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unlike their singles, which were always great,’ says Ivo. ‘The situation over “Double Dare” underlined what was wrong.’

      The album showed that Bauhaus was not to be swayed by criticism. ‘Terror Couple Kills Colonel’ may have changed tack but the album tracks ‘St Vitus Dance’ and ‘Stigmata Martyr’ could not have been a more resolute renewal of goth tendencies, with Murphy in the central crucified role. Their resolution was rewarded when In The Flat Field topped the independent charts and reached number 72 on the national UK chart. This was despite an unusually vindictive reaction from the music press. ‘Nine meaningless moans and flails bereft of even the most cursory contour of interest,’ said NME. ‘Too priggish and conceited. Sluggish indulgence instead of hoped for goth-ness,’ claimed Sounds.

      That Sounds wanted more ‘goth-ness’ was an irony that Bauhaus’ fragile ego was unable to appreciate. ‘We really had our backs to the wall,’ Haskins Dompe recalls. ‘We got slammed for the Bowie influence, and the press also felt we were really pretentious. It took me twenty years to accept we were, to a degree, but at the time I wouldn’t hear of it. It was us against the world.’

      ‘The zeitgeist was dark and intense, but I thought “gothic” was the antithesis of Bauhaus,’ claims David J. ‘We felt more eclectic, with influences like dub and early electronics like Suicide, Can and disco. Out of our peers, we felt most empathy with Joy Division. When [Joy Division singer] Ian Curtis said he liked Bauhaus, it meant a lot. He came to see us play and told us he had our singles.’

      Retrospection has been kinder to Bauhaus. Simon Reynolds, author of the seminal post-punk history Rip It Up and Start Again, claimed that Bauhaus were the exception to the rule that goth bands ‘didn’t live up to the image’. Reynolds also favourably compared Bauhaus’ early singles to Joy Division. ‘If we had dressed like Gang of Four or Joy Division we wouldn’t have been hated,’ Pete Murphy told Stool Pigeon writer John Doran in 2008. ‘And there was a really strong homoerotic element to what we did – a glamorous element; a very Wildean element.’

      Ivo didn’t care either. He dismissed labelling and ideas of what was perceived as cool or not – all that mattered was music and an artist’s self-belief. ‘I never understood the gothic association,’ he says. ‘If people think the music was dark, that’s fine by me. I was just responding to things I enjoyed, that I emotionally connected to, that had possibilities.’

      ‘The music fitted Ivo’s character, dark and personal,’ says Martin Mills. ‘The pop world was on a completely different shelf.’

      Disappointed by the Bauhaus album, Ivo was also struggling to fall for Rema-Rema’s successor, Mass: ‘I liked them enormously as people, but musically, they were an anomaly.’ With Max departing alongside boyfriend Marco Pirroni, the remaining nucleus of Mick Allen, Mark Cox and Gary Asquith found a drummer who was already looking for them: Danny Briottet, a schoolboy who would hang out in Beggars’ Ealing shop. ‘Danny said he really liked Rema-Rema, and to tell them that he’d like to be their drummer,’ says Ivo. ‘The next thing I know, Mass had formed and Danny – who couldn’t play drums! – was in. Was he going to ruin it?’

      ‘The one thing about Mass I don’t like is the stiff drums,’ says Asquith, who nevertheless went on to form Renegade Soundwave with Briottet (who proved to be a much better programmer than drummer). ‘And we didn’t have Marco’s brilliance. But Mick was a great bassist. And the source of songs was just as good.’

      Cox had been Marco’s number one fan but could see Mick Allen had come into his own. ‘Picture this super-slim guy with unkempt hair, kind of quiet, who had flowered into this multi-faceted personality. And our sound was completely uncompromised. We wouldn’t mould anything for anyone.’

      Mass’ 4AD debut was a seven-inch single that rivalled In Camera for dark and personal, with a side serving of bleak. ‘You And I’ followed in the eerie slipstream of Rema-Rema’s ‘Fond Affections’, laced with an organ drone, background cries and only an occasional tom-tom roll to lend momentum. The thick bass pulse, layered vocal extortions and thumped drums similarly recalled the old band but the feel and mood was more leaden, without the same degree of liberation. Not even John Peel was on side. ‘He thought it some of the most consciously morose music he’d ever heard,’ Cox sighs. And, as Ivo recalls, ‘Peel’s support made all the difference in those days.’

      Mass was the perfect example of a band driven by a fearless self-will, in the truest sense of punk’s do-it-yourself mentality. As they walked on stage for their first show, third on the bill to Bauhaus at the University of London, Cox recalls Asquith facing the audience and announcing, ‘I fucking hate students!’ At the Moonlight Club, Ivo remembers Mass receiving no applause after a song and Asquith yelling, ‘We’ve never been loved!’ But at the same show, Ivo adds, ‘I was mesmerised by Mick crooning “You And I” quite beautifully.’

      ‘We used to call Mass “Mess” because they lacked direction,’ says Richie Thomas, whose instrumental band Dif Juz had supported Mass at central London’s Heaven nightclub. ‘But they had a really interesting look: Germanic, like Bowie circa Low, but upmarket. Gary looked edgy and dangerous, like a tightly coiled spring.’

      At least Mass had style. Modern English had a guitarist with a stegosaurus haircut, but fortunately their second single ‘Gathering Dust’ showed a noticeable progress in dynamics, structure and impact. ‘It’s one of the most underrated of post-punk anthems,’ Ivo reckons, who gets credit from the band for his contribution.

      Mick Conroy: ‘Ivo was quiet at the beginning of our relationship, probably because he was focused on 4AD. But he got stuck in to “Gathering Dust”. The studio was as much an adventure for him as us. For example, he really liked Steve’s synth noises, which Steve couldn’t easily control, so Ivo had the idea to put it all through an Eventide harmoniser.’

      Ivo: ‘Fucking hell! It was my first taste of influencing a recording, and I loved it. But the only reason I got a producer credit was that the band were practically asleep under the desk, and the engineer had to get approval from someone, so I’d say yes to things.’

      After the haphazard art direction of 4AD’s early sleeves, including the unsuitably fey figurine on the cover of ‘Swans On Glass’, Modern English – and 4AD generally – needed art direction as well. ‘Ivo told us that someone was coming in with his portfolio,’ recalls Conroy.

      An exquisitely designed house in Epsom, Surrey, from the furniture and ornamental bric-a-brac to the shelves of hefty art books, framed posters and wooden sculptures – this has to be the property of an artist. The drawers of big, elegant wooden plan chests dotted all over reveal copious sheaves of artwork: proofs of record sleeves, posters, adverts, most of it vintage, all evidence of a rich body of work.

      The owner of the artwork, the man responsible for a lot of the surrounding designer detail, is as integral to the 4AD story as Ivo. There for the long run, he worked on endlessly bewitching, beguiling and beautiful images from his own warped imagination and those of his close collaborators; images that have been exhibited nationally and internationally, published in books and catalogues, and with countless dedicated designers and illustrators pledging allegiance to a body of work they claim irrevocably changed their lives.

      This is also a man who, for one particular sleeve image, stripped down to his underpants in a suburban London flat, strapped on a belt of dead eels and enacted a fertility dance for the camera. To say Vaughan Oliver is a character is an understatement. Everyone who ever worked for, or released a record on, 4AD during its first twenty years, has their Vaughan story. He might as well get his version in first.

      ‘The first thing I ever wrote on a toilet wall,’ he says, ‘were the words “To suggest is to create; to describe is to destroy”. So said French photographer Robert Doisneau, and it struck me as the perspective that I come from. To keep things open to interpretation.’

      In the spirit of Doisneau, Oliver shouldn’t really recount the inspiration behind the belt of dead eels, but it’s too good to resist. ‘It was a reaction to an all-girl band, called The Breeders, their album title

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