ABOUT Dominic Waxing Lyrical
Dominic Waxing Lyrical, a band centred on songwriter, performance artist and musician Dominic Harris, first appeared on the UK indie music scene in 1994. During 1990s they performed live and released a series of singles. Their debut album, Dominic Waxing Lyrical, was released on vinyl in 1995. It has subsequently become a collector’s item and been credited with influencing many other bands.
Fans waited until 2015 for second album release. The highly-acclaimed Woodland Casual and a series of associated singles featured musicians from leading Edinburgh bands Aberfeldy, Clean George IV and Badgewearer.
DWL released a third album Rural Tonic in 2017. It included performances from orchestral players from Mr McFall's Chamber and once again, the members of Aberfeldy.
Dominic Waxing Lyrical was subsequently recorded by the BBC in session with Mr McFall's Chamber on Classics Unwrapped which aired on BBC Radio. The band has also been played, and supported, by John Cavanagh (BBC 6Music) and Vic Galloway (Radio Scotland) and the single Susan Sontag was promoted on a playlist by Lauren Laverne (BBC 6Music).
Dominic recently travelled to the Bible Belt of America, to write and record the band’s fourth album Diminuet. On returning to Edinburgh, Robert McFall (of Mr McFall’s Chamber) scored the music for the string quartet. Strings, percussion and bass were duly added to the mix.
Ricky White (Oi Polloi and Kling Klang) helped write and produce this latest album. Diminuet has ‘winter’ as its theme and is slated for release in November 2024.
SIGNIFICANT APPEARANCES
1990s
Dominic Waxing Lyrical wrote and performed the music for Atoll Fugard’s A Place with the Pigs at the Traverse Theatre.
DWL’s music received radio plays from John Peel, when they recorded for Glasgow label Bosque Records. They basked in the glory of Peel’s verdict on the single Change: “Not bad when you think about it.”
Dominic and eight other band members/crew were arrested in the mid-nineties after staging an audacious roof-top concert in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.
In 1997 they recorded an EP in Jimmy Hendrix’s studio on West 8th street in New York (The Electric Lady Studio).
In 1998 they appeared on MTV live in concert (which was broadcast twice).
2000s
In 2000 they played at the National Review of Live Art in Glasgow. They also put on a show in The Assembly Rooms Ballroom that ran throughout the Edinburgh Festival.
Dominic played with The Fence Collective in 2014, in a cave in Crail (East Neuk, Fife).
In 2016 Dominic Waxing Lyrical appeared with Mr McFall’s Chamber as part of Classics Unwrapped on BBC Radio Scotland. View the video here >>
In 2019 Dominic appeared solo at the Click Clack Club in Edinburgh dressed in a Post Office Sellotape Bikini. Inspired by the International Situationists (who had handed out leaflets at a Paris film festival outlining why Charlie Chaplin was a waste of space) he ended the performance by leading the audience out to the street where he destroyed his guitar by smashing it on the pavement.
In 2021, during lockdown, the band was included in Soundhouse Spotlight an online concert series by The Soundhouse Organisation.
In January 2024 Dominic and the band played at Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre in Glasgow’s West End.
Currently Dominic is working on the live show for the November release of Diminuet with director David Greig.
REVIEWS
“Smeared with all manner of inspired quirk-pop delights” – Tim Peacock, Record Collector
“Not bad when you think about it” – John Peel
“A really beautiful record *****” – The Skinny (on Rural Tonic)
“A lovely thing to curl up with and get all misty-eyed to” – Back Seat Mafia (on Rural Tonic)
“Harris is primarily a poet, and while that is evident in the delivery of his often challenging and metaphorical lyrics, there's a musicality to his cadence and tenor which makes his work strangely alluring” – The List
“Compared to other ’90s acts who have reinvented themselves in our modern music scene, Dominic Waxing Lyrical have kept their game simple, staying the same” – Gigs Lutz
“DIY-baroque-folk” – Melody Maker
“There’s something quite refreshing about the songwriting of Dominic Harris. In as much as anything, it’s the way he thinks and writes out of the box. In a musical world with too many indentikit pop stars, and landfill indie failing to offer the alternative it thinks it does, this is much needed” – 17 Seconds
“The singular lyricism of Dominic Harris can be opaque, but it is never less than intriguing” – The Herald
“Music with dance with sheer madness and interesting items of clothing” – The List (1996)
“Dominic Harris is one of those men who come along every so often to remind people that music does not all have to sound the same” – God is in the TV
“What to say about Dominic Waxing Lyrical? I hardly know where to start, but the good thing is that he has not stopped” – Tom Worthington, Bosque Records
