Although
Colin Newman is most readily associated with
Wire, like bandmates
Bruce Gilbert and
Graham Lewis he has undertaken numerous additional creative endeavors. Across a range of projects, the
Wire guitarist/vocalist has consistently reinvented himself, venturing from post-punk art pop into ambient, electronic territory, along the way producing other artists and setting up his own label.
Newman was born in Salisbury, England, in 1954 and attended Watford School of Art, where he studied under Peter Schmidt. At Watford, he formed
Wire with
Bruce Gilbert in 1976 and the band quickly emerged as one of British punk's more innovative, intelligent acts. Having evolved at a breathtaking pace over three albums that were among the period's most influential records (
Pink Flag,
Chairs Missing, and
154), the group went on hiatus in early 1980.
With
Wire producer
Mike Thorne,
Newman immediately embarked on a solo album,
A-Z, much of which had been written during the making of
154. Recognizing
A-Z's commercial viability,
Newman's U.S. label suggested extensive touring to break the album, but since he had already been through this process with
Wire, and with little success, he declined. (The
A-Z track "Alone" would later be heard by millions on the soundtrack to
Jonathan Demme's
The Silence of the Lambs.)
For the follow-up, Provisionally Entitled the Singing Fish,
Newman and
Thorne parted company.
Thorne was convinced of
Newman's chart potential but
Newman wasn't interested in making purely commercial records. Inspired partly by
Lewis and
Gilbert's experiments as
Dome, The Singing Fish was a moderately ambient,
Eno-esque exercise. Although he re-adopted a more conventional, group-based rock approach for 1982's
Not To,
Newman had become increasingly frustrated with the music business and, after producing
the Virgin Prunes'
If I Die, I Die, disappeared to India for a year.
Following
Newman's return to Britain in 1984,
Wire resumed its activities, releasing
The Ideal Copy in 1986. The next five years were especially productive as
Newman kept his creative options open, recording and touring with
Wire and also pursuing solo projects. Having produced
Minimal Compact's
Raging Souls,
Newman moved to Brussels and, in collaboration with
Minimal Compact's
Malka Spigel, made two more albums,
Commercial Suicide (1986) and the synthesizer-based It Seems (1988). Throughout this period, both
Wire's and
Newman's own recordings became increasingly computer-oriented. While advances in digital technology prompted
Wire drummer
Robert Gotobed's departure and temporarily ended the band's existence as a foursome, they also stimulated a new phase in
Newman's work.
With
Spigel, he relocated to London in the early '90s, founded the
Swim label, and put out records by diverse electronic artists including
Ronnie & Clyde,
Lobe, dol-lop, and
Pablo's Eye. Energized by the flourishing techno and electronica scenes,
Newman collaborated with
Spigel during the '90s on her
Rosh Ballata (1993) and under various monikers:
Oracle,
Immersion, Earth, Oscillating, and Intens.
In 1996, as
Immersion, the pair contributed a sound installation to a group show at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. The following year saw the release of
Bastard, an album of instrumental, melodic electronica that was
Newman's first self-credited record since It Seems. In addition to working on
Spigel's second full-length record,
My Pet Fish, co-producing
Silo's
Instar, and remixing such diverse bands as
Bowery Electric,
Hawkwind, and
Gentle Giant,
Newman returned to performance in 1998-1999, playing gigs in Europe and America with
Spigel. Another
Immersion album, the abstract, ambient
Low Impact, followed, and 2000 found
Newman and
Spigel again playing live as
Immersion, this time with more of a multimedia emphasis.
Just as
Newman had recaptured some of punk's original D.I.Y. spirit with the foundation of the
Swim label, in 2001 he continued in the same vein with the launch of PostEverything.com -- a web-based store aimed at the distribution of independently released music.
Amid this flurry of millennial activity,
Newman also regrouped with
Wire for concerts in the U.K. and the U.S. in 2000 and the band eventually began recording again. The first entirely new
Wire material in over a decade appeared on 2002's
Read & Burn 01.
Send, a full-length containing brand-new songs and material from the
Read & Burn series, was released in May of 2003.
Wire remained a going concern throughout the 2000s and 2010s, and
Newman divided his time between the band and his other projects. These included
Githead, a collaboration with
Spigel,
Scanner's
Robin Rimbaud, and
Max Franken. The band debuted with 2004's
Headgit EP, and released full-length albums such as 2005's
Profile, 2007's
Art Pop, 2009's
Landing, and 2014's
Waiting for a Sign.
Newman also worked on
Spigel's solo albums
Every Day Is Like the First Day (2012) and Gliding (2014). Among
Wire's highlights during this time were 2008's
Object 47, their first album without
Gilbert; 2013's
Change Becomes Us, which reworked previously unrecorded songs from just before the band's first hiatus; and the moody, streamlined pop of 2015's self-titled effort. Late in 2016,
Newman reissued
A-Z, Provisionally Entitled the Singing Fish, and
Not To on his own Sentient Sonics imprint. ~ Wilson Neate