs.
"MZUI", the label's second full-length release features Bruce Gilbert, Graham Lewis and Russell Mills. The eagle-eyed among you will already (a-ha!) have spotted...yes! Gilbert and Lewis from WIRE, immediately arousing interest in the keen post-punkers out there.
The Wire name is, naturally, enough to draw in the casual listener. However, a word of warning needs sounding before we wade into deeper waters, as "Mzui" bears absolutely no relation to the sharp and totally distinctive cerebral pop dispensed by Wire and it will confound those of you expecting such returns.
No, "Mzui" is the aural soundrack to an audio-visual installation staged in August 1981 by Gilbert, Lewis and designer/ Eno associate Russell Mills. The event took place at London's Waterloo Gallery (an ex-meat packing warehouse) and many of the 'exhibits' were fashioned from articles found in and around the gallery's environs.
You probably get some idea of these rude sculptures when I tell you they were called things like "Drip Drum" and "Xylo-Trapeze" and also included four high-tension cables strung from ceiling to floor. In true punk rock fashion, the project even fell foul of the Health & Safety Inspectors, when a "meadow" constructed of broken glass from smashed wine bottles was declared unsafe, even after being roped off.
All nicely provocative stuff, though whether you'll stomach the resulting aural counterpart 20 years on depends on your disposition towards forty minutes (comprising two untitled 'tracks') of the public encouraged to 'play' the exhibits.
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The end results are actually not too dissimilar to Brian Eno's pioneering early ambient albums like "On Land" or even "Music For Airports" (though murkier), or perhaps bits of the Aphex Twin's bizarre back catalogue. All sorts of strange, orchestral possibilities emerge, ranging from people plainly beating the crap out of metal (wonder if Test Department's personnel turned up?) to symphonic bells, eerie drones, patches of John Cage-style silence and what appears at one stage to be snatches of a baby crying.
Of course there's a minute line between art for art's sake and the Emperor's New Clothes and "Mzui" straddles this very uneasily at times. Some of this is truly hard going and the art conceit does threaten to collapse in places. That said, the almost Gregorian properties of the drone that gradually rises during the second 'piece' are genuinely disquieting, even this far divorced from the proceedings, so this CD is not entirely without merit.
Besides, in this form we're spared the smell of industrial cleaner Lewis used to hide the gallery's prevailing smell of offal from it's meat-packing days. Somehow, I think I can survive without being quite THAT at one with my environment.
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