Ford A.D.

Fordlandia






A treat for a golden late october afternoon. Incredibly beautiful photography by very talented Will Govus. Set to the opening track of Johann Johannsson´s new, upcoming album "Fordlandia". (It starts out very quiet, be patient...but it´s worth it)

Colourbox: Sleepwalkers in Westworld

Baby I love you so!

Colourbox were sticking out like a sore thumb next to the other bands that made up the 4-AD catalogue and their "corporate sound" of the mid- to late 80s.
Their contribution to the collective This Mortal Coil records were mostly drum-programming and keyboard wizardry, which honestly didn´t date that well in the whole context.

On their own, however, Colourbox were a totally different beast! Infused with dub, hip-hop, mixtapes, reggae, funk and soul, the Young-Brothers and Lorita Grahame were doing what everybody would do a decade later: Sampling and cutting their way through every bit of inspiration they picked up on their way to the studio.



When they arrived on the scene in 1982, Colourbox were hard to pin down. The electro-breakdance craze was still in its early stage, when they released "Breakdown" with its brick-heavy drum beat and its wild cuts.

Colourbox was a bit between all chairs: not italo-disco, not indie-rock, not goths. On top of this, they were publicty shy to the point of autism. They would hide behind their radical sound , baseball hats and innovative use of film-samples. All in all, they were the prototype for every producer-act that would follow a decade later. Even their on and off again integration of female vocalists would set an example for future artists.

Looks like we´re shy one horse/Shoot out!

The "Shotgun"-EP which pictured the fucking horses on its sleeve blew me away when it was released in the end of 1983. Their treatment of the studio, the total radical approach of cutting, editing and manipulating sound, was pretty unheard of back then.

While New-York-mixmasters would use a similar way of splicing sounds to a new ryhthm, Colourbox were like kids left alone in a toy-store. At every moment a piece of an actual song would emerge through the mayhem, they would drench it in more cuts and edits. Adrian Sherwood had nothing on these "idiot savants".



Of course critics would argue that there was nothing behind the wall of sound, but Colourbox were actually trying to write proper pop and funk songs. Maybe they were just too underground and embarrassed to acknowledge this?!

I must say, that I too was not very impressed with their first real album in 1985. Here the kitsch was taking overhand and the edits were hidden on the additional "ltd. ed. bonus album". Beside the great northern-soul pastiche "The Moon is blue", sample-orgy "Just give ´em Whiskey" and the flat out amazing "Manic" there was not much to like for me back then. "You keep me hanging on" and "Arena" were hitting far too close to the contemporary dribble that I would avoid like the plague back then. (It took me some years to appreciate these songs too)

For the next year Colourbox would hit a double whammy with the release of two radically different 12"es on the very same day. "The official Colourbox World Cup Theme" was to be just that! (but I think it was never really, really official?!)
One of the biggest sounding, proto-techno tracks, backed with the ambient "Philip Glass" it is one of the more bizarre singles 4-AD ever released. Looking back on this single in its entirety: it is really a glimpse at the future of british dance-music. Every aspect of these two songs would appear over and over in techno, ambient and house.


Manic

The other 12" was a bit more traditional! The Augustus Pablo cover of "Baby I love you so" backed with a vast dub-excursion in cinerama! Once more featuring the great voice of Lorita Grahame (were did she go?) it is one of the best dub-reggae interpretations I have ever heard. Finally, Colourbox had mastered the art of merging superb instrumentation with show-stopping effects, film-samples and great vocals into a tight production. "Shoot out" is like The Orb running out on dope!

Actually this was the last "official" Colourbox release ever. One year later, the Young-Brothers would team up with another 4-AD act, the enigmatic A.R.Kane for another one-off release. As M.A.R.R.S they would alledgedly change the music world forever with "Pump up the Volume". Well, they had done stuff like this before and nobody noticed. The flip side of this A/A sided single "Anitina" is actually the far, far better track. It showed what Colourbox were up to and what they were capable of. For whatever reason the brothers decided to close the Colourbox and their musical career! Apart from very few remixes for other 4-AD artists and a production job for The Christians, they turned their back on music.

From The Flagstones

At times I´ve seen you from the oriole

At times I´ve seen you from the balustrade

At times I´ve seen you from the flagstones.


It´s hard to find good live cuts from the Cocteau Twins. I remember seeing them opening for O.M.D. in 83 and it was a catastrophy.

When I heard "Head over Heels", their second and sound-defining album for the first time, I could hardly believe that this was the same band.
Their sound that seemed to explode with light from the inside caused many critics to fling bucketloads of hate upon them.
Germany´s most important music magazine at the time despised them with a passion, while less informed papers labeled them as a goth-band and Siouxsie-clones. Nothing could be further away from the truth.

Here they perform "From the Flagstones" at the Tube. Great minimal performance with a tape-machine, enigmatic guitar playing and Liz Fraser giving her Joe-Cocker-trapped-in-a-dove-performance.
Of course its close to impossible to recreate the glistening ultra-sound they created on their records, and if you have never heard them you will probably miss the purpose of this clip. Instead you can giggle at the mosh-pitters who do their thing to a slow 3/4 waltz!

When the Cocteaus disappeared from 4AD they also disappeared out of my life.
I only learned much later that they had to live through very troubling times between "Heaven or Las Vegas" and their american success of "Four Calendar Cafe".

Who would have thought that their stories would involve drug-addictions, hanging out with UZI owners in Harlem and child abuse. Was the spectacular, glistening sound and incredible vocalisation the effect of pure sublimination?

I can only recommend David Stubbs´great, honest and insightful article about the Cocteau Twins which was published in Uncut-Magazine.

Did I dream you dreamed about me?

The music, just a faint echo of a yet unborn melody, provides a fragile background for a strangely distant voice that forms words out of a seemingly semi-conscious, somnambulist state of mind. The "shipless oceans" it describes seem to have dried out a long time ago. The lovelorn, beckoning voices are floating over crystalline dunes like drifting scarves of some distant figurine.

"Did I dream you dreamed about me?"


I could go on forever and wax poetic and make a fool out of myself.
But when I heard "Song to the siren" for the first time in 1984, i was reading the "Vermillion Sands"-stories by Ballard and "Pandora and the flying dutchman", a forgotten Hollywood melodram with Ava Gardner and James Mason was constantly on Tv. All this resonated heavily with me and it was like many different pieces were falling into place.
Of course, this song was a litmus test among my friends. Many considered it to be the peak of kitsch and pretentiousness.

Here is a rare live version which is remarkable for two reasons:
a) The haunting effect of "Song to the siren" was not made by studio trickery.
b) Liz Fraser sings it with a very strong scottish accent.

This mortal coil: Song to the siren


Although I always knew that it is a cover version of a Tim Buckley song, I haven´t heard the original until recently. I must say that i was not really floored by it.

During the last 10 years many different musicians like Robert Plant and George Michael have decided to cover "Siren", certainly more inspired by the success of the Liz Fraser version than the slightly jarring original by Buckley.
During the 90s it was also, quite fittingly, licensed for a perfume-ad and less effective in David Lynch´s "Lost Highway".


UPDATE: The latest brilliant moment thanks to "Song to the Siren" is the opening sequence of Michael Armfield´s 2006 drama Candy.

Of course its creators, Robin Guthrie and Liz Fraser, who usually recorded as Cocteau Twins, hated their version with a passion. They referred to it as "sludge to the siren", but this was nothing unusual, as they usually met their own back catalogue with disgust.

However, during the peak of the rave-scene producer duo Messiah sampled the famous "Did i dream you dreamed about me" and made it the central moment of their cut-up track "Temple of dreams". A few years before Fraser would work with The Future Sound of London and Massive Attack she became the siren of the amphetamine age and the queen of a million glow-sticks.

Messiah: Temple of dreams