Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD. Martin Aston
and the bass line of ‘Legion’ was another echo of Joy Division, just like ‘The Attic’ was an echo of Warsaw’s primitive dynamic, reduced by In Camera to an even starker, flatter sound.
‘The production values were nearer to our live sound; meatier drums and more avant-garde than the PiL and Banshees influences,’ suggests Andrew Gray. ‘We, and Ivo, were really happy with it.’
IV Songs was more proof that Ivo was content to put out records that were committed, passionate and uncompromising, though, looking back, the cumulative effect of the catalogue – Red Atkins notwithstanding – was fifty shades of black. The gloom was claustrophobic. Where was the light and shade, the fuller spectrum of humanity? ‘Musically, that was the era,’ Ivo argues. ‘And to paraphrase [American pianist] Harold Budd, I was suspicious of anything that is enjoyed by the masses. I don’t think pop artists would have come to 4AD in any case.’
Colin Newman, the next Wire member to strike a deal with Ivo, thought 4AD had its limitations at the beginning. ‘Everything was in black and white. And I didn’t think most of the records Ivo had released were that good. Cherry Red was a similar label: sketchy, a bit homemade, mawkish and interior-looking. Bauhaus was the exception.’
‘Back then, I didn’t know what I was doing on any level,’ Ivo admits. ‘Peter and I were learning what running a label involved. We were lucky that Bauhaus effectively funded the next year. I’ll always be proud to have released their records, and eternally grateful too, because without their speedy success, despite the British press, 4AD might have struggled to pay for albums the following year. It started a trend that continued for a decade; each year, I was lucky enough to start working with at least one key band or artist. One album a year did pretty well and allowed us to keep going.’
Towards the end of 1980, Ivo did his first interview with Lynnette Turner, who ran the Station Alien fanzine. ‘She said, “I just want to get to you before anyone else does”. She knew something was stirring.’
There was more stirring than just music: ‘Lynnette and I pretty much fell in love at that first meeting and ended up living together for the next two years,’ says Ivo. This came after another upturn in his life; Beggars had suggested that he should stop working in the shop and concentrate full-time on 4AD: ‘It was the first time I’d ever felt truly, giddily happy,’ he recalls.
But with Ivo left in sole charge, without Peter Kent’s man-about-town demeanour and his greater potential for playfulness, how dark and personal might 4AD become?
1 Of all Axis’ lesser-known luminaries, Bearz producer and keyboard session player David Lord has done the best, as an engineer/producer for artists such as Peter Gabriel, Tears For Fears, Peter Hammill, Tori Amos and Goldfrapp. David ‘Fast Set’ Knight became a studio-based collaborator (and lover) of British singer-cum-performance artist Danielle Dax. However, Shox vocalist Jacqui Brookes fronted the synth-pop band Siam and released a solo album, Sob Stories, for major label MCA.
2 Kevin Haskins Dompe: ‘Peter Kent tour managed us when we got an offer to support Magazine. We didn’t know that Peter was gay, and he booked the band into gay bed and breakfasts around the UK. One had Playgirl centrefolds stuck on the walls! We had some funny interludes. All of us wore make-up then and flirted with our feminine side, so after the gig, with all our gear on, down in the bar … the clientele made some assumptions! There were bums pinched. Peter found it very funny.’
3 Daniel Miller, who ran Mute Records, also regularly used Blackwing – from his electronic-pop pastiche Music For Parties under the alias Silicon Teens to sessions for his two most popular acts, Depeche Mode and Yazoo, whose debut album title Upstairs At Eric’s referred to Blackwing’s owner Eric Radcliffe.
4 Beggars Banquet gave Peter Kent financial backing to start a new label that he called Situation 2 (Bauhaus’ original management company was called Situation 1). The label’s first releases were an astounding run of Associates twelve-inch singles (later compiled on Fourth Drawer Down), one a month, for five months. ‘I can’t think of a better and more original introduction to a label than Peter releasing those Associates singles in that way,’ Ivo reckons. ‘It was crazy, because what would have happened if one was a hit? Would you release the next single?’ Kent ran Situation 2 for only a year before he started managing Associates and signed them to Warners. At the end of 1982, illness forced Kent to live a quieter life. He moved to Spain to open a restaurant, though he later worked for Brussels-based independent label/distributor Play It Again Sam before relocating to Chicago.
chapter 4 – 1981
(AD101–CAD117)
Axis had kicked into life in 1980 with four simultaneous singles, three of unknown origin. 4AD’s first complete year of operation, 1981, began in similar fashion, with three singles from two new bands, one so far unknown in the UK. Though the trio were not released on the same day, each seven-incher in its illuminating sleeve represented the same opportunity, as Ivo saw it, to ‘serve their own beautiful purpose. A record for a record’s sake.’
And much like the original Axis offensive, with the exception of Bauhaus, and much of the Presage(s) collective, none of the singles by Sort Sol, Past Seven Days and My Captains reappeared on 4AD; none were re-pressed after selling out their initial pressing, and only Sort Sol survived to release another record. These false dawns remained immaterial to Ivo: ‘The fact that a record was coming out on 4AD meant that it was a success already, which was absolutely at the heart of what I wanted to do.’
The first of the three was ‘Marble Station’, a sombre, glacial jewel by Copenhagen, Denmark’s Sort Sol (which translates as Black Sun), who had recorded two albums as The Sods before shedding its punk identity for something suitably post-punk. Ivo had heard their second album Under En Sort Sol and the band agreed to have his two favourite songs released as a single. The six-minute ‘Raindance’ by Sheffield’s Past Seven Days adopted an ominous backdrop of synths but represented a chink of light in 4AD’s assembled heart of darkness, coiled around a chattering quasi-funk rhythm guitar in the style of Factory label peer A Certain Ratio, and a matching, insistent vocal melody. The self-titled EP by Oxford quartet My Captains restored the generic setting of gloom, and was less exciting for it, while reinforcing the notion that 4AD’s core constituents might be reduced to, as the cliché had it, those shoulder-weighted interlopers in long raincoats with Camus novels under their arm.
Stylistically, all three singles were reminiscent in some form of another band from Sheffield, The Comsat Angels, which had signed to Polydor in 1979. But the Comsats’ smouldering style eventually lasted for nine albums; Sort Sol never released another track in the UK; My Captains simply vanished; and Past Seven Days were, Ivo says, ‘lured away’ to Virgin offshoot Dindisc. However, there were potential perils in joining a major label – Dindisc founder Carol Wilson once said, ‘I never signed a band unless I thought they could be commercially successful.’ Soon enough, the band asked Ivo if they could return to 4AD. ‘I was a bit of a bitch and said, no, you went away,’ he admits.
Yet just as The Birthday Party’s debut 4AD single ‘The Friend Catcher’ had followed Presage(s), so the band’s debut 4AD album Prayers On Fire swiftly counteracted the mood of short-term disappointment. The Birthday Party had started recording the album within a month of landing back in Melbourne at the tail end of 1980, and when they returned to London in March to headline The Moonlight Club (supported by My Captains), Ivo was shocked. ‘I wasn’t expecting an album, or how it sounded. Where had these Captain Beefheart influences come from?’
Cave claimed his inspiration was, ‘the major disappointments we felt when we went