DUET EMMO - Or So It Seems

LP Mute Records 1983
CD reissue Mute Records 1992 with bonus track



"Originally released in 1983, Duet Emmo's Or So It Seems was one of the numerous projects pursued by Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis during Wire's hiatus in the early '80s. While preparing the third Dome album, the pair began working with Mute Records founder Daniel Miller, brains behind the Silicon Teens and also known as The Normal, whose single T.V.O.D. / Warm Leatherette had been a foundational recording for electro-pop. In theory, Duet Emmo - an anagrammatic combination of the names Dome and Mute - promised to be an engaging hybrid of Gilbert and Lewis' abstract, minimal textures and Miller's rigid, song-based electronics. However, Or So It Seems didn't completely realize that potential and the album is less a seamless marriage of the collaborators' aesthetics than an awkward cohabitation of abstruse Dome material with more accessible and melodic synth-oriented fare. (...) The trio's composite name suggested a blending of creative identities. Nevertheless, the fruit of this collaboration is a largely schizophrenic affair in which the Dome-flavored material accounts for the less compelling moments. ".
(Wilson Neate, All-Music Guide)

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