When Wire played the Quietus-affiliated DRILL:LONDON festival last March, one of the most interesting parts to witness was the various members going off to play on their own or with other projects – bassist Graham Lewis performed a solo set at Cafe Oto, stern and professorial behind a laptop. "[he] does the honours, opening both the weekend part of the Quietus-assisted Drill:London… and a gaping abyss in the middle of everyone’s Friday evening" we said at the time. Lewis has just announced details of two new solo albums, to be released vie Editions Mego on June 23rd 2014. All Over, written over the past decade, features contributions from Andreas Karperyd, Howardamb, Linda Dahl, Jim Ascoft, Fabrizio Clemenza, Jan Lundquist, Giovanni Romano and P.T.Kirk, who readers of our Rum Music column will know as Akatombo. It was mastered by Russell Haswell. We’re told that this is a "catchy excursion into the unstable grid of the 21st Century" and "a major amalgamation of music, media, man and mind". We can tell you that lead track ‘We’ve Lost Your Mind’, streaming below, sounds fantastic, with typically unusual Graham Lewis wordplay ("visit the poet/ surgery and the sonic mill" and lines about lubricating the flicking tongue) tripping along over a rather fetching little melody and emerging and disappearing into plenty of racket.
All Over will come out at the same time as All Under about which Lewis says: "All Under contains the full versions of the ‘professorial’ material I aired at Oto plus other donnish delights." Said delights include soundtracks to films, installations and a self penned short story, and the film score track ‘All Under’ can be listened to below. For pre-order please visit the Editions Mego website.