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NUMBER 8 WIRE is the new track to be taken from ‘The Obvious I’, the second album from Ed Dowie and the second new master release from Needle Mythology, the label founded by music writer, author and broadcaster Pete Paphides.

The delicate and captivating electronic sound of NUMBER 8 WIRE was today's ‘While You Were Sleeping’ on the BBC 6Music Breakfast show.

Of the song Ed says “I first wrote this song a few years ago when I spent the summer writing a bunch of songs. I had felt like it was going well, until one day I listened to them and decided they were all total rubbish. I decided I needed to start again, so I deleted them all, along with all of my own music from my computer to start anew. This song sort of stayed with me, I’d find myself playing/singing it, so I tried lots of different versions, but ended up coming back to this first version (which I fortunately had on a backup drive!). I guess the song is about being careful not to be seduced by things that might appear to be beneficent or beneficial, but might just be your undoing. With a little side note of night time anxiety thrown in: Paranoid dyspepsia, Paranoid dyslexia, Paranoid dyspepsia"

ABOUT ED DOWIE ‘THE OBVIOUS I’

“The Obvious I would sound unutterably pretty even as an instrumental album. But once you factor in a voice whose purity has elicited comparisons to Robert Wyatt, Mark Hollis and Dean Wareham, the effect is something akin to hearing a ghost transmitting from a machine of its own making”. Pete Paphides

In 2017, Ed released his feted debut album ‘The Uncle Sold’, leading The Quietus to hail him as a “bold and starry-eyed visionary” and The Skinny to praise his “beautiful… stolen snapshots of glimpsed futures and lost pasts.” and BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction made the record one of their albums of the year. Now, four years on, Ed is to return with an album that will surely find him new followers alongside longtime fans such as Lauren Laverne, who described its predecessor as an “absolutely extraordinary” achievement.

The Obvious I marks a pronounced evolution from Dowie’s earlier music. Adhering to Kraftwerk’s maxim about achieving the maximum emotional impact by the most minimal means.

The Obvious I is a record that would see Dowie drawing on musical lessons learned throughout his life: from his childhood as a chorister in Dorset, taught to play piano by his father who himself composes choral classical 20th Century Music, to pivotal friendships made following the dissolution of his first group Brothers In Sound, when Dowie enrolled to study Music, Technology And Innovation at De Montford University in Leicester. The first module studied by Dowie during his time in Leicester introduced him to the work of minimalist composers such as Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young. “It helped break down the barriers between what pop is and what all this other stuff is. I love the way sometimes little pockets of beautiful melodies sneak into the world of experimental music – Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, the songs of Cornelius Cardew, the beauty and emotion in something like Terry Riley’s In C, and obviously the way the work of minimalists Philip Glass and Steve Reich seem to stray into quite sentimental areas.”

The Obvious I was co produced by pioneering British experimental musician and sometime member of Polar Bear “Leafcutter John” Burton “John’s become something of a hero of mine over the years. Way back when he was in Polar Bear, I approached him after a couple of gigs, and he’d remembered me from those days. And really, his presence on the record was invaluable. He lent me equipment and gave me advice, then when I finished recording, I sent him the stems and he mixed the album.”

What ultimately emerged from these efforts – and what reveals itself with successive plays – is a beguiling process of alchemy. Each song from The Obvious I is the culmination of a beautiful process of distillation. A crystal extracted from chaos. Tumult distilled into lullaby. “My biggest battle,” says Ed Dowie, “was to ask myself how I can make something that reflects the turbulence of this period without adding to it.” By that metric, and several more, The Obvious I is no small triumph.

ED DOWIE ‘THE OBVIOUS I’ LP (NEMYLP008)

Heavyweight vinyl pressing (@ Vinyl Factory) with a four-page insert.

The CD comes with a 12-page colour booklet.

Side One:
Then Send Them
The Obvious I
Red Stone
How Light I
Number 8 Wire

Side Two:
Under The Waves
Dear Florence
The Island
Robot Joy Army

ED DOWIE ‘THE OBVIOUS I’ CD (NEMYCD008)

Then Send Them
The Obvious I
Red Stone
How Light I
Number 8 Wire
Under The Waves
Dear Florence
The Island
Robot Joy Army

ED DOWIE ‘THE OBVIOUS I’ RELEASED ON NEEDLE MYTHOLOGY 26th MARCH 2021.