It sort of explains...
March 9th
Young Marble Giants-N.I.T.A.-Colossal Youth
Most music-well,
apart from Karen Cooper Complex-has roots. You can see where it has come from,
what the inspiration is, what influences play upon it, what the inspiration is.
With the benefit of hindsight you can also see where it was going, what it would
lead to.
There is none of this with Young Marble Giants. I cannot compare them to anybody else-either
in their past or their future. They arrived in 1978, split up in 1980, and
released one album and two E.P.’s. YMG were like nothing before and since.
“Colossal Youth” (the album) was their first release i.e. before the E.P.’s and
it turned up in 1980, like nothing else at the time, so different, but
perfectly formed. It was if they had followed a different path to get where they
were-it was just a different kind of music.
This
potentially sounds as if they are some out there, avant-garde, improv,
free-form group if you haven’t heard them before.
Maybe I’m not describing them
properly, not doing them justice. “Colossal Youth” - as originally released in
February 1980- had 15 tracks and had a running time of 40 minutes. These 15
tracks were all distinct songs, all discrete tunes. There was nothing
avant-garde about them, no dissonance, nothing to set your teeth on edge.
But
it wasn’t like anything you had heard before.
Maybe a bit of
explanation is called for. YMG were a three piece band-Alison Statton on
vocals, with brothers Stuart and Phillip Moxham on guitar, bass and keyboard.
There was no drummer-they used tape recordings of a very primitive home-made
drum machine for the limited percussion. All the songs were written by Stuart
Moxham, and he played the guitar and keyboard. It wasn’t actually a keyboard as
such, but an electric organ.
“Colossal Youth” was recorded in three days and
cost only £1000 to record. There are no overdubs on the album-it was recorded
all in one take. It’s such a quiet album.
The Pixies film was called
loudQUIETloud-if YMG had made a film it would be called quietquietsssh.
There
is more silence on the “Colossal Youth” than there is noise. You can only hear
four things on the album-Stuart Moxham’s choppy, minimal guitar and fragmented
cheesy keyboards, Phillip Moxham’s steely, loopy bass and Alison Statton’s
voice suspended in the middle. You can hear all these four things all the time,
there isn’t anything extraneous on there, no bells or whistles (literally or
figuratively).
Alison Statton’s voice is so plaintive, gentle, matter-of-fact. She
could be singing a shopping list or from a telephone directory, but that makes
it sound too cold and dispassionate. It’s more than that-there is more emotion
in there-but like the music itself, there are no histrionics, no rock posturing
(I can’t imagine any album that is less rock than this).
She hasn’t got a massive
vocal range-it’s not a Mariah Carey thing -but she’s one of my favourite female
vocalists. I’m listening to the album whilst I’m writing this and she sounds as
if she has a cold on many of the tracks.
Maybe that’s
just my imagination.
Maybe its because the album came out in February 1980 when
I was full of cold myself. I remember taking it out of the plain black and
white cover, with only one photograph of the band on the sleeve and a simple font
for the track listing. There was only a plain paper inner sleeve. It was a
Saturday afternoon and it had been drizzling all day. I sat with a cup of tea
and some toasted teacakes while this spun round on the record player. Alison
Statton’s voice and the music was the only sound in the house. It was a perfect
way to spend 40 minutes.
Get/see/ read "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod" here as a Kindle e book http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CJYZ3CA and here in paperback http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-The/dp/149495687X
actually they arrived in 1978 not 1970
ReplyDeleteThat was just an (oops) typo on my part! Will update.
ReplyDelete