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Drums & Wires

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a b c Bernhardt, Todd; Partridge, Andy (6 January 2008). "Andy discusses 'Complicated Game' ". Chalkhills . Retrieved 30 August 2019.

Making Plans for Nigel” is a prime example of Moulding’s songwriting; the second song on Drums and Wires, “Helicopter,” is pure Partridge. While “Nigel” opens with the booming live drums made famous by Townhouse Recording Studio’s stone room (best known for birthing Phil Collin’s signature sound), “Helicopter” zips in on electric-sounding beats and a playful guitar line. Zippy, playful and futuristic, the song is perfect encapsulation of Partridge’s musical bugbears: novelty tunes heard courtesy of a junked record player his father nailed to a tea trolley. “I think he thought that was swish — that you could move it from one room to another and plug it in in another room,” Partridge says. “It was very perverse.” Coinciding with Gregory's arrival, in April 1979, the band recorded " Life Begins at the Hop", written by bassist Colin Moulding, and their first record with Lillywhite producing. [9] After the band went on tour for the single, sessions for Drums and Wires resumed from 25 June to July. [10] By this time, Moulding "wanted to ditch [our] quirky nonsense and do more straight-ahead pop." [1] He said that when Andrews was in the band, Partridge had "no kind of foil" to work with, as he "used to like the real kind of angular, spiky, upward-thrusting guitar ... if one is angular, the other has to kind of straighten him out, you know? It was just going too far the other way, I felt. So when Dave came in, and was a much straighter player, it seemed to make more sense, I think." [11] Partridge opined that, before then, Moulding's songs "came out as weird imitations of what I was doing, 'cause he thought that was the thing to do. ... On Go 2 he was sort of getting his own style, and by Drums and Wires he really started to take off as a songwriter." [2] Gregory remembered that XTC's songs "inspired a different approach to listening and playing from that which I'd grown up with. I simply couldn't continue grinding out old blues clichés and power chords, so I began to think more in terms of the songs as the masters and the instruments as the servants." [12] The album was recorded in three weeks and mixed in two. [10] Moulding agrees. “I started writing more in my own self; I think in the first two albums I was trying to find my niche, what was me and what wasn’t,” he tells TIDAL. “ Drums and Wires was a new start for me and I was writing in the vein that I wanted to write in. And we had a hit! That was a surprise…”I was fascinated with Chinese culture, and I started wearing Chinese clothes whenever I could get a hold of them,” Partridge recalls. “This fascination with China lasted until I saw the Tiananmen massacre on the TV. I thought, ‘Nope, don’t want to be fascinated by that no more.’”

In Moulding's recollection, "Up until that point, we were viewed as a poor man’s Talking Heads or something. People called us 'quirky.' But when we came out with Drums and Wires it was like a different band, really. Mainly, that was probably my fault." [65] He was surprised when the label began choosing his songs, instead of Partridge's, as singles. [11] Partridge felt that he was losing the band's leadership and attempted to exert more authority in the group, calling himself "a very benevolent dictator." [1] Moulding and Chambers reunited in 2017 as TC&I, releasing an EP titled Great Aspirations and playing a run of sold-out shows in their hometown of Swindon. They released a live album in early August 2019, but Moulding isn’t sure they’ll continue with the project. That was where Moulding came in; the bassist evened out some of Partridge’s more esoteric impulses, creating that balance between batty and boppy that defines XTC. The result is a record that boasts both poppy tunes (Moulding’s “Life Begins at the Hop,” which made it to Top of the Pops) and the very Beefheartian “Roads Girdle the Globe,” Partridge’s hymn to the religiosity of car enthusiasts.

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This I believe is one of my favorite top 3 XTC albums. Very underrated, but most XTC fans agree that this one has some amazing songs. This is the first of their albums that is really enjoyable all the way through, or is way more than just a curiosity at least. I do enjoy White Music and Go 2, but I'm not sure how many people would care about their existence if they weren't released by this band. Drums & Wires takes their quirky new wave or "post punk" type of sound from their last 2 records and uses it for some of the catchiest, most fun, clever, original and groundbreaking type of songs this band had yet to put out at this point.

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