Colossal Youth | |
---|---|
Studio album by | |
Released | February 1980 |
Recorded | 1979 |
Studio | Foel (North Wales) |
Genre | Post-punk |
Length | 38:20 |
Label | Rough Trade |
Producer |
|
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [1] |
Blender | [2] |
Christgau's Record Guide | B [3] |
The Guardian | [4] |
The Irish Times | [5] |
Pitchfork | 9.3/10 [6] |
Rolling Stone | [7] |
Spin | [8] |
Spin Alternative Record Guide | 10/10 [9] |
Uncut | [10] |
Colossal Youth is the only studio album by Welsh post-punk band Young Marble Giants, released in February 1980 on Rough Trade Records. Young Marble Giants were offered the opportunity to record the album after Rough Trade heard just two songs by the band on the local Cardiff music compilation Is the War Over? [11]
Young Marble Giants emerged from the remains of the band True Wheel (named after a song by Brian Eno from his 1974 LP Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). Alison Statton (vocals), Philip Moxham (bass) and his brother Stuart (guitar and main songwriter), formed Young Marble Giants in 1979, when they were all barely in their twenties. Quickly snapped up by the prestigious Rough Trade label, the band recorded Colossal Youth over the course of five days in a tiny studio in North Wales. [11]
Colossal Youth was recorded in five days at Foel Studios, located near Welshpool in mid-Wales. The album was engineered by the studio's owner, former Amon Düül II and Hawkwind member Dave Anderson. [11] Young Marble Giants had no prior knowledge of formal music production, and as a result the production on Colossal Youth was kept deliberately simple, with the final record featuring many of the band's first takes, as well as minimal overdubbing. [12] The only two overdubs on the record are a slide guitar on "Include Me Out" and distorted vocals on "Eating Noddemix". Each track was mixed in around 20 minutes. [11]
According to critic Richie Unterberger, Colossal Youth is "one of the most highly regarded indie cult post-punk recordings, with a unique hushed and minimal atmosphere." [12] Nirvana singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain said in a 1992 Melody Maker interview that Colossal Youth was one of the ten most influential records he had ever heard, [13] [14] and he also included it in a personal list of his 50 favourite albums. [15] In the aforementioned interview, he spoke of his admiration for the album:
This music relaxes you, it's total atmospherics. It's just nice, pleasant music. I love it. The drum machine has to have the cheesiest sound ever. We're going to be on a Young Marble Giants compilation, doing "Credit in the Straight World". I had a crush on the singer for a while—didn't everyone? I didn't know much about them—the Moxham brothers, right? I heard they might be getting back together again recently. Isn't it weird how, when you hear something like that, you still get excited, even though you know you shouldn't? I first heard Colossal Youth on the radio, after I started getting into K music when I lived in Olympia. It was a year before I put out the Bleach album. [13]
Cobain's wife Courtney Love would later record "Credit in the Straight World" with her band Hole on their second album Live Through This , released in 1994.[ citation needed ] Stephin Merritt credited the album as the main inspiration for his band The Magnetic Fields's debut album Distant Plastic Trees , and has recorded a cover of "The Man Amplifier".[ citation needed ] Australian band Toys Went Berserk covered "Brand - New - Life" on their 1989 album The Smiler With A Knife.
Domino Recording Company released Colossal Youth & Collected Works, an expanded reissue of the album, on 9 July 2007. [16] In May 2009, Colossal Youth was performed live in its entirety by Young Marble Giants as part of the All Tomorrow's Parties-curated Don't Look Back series. [17]
In 2020, Rolling Stone included Colossal Youth in their "80 Greatest albums of 1980" list, praising the band for "creating an arresting, quiet sound ". [18]
All tracks are written by Stuart Moxham, except where noted.
The 1993 reissue includes the following bonus tracks, taken from the Testcard EP, the "Final Day" single and the various artists compilation Is the War Over?:
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes. [19]
Young Marble Giants
Additional personnel
Chart (1980–81) | Peak position |
---|---|
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ) [20] | 20 |
UK Independent Albums (Record Business) [21] | 3 |
Chart (2007) | Peak position |
---|---|
UK Albums (OCC) [22] | 163 |
UK Independent Albums (OCC) [23] | 13 |
The Raincoats are a British experimental post-punk band. Ana da Silva and Gina Birch formed the group in 1977 while they were students at Hornsey College of Art in London.
Young Marble Giants were a Welsh post-punk band formed in Cardiff, Wales, in 1978. Their music was based around the vocals of Alison Statton along with the minimalist instrumentation of brothers Philip and Stuart Moxham. Their early sound was a sharp contrast with the more aggressive punk rock that dominated the underground at the time. Young Marble Giants released just one studio album, Colossal Youth, in 1980. They also released two EPs and recorded a John Peel session.
Buffalo Springfield Again is the second album by Buffalo Springfield, released on Atco Records in November 1967. It peaked at #44 on the Billboard 200. In 2003, the album was ranked number 188 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list. The album was included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings—published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)—and in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. It was voted number 165 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums in 2000.
Bleach is the debut studio album by American rock band Nirvana, released on June 15, 1989, by Sub Pop. After the release of their debut single "Love Buzz" on Sub Pop in November 1988, Nirvana rehearsed for two to three weeks in preparation for recording a full-length album. The main recording sessions for Bleach took place at Reciprocal Recording in Seattle, Washington between December 1988 and January 1989. It is the only Nirvana album released on the Sub Pop label and their only album to feature drummer Chad Channing.
The Au Pairs were a British post-punk band that formed in Birmingham in 1978 and continued until 1983. They produced two studio albums and three singles. Their songs were said to have "contempt for the cliches of contemporary sexual politics" and their music has been compared to that of the Gang of Four and the Young Marble Giants. The band was led by Lesley Woods, who was once described as "one of the most striking women in British rock".
Live Through This is the second studio album by the American alternative rock band Hole, released on April 12, 1994, by DGC Records. Recorded in late 1993, it departed from the band's unpolished hardcore aesthetics to more refined melodies and song structure. Frontwoman Courtney Love said that she wanted the record to be "shocking to the people who think that we don't have a soft edge", but maintain a harsh sensibility. The album was produced by Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie and mixed by Scott Litt and J Mascis. The lyrics and packaging reflect Love's thematic preoccupations with beauty, and motifs of milk, motherhood, anti-elitism, and violence against women, while Love derived the album title from a quote in Gone with the Wind (1939).
In Utero is the third and final studio album by American rock band Nirvana, released on September 21, 1993, by DGC Records. After breaking into the mainstream with their second album, Nevermind (1991), Nirvana hired Steve Albini to record In Utero, seeking a more complex, abrasive sound.
"Mr. Tambourine Man" is a song written by Bob Dylan, released as the first track of the acoustic side of his March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. The song's popularity led to Dylan recording it live many times, and it has been included in multiple compilation albums. It has been translated into other languages, and has been used or referenced in television shows, films, and books.
"Lithium" is a song by the American rock band Nirvana, written by vocalist and guitarist, Kurt Cobain. It appears as the fifth track on the band's second album Nevermind, released by DGC Records in September 1991.
"And I Love Her" is a song recorded by English rock band the Beatles, written primarily by Paul McCartney and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. It is the fifth track of their third UK album A Hard Day's Night and was released 20 July 1964, along with "If I Fell", as a single release by Capitol Records in the United States, reaching No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Lo-fi is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice. The standards of sound quality (fidelity) and music production have evolved throughout the decades, meaning that some older examples of lo-fi may not have been originally recognized as such. Lo-fi began to be recognized as a style of popular music in the 1990s, when it became alternately referred to as DIY music.
The Wayward Bus is the second studio album by American indie pop band The Magnetic Fields, released in 1992 by the band's own label, PoPuP Records.
James Albert Bowen is an American record producer and former rockabilly singer. Bowen brought Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood together, and introduced Sinatra to Mel Tillis for their album, Mel & Nancy.
Alison Statton is a Welsh singer best known for her work with Young Marble Giants. Fans of the singer have included Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Stephin Merritt, Belle and Sebastian and Renato Russo.
Weekend were a Welsh band formed by Alison Statton in 1981, following the split of Young Marble Giants. The band was a merger between two projects. Statton began writing with Spike of Z Block Records and Reptile Ranch in Cardiff, Wales in the summer of 1981, before moving to London where she teamed up with Simon Emmerson of Methodishca Tune. The band signed to Rough Trade Records in December 1981, but recorded only one studio album, La Variete.
Mark Williams more commonly known as Spike or Spike Williams is a Welsh guitarist and co-founder of South Wales' record label, Z Block Records. He was a member of the Cardiff-based band Reptile Ranch.
Live at Reading is a live CD/DVD by American rock band Nirvana, released on November 2, 2009. It features the band's headlining performance at the Reading Festival in Reading, England, on August 30, 1992. Bootlegged for years, the new issues present the performance for the first time mastered and color corrected.
"Hey Man Nice Shot" is a song by American rock band Filter, released on April 25, 1995, as the lead single from their debut studio album Short Bus. Some radio stations were playing it as early as March. The guitar line in the chorus was previously used in the Stabbing Westward song "Ungod" in 1994. Stuart Zechman, who was also playing guitar for Stabbing Westward at the time, took the riff and showed it to Stabbing Westward who ended up using it as well.
"Bluebird" is a song recorded by the American rock group Buffalo Springfield. It was written and produced by Stephen Stills, with co-production by Ahmet Ertegun. In June 1967, Atco Records released it as a single to follow-up their hit "For What It's Worth" (1966).
Embrace the Herd is the sole studio album by English band The Gist, released in 1982 by record label Rough Trade.
[With] shadows of Eno and Kraftwerk in their sound, which pitted the fluid bass and spiky guitar of brothers Phil and Stuart Moxham against the clicking pulse of a homemade drum machine.
{{cite AV media notes}}
: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)