Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD - Martin Aston

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I bought “Dark Entries”, and after that I needed everything on 4AD. I’d heard all this British music at [New York club] Danceteria, yet nothing on 4AD sounded like anything else.’

      Fronted by David Sylvian, Japan’s sound was austere and romantic, a world unto itself. Roseberry found 4AD similarly fascinating: ‘It defied definition, but evoked the same feeling, what I’d call an “other otherness”. It was an esoteric version of music like Siousxie and the Banshees, music to the left of what was already left of centre. By then, I’d discovered lots of art, like Bauhaus and Dada. I understood from 4AD artwork, which was just as left field, that 4AD was coming from an art aesthetic more than simply music. It was informing me how to see the world.’

      Roseberry began collecting every 4AD release, right back to Axis. ‘It was something to obsess over, even more than with Prince or David Sylvian. It was more obscure and niche and when you found it, you cherished it because it seemed to appear out of nowhere. It had such mystique. But what struck me the most was the catalogue numbering! So I had to own it all, and file everything in sequence. 4AD was more than a record label or art house; it became a culture.’

      The attention to cataloguing aided the collectability of 4AD (the prefixes extended to DAD, GAD and HAD). It was all part of the bespoke detail that set independent labels apart from the majors. It created an identifiable culture that had grown big enough to support its own distribution system and trade magazine. The Cartel was a new association of independent regional UK distributors, which was partly funding the monthly title The Catalogue, which was based in the Rough Trade distribution offices, with listings and features covering the ever-expanding alternative movement of labels and artists.

      The Catalogue’s Australian-born founding editor Brenda Kelly had first discovered 4AD while working at Melbourne’s alternative radio station 3RRR. ‘The Birthday Party was a key and radical Melbourne band, and any label that signed them had to be interesting, but what first attracted me to 4AD was Cocteau Twins,’ she says. ‘All of the four big UK independents – 4AD, Rough Trade, Factory and Mute – had maverick qualities, but, more so even than Factory, 4AD was special because it created an atmosphere around beauty. It was art for art’s sake. The artwork gave 4AD the most clearly articulated and uncompromising identity, which was crucial to the independent movement at that time – things were more complex and subtle than “do it yourself”.

      ‘People forget that art is a part of youth culture rather than just a succession of trends or an attitude, and such a consciously arty label like 4AD meant the independent scene was enriched and broadened. It created a space for bands and labels to build a roster and create a strong identity and base for their bands. Some independent labels, particularly 4AD, didn’t talk much about the politics of independence, but Ivo understood and supported the space that independent distribution created.’

      If enough people responded with the same belief and support as Kelly and Roseberry, 4AD had a fighting chance of creating something bigger than an esoteric cult. If there could be songs that US or UK mainstream radio responded to, there might even be hits, to match Depeche Mode at Mute or New Order at Factory. Modern English were 4AD’s best hope, and in the major label tradition, a second single was plucked off After The Snow after the album had been released.

      ‘I Melt With You’ had a simple structure, breezy timbre and matching chorus, which Sounds writer Johnny Waller described as, ‘a dreamy, creamy celebration of love and lust’. Yet the single barely broke the indie top 20. The video showed 4AD’s inexperience in catering to a broader demographic: ‘It was one of the most awful we ever did,’ Ivo recalls. ‘It was filmed in a dingy basement with two hired dancers, and Robbie bleeding from a scab after a cat had scratched his face.’

      If Modern English’s new identity had lost John Peel’s patronage, The Happy Family never had the DJ on side to begin with. This was despite the fact that Peel had always supported Josef K, and line-up changes increased the number of former Josef K personnel; though Malcolm Ross and Ian Stoddart had left (the former, to join Orange Juice), their respective replacements were Josef K roadie Paul Mason and drummer Ronnie Torrence. New keyboardist Neil Martin made five).

      Nick Currie recalls that The Happy Family had effectively ambushed Peel at the BBC Radio 1 offices, to hand over the debut album, The Man On Your Street. ‘I saw [Altered Images singer] Claire Grogan in the lobby, who Peel was famously besotted by, and when John emerged, my first words where, “Oh, we just saw Miss G”, with a saucy grin on my face. He looked really embarrassed, as if he’d been consorting with her. It was embarrassingly awkward. Peel never did give us a session.’ Despite his very public profile, Peel was as shy as Ivo (whose approach in the past had been to send the Cocteaus-besotted DJ his own acetate of Garlands, letting music alone do the talking).

      The album didn’t find much press favour either. The album’s brittle, wordy atmosphere was always going to be divisive: Don Watson at NME – reviewing it two months after release – seemed divided himself, referring to the album’s ‘flat sound that borders on dullness’, but also saying, ‘It barbs your brain with a bristle of tiny hooks.’ Currie says Josef K supporter Dave McCullough at Sounds was more certain: ‘He gave it a bit of a trashing, saying it was too verbose, and the time wasn’t right for the return of the concept album.’

      Indeed, The Man On Your Street was the least popular album in 4AD’s early years, selling just 2,500 copies. Currie thinks Ivo wasn’t that keen on the record himself: ‘The song he liked the most of ours was “Innermost Thoughts”, which to me was the musical equivalent of 23 Envelope sleeves, a delicate object, with a fully-flanged bass line that was the hallmark of miserablist bands at the time. But the album had moved away from that style. I’d got sick of all the long raincoats, the Penguin Modern Classics book poking out of the pocket top, the Joy Division scene. [NME’s] Paul Morley was the critic of the time, and he was promoting this new, shiny, happy pop music [meaning the likes of ABC, and also Orange Juice] after turning his back on miserablist Scottish pop. The Happy Family was going with that tide, moving away from 4AD’s aesthetic.’

      Currie had also declined Vaughan Oliver’s input, going for his own bizarre mish-mash, a Sixties retro layout that included the subtitle Songs From The Career Of Dictator Hall and an out-of-place primitive folk art drawing to the side of a colour photograph of the earth. ‘I stubbornly wanted to do the cover myself,’ he admits. ‘The photo of the globe cost Ivo a lot more than Vaughan!’ It was more expensive, actually, than the album’s recording budget, which illustrated 4AD’s commitment to packaging.

      Currie thinks The Man On Your Street would have fared better if Oliver had taken over, giving it an identifiable 4AD cachet: ‘We were an anomaly on 4AD. I was deliberately trying to undermine their image, to show 4AD could go to other places. I think Ivo was flummoxed by our brash, alienating irony and a narrative music hall sensibility that was at odds with him, and we didn’t have that sense of beauty that he liked. It also had this Puckish, communist streak, and I don’t think we saw eye to eye politically. But I’m very grateful to Ivo. It was a terrific adventure.’

      Currie also saw Ivo’s patronage and 4AD’s early achievements as part of a watershed era for British music. ‘It was the first generation of record label bosses who were creative themselves, and trying to shape a sensibility. Though in the end, I found it easier dealing with old-fashioned record labels that were just a marketing department and a bank!’

      If Ivo’s intuition had failed him on this occasion, his next discovery was another maverick mould-breaker in the Happy Family tradition, albeit in a radically different form. Coming at the end of the year, it finally put paid to the idea that 4AD was a repository of Stygian gloom – even if the title of Colourbox’s debut single was ‘Breakdown’.

      From

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