4AD 1992

Listen to 4AD 1992 on Spotify.

1992 was another year of change for 4AD. Ivo Watts-Russell wanted to be able to pick more freely among things to release without getting in a serious relationship with bands, so he started the Guernica imprint which released three things at a rapid pace at the end of the year (and couple more the next year) before petering out. While it might be nice for the label not to commit to an artist, the artists may feel a bit… slighted? Because the audience is going “so these are the bands not good enough to be on 4AD?”

Which is a shame, because they’re better than some of the albums released on 4AD “proper” this year.

4AD released a buttload of things in 1992, and few of them have become well-loved classics. Down Colourful Hill by Red House Painters was a revelation and launched Mark Kozelek’s long-running career (still going now); Lush released Spooky, probably their best album (and it’s really good, but it was a let-down after the initial series of EPs, because Robin Guthrie’s production is somewhat sterile and claustrophobic); The Breeders did their first post-Pod EP that points to future stardom; and Belly release their first two EPs.

And I think the Gepetto EP made it clear to everybody that they’d soon have a hit on their hands: It (and Throwing Muses’ Firepile) were the first singles that would be “formatted”; i.e., released in as many formats as the UK indie chart rules would allow. From now on we get a bunch of remixes and more B-sides than anybody really wanted for every single single 4AD releases.

4AD is now becoming a commercial juggernaut with huge name recognition, particularly with the lucrative US college market, and other people than Ivo Watts-Russell would also have a say in what groups were signed. A US office is also opened around this time. *insert spooky music here*

(The first Belly EP, Slow Dust, isn’t available on Spotify, but all the songs show up in different versions on subsequent releases. Perhaps Tanya Donnelly didn’t want those early versions out there? Or did 4AD just forget to upload it? And none of the songs from the limited edition 7″ singles included with the Guernica albums are on Spotify, either.)

1992

	BAD2001 Lush — For Love For Love, Starlust, Outdoor Miner, Astronaut
	CAD2002 Lush — Spooky Stray, Nothing Natural (remix), Tiny Smiles, Covert, Ocean, For Love, Superblast!, Untogether, Fantasy, Take, Laura, Monochrome
	BAD2003 The Breeders — Safari Do You Love Me Now?, Don’t Call Home, Safari, So Sad About Us
	CAD2004 Pale Saints — In Ribbons Throwing Back the Apple, Ordeal, Thread of Light, Shell, There is No Day, Hunted, Hair Shoes (remix), Babymaker (remix), Liquid, Neverending Night, Featherframe, A Thousand Stars Burst Open
	rib1 Pale Saints — untitled A Thousand Stars Burst Open (brass), A Revelation (rerecorded)
	BAD2006 The Wolfgang Press — A Girl Like You A Girl Like You (7″ mix), Angel, A Girl Like You (1000 Times), A Girl Like You (Born To Be Kissed)
	CAD2007 Michael Brook — Cobalt Blue Shona Bridge, Breakdown, Red Shift, Skip Wave, Slipstream, Andean, Slow Breakdown, Ultramarine, Urbana, Lakbossa, Ten, Hawaii
	BAD2008 Pale Saints — Throwing Back The Apple Throwing Back The Apple, Blue Flower, Half-Life Remembered (remix), Reflections From A Watery World
	BAD2009 Belly — Slow Dust Dusted, Slow Dog, Dancing Gold, Low Red Moon, Dusted (remix)*
	cdLilliput 1 & 2 Various — Lilliput Dark Entries, Controversial Subject, Nick the Stripper, I Melt With You, Song To The Siren, Incubus Succubus II, The Spangle Maker, Stranger, Baby I Love You So, Hate My Way, No Motion, Pump Up The Volume, Mercy Seat, The Host Of Seraphim, Monkey Gone To Heaven, De-Luxe, Throwing Back The Apple, Featherframe, A Girl Like You (7″ mix), Birmingham, Breakdown, Urbana, Chlorine Dream, Signed D. C., Gloria, Are We Still Married?, Tastes Like Honey, Follow Me Down, A Thousand Stars Burst Open (brass)
	CAD2010 Swallow — Blow Lovesleep, Tastes Like Honey, Sugar Your Mind, Mensurral, Peekaboo, Lacuna, Oceans and Blue Skies, Follow Me Down, Halo, Cherry Stars Collide, Head In a Cave
	TAD 2011 CD Michael Brook — Live at The Aquarium Shona Bridge (live), After Image / Urbana (live), Andean (live), Ultramarine (live), Lakbossa (live), Cascade (live), Red Shift (live)
	BAD2012 Throwing Muses — Firepile Firepile, Manic Depression, Snailhead (remix), City of the Dead
	BAD D2012 Throwing Muses — Firepile Firepile (ep2), Jak, Ride into the Sun, Handsome Woman
	CAD2013 Throwing Muses — Red Heaven Furious, Firepile, Dio, Dirty Water, Stroll, Pearl, Summer St, Vic, Backroad, The Visit, Dovey, Rosetta Stone, Carnival Wig
	KH1 Kristin Hersh — Live at Maxwell’s, Hoboken Juno (live), Marriage Tree (live), Pearl (live), Stand Up / Dovey / Mexican Women (live), Run Letter (live), Soap & Water (live), Rabbits Dying (live), Cry Baby Cry (live), Counting Backwards / Handsome Woman (live), Take (live), Soul Soldier (live), Bea (live), Delicate Cutters (live)
	GU1 CD Unrest — Imperial f. f. r. r. Volume Reference Tone, Suki, Imperial, I Do Beleive You Are Blushing, Champion Nines, Sugarshack, Isabel, Cherry Cream On, Firecracker, June, Loyola, Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl, Hydrofoil no. 1, Full Frequency (remix), Wednesday & Proud
	GU1S Unrest — untitled Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl (rerecorded), Hydrofoil no. 3 (rerecorded), Range Recording (remix)*
	CAD2014 Red House Painters — Down Colorful Hill 24, Medicine Bottle, Down Colorful Hill, Japanese to English, Lord Kill the Pain, Michael
	TAD 2015 CD Swallow — Blowback Oceans and Blue Skies (remix), Head in a Cave (remix), Tastes Like Honey (remix), Peekaboo (remix), Sugar Your Mind (remix), Follow Me Down (remix), Mensurral (remix), Cherry Stars Collide (remix)
	DAD2016 The Birthday Party — Hits The Friend Catcher, Happy Birthday, Mr. Clarinet, Nick the Stripper, Zoo Music Girl, King Ink, Release the Bats, Blast Off, She’s Hit, 6″ Gold Blade, Hamlet (Pow, Pow, Pow), Dead Joe, Junkyard, Big-Jesus-Trash-Can, Wild World, Sonny’s Burning, Deep in the Woods, Swampland, Jennifer’s Veil, Mutiny in Heaven
	CAD2017 Ultra Vivid Scene — Rev Candida, Cut-throat, Mirror to Mirror, The Portion of Delight, Thief’s Love Song, How Sweet, Medicating Angels, Blood and Thunder, This is the Way
	GU2 Underground Lovers — Leaves Me Blind Eastside Stories, Promenade, I was right, Holiday, Got of on it, Daze, Waves, Your eyes, Ladies choice, Get to know, Whisper me nothing
	7″GU2S Underground Lovers — untitled Leaves Me Blind (demo version), Mumble Head (demo version)
	BAD2018 Belly — Gepetto Gepetto, Sexy S, Hot Burrito #1, Sweet Ride
	BAD C2018 Belly — Gepetto Gepetto (remix), It’s Not Unusual, Star (demo), Dusted (demo)
	TAD 2019 CD Throwing Muses — The Curse Manic Depression (live), Counting Backwards (live), Fish (live), Hate My Way (live), Furious (live), Devil’s Roof (live), Snailhead (live), Firepile (live), Finished (live), Take (live), Say Goodbye (live), Mania (live), Two Step (live), Delicate Cutters (live), Cottonmouth (live), Pearl (live), Vic (live), Bea (live)
	GU3 Bettie Serveert — Palomine Leg, Palomine, Kid’s Allright, Tom Boy, Under The Surface, Balentine, This Thing Nowhere, Healthy Sick, Sundazed To The Core, Palomine (small)
	GU3S Bettie Serveert — untitled Brain-Tag, Get The Bird, Smile*

This post is part of the chronological look at all 4AD releases, year by year.

*) Missing from Spotify.

New Music

Music I’ve bought (or resampled) this month.

I discovered a shelf of 12″ things this month: They were all items I’d bought in the early noughts before I started doing FLAC instead of MP3. So I had to resample them all, of course, even though I’ll probably never listen to many of them again…

But I’ve really got to stop buying so much music. Every album always seems to lead to ten more that I want to have. And with Discogs and Bandcamp existing, I can get them all like *snap*.

Like I was listening to an old Thomas Mery EP and wondering whether he’d done something else (he had; snapped two things up), and then I went to his Bandcamp, and got that one (it’s a stunning album), and then I went to his web site, and he recommends Sam Amidon, who I’m totally unaware of, so I get that album, and it’s FANTASTIC, and he’s done quite a lot, so I should get all those.

That’s all great. But!

While end-of-lifing stuff from the /music/new directory the other week, I discovered that I’d just listened to Bright Phoebus by Lal & Mike Waterson, bought in October 2017, three (3) times. And it’s such a wonderful, magnificent album. (Except the first song. Rubber Band is annoying!)

I should have been listening to that album 20 times and not listening to all the… other… music.

So! I’m cutting way back! I hope! But but but! I really want to buy all the other things that Lal Waterson has made. And Mike Waterson. And The Watersons. And that tribute album of cover versions of Lal Waterson songs. And.

OK, calm down. Just scaling back… not stopping… Perhaps just a couple of Waterson-related albums over the next month…

We’ll see, I guess!

September 1948: Sorry, Wrong Number

Oh, wow! I know this storyline!

I’ve been listening to old Norwegian radio dramas while walking the last year, and there was a 50s serial about an invalid woman overhearing a murder plot on a crossed line on the telephone, and then trying to do something about it — all over the phone.

So the story has basically one single setting: A woman, in a bed, talking on the phone. And they made this into a movie?

Me am intrigue!

I am unfamiliar with the director, Anatole Litvak, but one of the ways he solves the problems is to use a constantly roving camera that haunts the other rooms of the house, giving us background.

But the other ways they’ve making this more movie-like aren’t as interesting. They’ve added a bunch of flashbacks and expansions to the plot. Well, basically changing the entire plot, I think? Or… was the Norwegian version extremely condensed? I don’t know!

They lose most of the tension with all the flashbacks.

Barbara Stanwyck is wonderful in bed. I mean, acting wise.

Oh, wow::

Lucille Fletcher’s play originally aired on the Suspense radio program on May 25, 1943, essentially a one-woman show with Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Stevenson. The play was reprised seven times, each starring Moorehead. The final broadcast was on February 14, 1960.

I’d love to listen to any of those versions.

Sorry, Wrong Number. Anatole Litvak. 1948.

Popular movies in September 1948 according to IMDB:

Votes	Rating	Movie
3323	7.8	Johnny Belinda
4868	7.6	Macbeth
7583	7.5	Sorry, Wrong Number
1608	7.3	Road House
274	7.2	Dédée d’Anvers
1439	7.2	Cry of the City
1486	7.0	Rachel and the Stranger
1207	7.0	Louisiana Story
584	6.9	The Luck of the Irish
659	6.7	Station West

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

August 1948: The Scar

Huh! The previous movie was also an Eagle-Lion thing. How odd I’ve bought two of these in sequence.

At least this had been restored properly; the Amazing Mr. X looked horrible.

This is noir, though, and is told from the viewpoint of a bunch of small-time (wannabe) gangsters. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie quite like this before. It makes a lot of unusual (for its time) aesthetic choices, as in not using a score to tell the viewers how to feel all the time.

It feels fresh and unsettling.

Back in those days, they felt they had to make criminal protagonists somewhat more palatable by having the people who are after them be even worse people, and they use that for great effect here. We forget that he’s a ruthless killer for minutes at a time!

These days, of course, they’ll just have TV series starring the worst psychopaths and people will totally root for them anyway.

The plot is preposterous and all the more fun for that. But there’s a twist is signalled so thoroughly that when it comes to actually do the fatal mistake, it’s a bit “Paul, pleez.”

Joan Bennett is wonderfully cynical.

It’s almost a perfect little gem of a movie.

The Scar. Steve Sekely. 1948.

Popular movies in August 1948 according to IMDB:

Votes	Rating	Movie
427	8.1	Los tres huastecos
99735	8.0	Rope
831	7.8	The Winslow Boy
22264	7.8	Red River
5844	7.8	The Fallen Idol
4504	7.6	They Live by Night
1654	7.2	Pitfall
954	7.1	L’amore
409	7.0	Four Faces West
656	7.0	Julia Misbehaves

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

July 1948: The Amazing Mr. X

Wow, this is a bad DVD transfer. Looks like it’s been sourced from VHS via an NTSC broadcast.

But never mind. This is fun! It’s a horror movie, sort of. Or perhaps thriller? It’s kinda thrilling, anyway.

Being able to see what was going on would perhaps have been even better, but it works anyway.

That crow!

At the end of the day, it’s an entertaining piece of fluff. I’m not sure what it’s at the start of the day, though.

The Amazing Mr. X. Bernard Vorhaus. 1948.

Popular movies in July 1948 according to IMDB:

Votes	Rating	Movie
20996	8.3	The Red Shoes
29728	7.9	Key Largo
689	7.1	Superman
646	6.8	The Velvet Touch
488	6.7	Coroner Creek
832	6.6	A Date with Judy
1007	6.5	The Amazing Mr. X
535	6.3	Return of the Bad Men
554	6.1	Blonde Ice
758	5.5	The Babe Ruth Story

This blog post is part of the Decade series.