Search - Bruce Gilbert :: Ab Avo

Great sounds from ex-Wire-guitarist

07/24/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Ab Ovo" ist the best album from Bruce Gilbert and probably the best way to become acquainted to the innovative output of the former Wire-guitarist. It offers a great variety of styles, sounds and moods and contains quiet ambient-landscapes, disturbing electronic noises and psuedo-techno-rhythms. The mostly short pieces are based around the albums core, the 24 mins. title track. "Ab Ovo" is a great listening adventure for those generous enough to give it ears, and it is preferable to "In Esse", the chaotic and almost unlistenable album that followed."

I guess being a DJ does enhance recording creativity!

Joren A. Lindholm | Washington DC | 09/15/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"One of Bruce's best. The Ab Ovo remix 12" is also very good, if you can find it (it's a picture disc!). Bruce's previous recordings were more or less from a previous decade and are all perfectly pitched encapsulations of his ideas of the time. When Ab Ovo came out in the mid-'90s, our Wire man - yours truly - had done quite a number of events as a live 'DJ', developing his own special approach to it and yielding considerable public recognition (predominantly through the Disobey Club). I remember being a little suspicious and worried. However, you can tell the effect it has had on Bruce's studio recording. The cramming of sounds. Ab Ovo overall is twice as dense as his previous albums. The only earlier piece that comes close to the layering that Ab Ovo has is 'Bloodlines' from the Insiding album. This new decade's release is a total blossoming of sonic manipulation, yet Bruce still lets his ideas remain fresh and uncluttered behind everything that got generated for the album. Ab Ovo also is longer than his previous discs, with a higher number of tracks - his first CD only release. The thing that gets me with each listen to this is how darn DYNAMIC this type of sound collage can be! (In Esse is another chapter completely.) Each track here is different from the next. Then a stellar centerpiece with so many different parts. Geez, what is a track(?), I'm left wondering. What is music? It's a waste trying to describe this stuff. The bottom line is that this release is superbly composed and creates a transporting experience which for me defies all sense of time and space. It also tends to dismantle the rest of the music in my library that it sits next to. A beautiful sore."

What true experimental music is about

Said Head | MN, USA | 10/26/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Bruce Gilbert is a brilliant musician, but often he doesn't even try to make music, just ideas, and AB Ovo is the epitome of music created by ideas. This music shows that the four things that make music popular: conventional structure, quality production, catchy hooks, and gimmicks, are simply not necessary to create something with emotion.



The album varies greatly in sound and structure, no two pieces similar to each other. Within the first two tracks you go from electronic drone to minimal percussion and guitar. The different pieces are all rather repetitive, but in a good way; nothing is 'cut and paste' production (or at least doesn't sound like it), which gives AO a much more organic feel and more volume. The title track itself is almost an album all on its own, not out of length, but from the many different sounds and textures that develop and die within those 24 minutes.



I'm a big Wire fan, and although I feel that Wire's latest album falls short musically because of Gilbert's, I am kind of glad he is now able to fulfill more of his own musical ideas."