Facing the Other Way

by Martin Aston

  4AD’s arrangement with Relativity had a spin-off benefit, as it meant Ivo could import copies of The Pink Opaque back to Britain and then export them out again to different territories, turning a profit on each copy. If 4AD was shipping British music to America and around the world, the label’s next phase would see 4AD bringing American music to Britain for the first time. It wasn’t planned; in fact, Ivo resisted it for a while. But when he accepted the challenge, it was to change the face, direction and future of the label from which there was no turning back.

  chapter 9 – 1986

  Le Mystère des Delicate Cutters

  (BAD601–CAD613)

  There were enough musical oddities in 4AD’s catalogue, from The Wolfgang Press’s beat fusion to Clan Of Xymox’s synthetic dance, to counter the idea that the label’s identity was limited to Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil and Dead Can Dance. But Ivo could not have underlined the hyper-ethereal any more than he did by releasing a single by Dutch vocalist Richenel – especially given it was a grand ballad about a crush on a slave boy written by an operatic French diva and sung by a man of Dutch Suriname extraction considered the Netherlands’ version of Boy George.

  In its remixed form, ‘L’Esclave Endormi’ remains one of 4AD’s lost treasures. The man helping to sustain the label’s measured and spellbound attempt to transcend mortal form for something more divine was Hubertus Richenel Baars, born in Amsterdam. He now lives in the south of France, his base for an ongoing career as a jazz singer.

  ‘I have had a crazy life,’ Richenel declares. ‘I never planned to make music, or sing, but music was always in our house.’ He was nevertheless already twenty-one years old when he was invited to replace the departing singer of the band Luxor Funk. The one potential issue was that the (female) singer’s boyfriend was a Hells Angel, and the bikers made up the band’s core fan base. ‘The strange thing was that the Angels loved me too!’ he recalls, even when he dressed up. ‘I wasn’t always in drag, but I always wore heels and lipstick. That was still a big deal in those days.’

  Richenel knew he wasn’t destined to spend his life working as a translator for an Amsterdam bank and moonlighting for Hells Angels. At art school, he befriended the multi-media collective Fetisj, who backed him on his 1982 debut album La Diferencia. The title was ambitious, less so his pedestrian soul-funk. Salvation came in 1984 after hearing ‘L’Esclave Endormi’ (which translates as ‘The Sleeping Slave’) on the radio, sung by the sublimely camp French-Turkish singer/actress Armande Altaï.

  The track was from the album Nocturne Flamboyant, produced by Martin Hannett, Factory Records’ crazed and genius in-house producer, the man who had turned Joy Division’s base metal into gold. Altaï’s album attempted the same kind of vaulting classical/electronic hybrid as the outrageous German singer Klaus Nomi; Richenel instantly wanted to cover the song, and after he rejected the request for a disco version from his new label, Dutch independent Megadisc, he aimed for the same exalted spirit of Altaï’s original. He concocted a mood as exotic and precious as any Dead Can Dance quest, though the way Richenel entwined the styles of choirboy and soul boy against a backdrop of suspended synths was in line with Eighties synth-pop, more Art of Noise than Art of Goth.

  Megadisc had sent Ivo a copy of Richenel’s next album Statue Of Desire, which he hadn’t enjoyed, except for ‘L’Esclave Endormi’. ‘It had an absolute purity and beauty, so I asked for the multi-tracks so that John and I could remix it – which I think we did beautifully.’ The remix, released on a twelve-inch single alongside Richenel’s original version, drew out the singer’s superlative technique across seven giddy minutes.

  ‘It’s one of my all-time favourite releases on 4AD,’ Ivo says. ‘Beautiful image, logo, beautiful singing by a beautiful man. It’s possibly my favourite sleeve credited to 23 Envelope. Nigel and Vaughan were collaborating at their best.’

  23 Envelope’s pursuit of beauty reached an apotheosis on ‘L’Esclave Endormi’. Nigel Grierson’s photograph of a naked boy, lying in a bath of milk, was posed like Michelangelo’s twin statues L’Esclave Mourant (The Dying Slave) and L’Esclave Rebelle (The Rebellious Slave), but Vaughan Oliver says the image was more inspired by nineteenth-century German photographer Baron Wilhelm Von Gloeden, whose images of naked Sicilian youth – and the sleeve of ‘L’Esclave Endormi’ created ninety years later – are fragments of a very different moral age. ‘Nigel kept asking the boy to get in a cold bath of milk,’ Oliver recalls. ‘You’re working as an artist; you’re not thinking it’s naughty. These were two heterosexual men working on this. It’s a lovely sleeve.’

  ‘L’Esclave Endormi’ became a one-off; Ivo saw no evidence in Richenel’s other material to release anything else. But he could see what Richenel could bring to a song, and invited the singer to London, to join the ongoing sessions for the new This Mortal Coil album. Ivo paired him with two songs – Tim Buckley’s ‘I Must Have Been Blind’ and Quicksilver Messenger Service’s ‘Fire Brothers’, another of Ivo’s west coast acid rock memories.

  The singers that ended up on the second This Mortal Coil album all had the same undiscovered, untapped potential, with a talent for conveying the sadness and drama that the collective’s music embodied. They also shared an androgynous aura. Though no one’s sexuality was on Ivo’s radar, the album’s other male voice, Dominic Appleton, was also gay, like Richenel.

  Appleton was discovered via a demo, by his band Breathless. The press release for the band’s 2012 album Green To Blue, their first in nine years, began with a quote from Ivo: ‘Without exaggeration, Dominic Appleton is by far my favourite living male vocalist. He has such a beautiful, sad voice and comes up with melodies that do the same.’

  Appleton admits that It’ll End In Tears had been a big influence on the London-based quartet. ‘It was exactly what I was looking for at the time and something I hadn’t heard before; unbelievable beauty,’ he says. ‘People focus on the gothic tag with 4AD but to me it was such delicate music, with fantastic textures. I’d immediately invested in Tim Buckley and Roy Harper’s catalogues and got pushed in all these lovely directions. Ivo pulled in a lot of people in the same way.’

  Breathless had released its earliest singles on the band’s own Tenor Vossa label; the 1985 EP Two Days From Eden had been recorded at Blackwing with John Fryer and Wolfgang Press engineer Drostan Madden. Hearing one track, ‘Pride’, was enough for Ivo to contact Appleton to say how much he’d liked it – but in this case, he didn’t take it further by signing Breathless. A version of ‘Pride’ was even attempted for the new This Mortal Coil album, but Dif Juz guitarist David Curtis was unhappy with his accompaniment and Ivo scrapped the idea, saving some of Curtis’s part for the instrumental ‘Meniscus’.

  Compensation for Appleton came in the form of an invite to sing on the album. Ivo matched Appleton’s sorrowful baritone to three lyrics of unreserved melancholy: ‘The Jeweller’, Colourbox’s ‘Tarantula’ and former Byrds member Gene Clark’s ‘Strength Of Strings’, which Ivo says still never fails to reduce him to tears.

  Ivo: ‘Someone said to me that Dominic had the kind of voice that would have sung a lot of these songs in the first place. My experience of him in the studio was he was shy and a bit flustered, but such a wonderful voice. There were moments when he felt he couldn’t hit a note, and then it would just build.’

  Ivo also singles out Scottish sisters Louise and Dee Rutkowski, the vocal frontline of the white soul band Sunset Gun that Ivo had unearthed via a compilation cassette. ‘More than anyone, they got what This Mortal Coil was about. Their voices took me back to the era of Emmylou Harris with Gram Parsons, or Linda Ronstadt, those wonderful, capable, pure voices that understand how to harmonise with each other as easily as breathing.’

  The Rutkowskis co-sang ‘I Want To Live’ (from Gary Ogan and Bill Lamb’s soft-rocking Portland), a second Tim Buckley cover ‘Morning Glory’, and provided back-up vocals to Appleton’s trilogy. ‘Ivo had wanted Scott Walker, but we managed to get
our foot in the door instead!’ says Louise Rutkowski. ‘At the time, I was listening to Chic and Philadelphia soul, but listening to This Mortal Coil’s originals, I realised that it was more “me” than the commercial stuff. I didn’t find those songs dark or depressing, just interesting and beautiful, and Ivo pulled that out of me. Dee agrees that, singularly or together, This Mortal Coil has been the only thing we’ve ever done that’s had any class or enjoyment. The rest has been hell!’

  This female side of This Mortal Coil’s vocal collective also included Jean, who had released a single and the EP Lady Blue under the name Jeanette, who Ivo paired up with ‘Come Here My Love’. Introduced to Ivo by Bauhaus singer Peter Murphy, Alison Limerick sang ‘My Father’ and Talking Heads’ ‘Drugs’ while ‘Alone’ was sung by Caroline Seaman, another discovery from a demo. Ivo also added Seaman’s Elizabeth Fraser-style wordless vocal to the needling guitars and solemn backbeat of ‘Red Rain’.

  Compared to their own nascent solo careers that had yet to bear much fruit, the singers were part of a bigger event: a new family, all united by Ivo’s obsessive vision. ‘It was just the best experience because of Ivo, the combination of the music he was making and pulling together,’ recalls Dee Rutkowski. ‘There was something beautiful and real and true about it, because the real truth of life is that it’s dark. Ivo was eccentric in the best way, with a passion for all things creative. And at the same time, he was running a record label!’

  Ivo’s capacity for overwork had already been proven, driven by 4AD’s success and, perhaps, subconsciously, from a need to fill the spaces in his life. But he did have valuable office back-up – from Deborah Edgely to Rob Deacon, who had been working part-time in the label’s warehouse since 1984. Deacon (who was killed in a canoeing accident in 2007) had been publishing Abstract, a vinyl-based fanzine that was as loyal to 4AD as The Offense Newsletter had been. In 1985, he had also begun his own independent label, named Sweatbox after The Wolfgang Press EP. Freed of the daily hassle of warehouse duties, Ivo had more time to spend in the studio, including an offer from Peter Murphy to produce the former Bauhaus singer’s first solo album.

  Bauhaus’ shift to Beggars Banquet had paid off: a cover of David Bowie’s ‘Ziggy Stardust’ reached number 15 on the UK national chart in 1982, getting them on Top of the Pops, and their third album, The Sky’s Gone Out, had subsequently reached the UK national top five. Bauhaus had also broken into film. Where Cocteau Twins had been thwarted by Tim Buckley’s lawyers, Bauhaus had successfully made it to celluloid by miming to ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ for the opening nightclub scene of Tony Scott’s vampire melodrama The Hunger, in which Bauhaus idol David Bowie had a modest role as a centuries-old bloodsucker.

  Murphy also had a significant role in a dramatic TV and press advertising campaign for Maxell cassettes, playing the imperturbably cool figure pinned to a chair as the supposed crystal-clear tape wrecked the room but only ruffled his hair and tie. The image went around the world, no doubt expanding an already sizeable ego, and after one too many confrontations between stubborn factions within the band, Bauhaus split up after their fourth album, Burning From The Inside.

  As the other three members regrouped around Daniel Ash’s side project Tones on Tail – which was eventually renamed Love and Rockets – Murphy recorded an album with ex-Japan bassist Mick Karn under the name of Dalis Car. For Murphy’s first solo album, he called on Ivo, impressed by This Mortal Coil and knowing that Ivo would not be the usual kind of overreaching producer who might stand in his way.

  Not that Ivo thought Murphy had made the right choice. ‘Peter had unstructured songs and jams and needed someone to help arrange it all,’ Ivo recalls. ‘He should have made it with John [Fryer] as I’m not a musician, but I was flattered that someone was asking me.’

  Over five weeks at Blackwing, Ivo discovered that Murphy had left his ego at home. ‘Though I’d never got close to Bauhaus, I’d really enjoyed them as people. Those weeks with Peter were nothing but gracious and fun, with lots of self-deprecating humour. There wasn’t the hint of a tantrum. I’d go into the 4AD office every morning till midday, and once Deborah was there too, everything was safe and I could head to Blackwing.’

  Working on Murphy’s album Should The World Fail To Fall Apart made no difference to Ivo’s standing as a producer, as he received no other such offer. But the collaboration had the most extraordinary payoff. Every night after recording had finished, Murphy and company would wind down to a cassette that he’d been given. For fifteen years, Swiss musicologist Marcel Cellier had recorded the Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir, and in 1975 had released a selection of their recordings on his own label Disques Cellier – hence the French name Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares on the cassette that Murphy insisted they enjoy every night.

  So it wasn’t the Aboriginal chants that Ivo had once talked about that became a possible direction for the label, but the Bulgarian choir’s uncannily piercing, resonating timbre developed from the open-throated technique of singing. For Ivo, schooled by Elizabeth Fraser and Lisa Gerrard in the art of female vocal supremacy, it was a defining moment. ‘It simply buckled my knees!’ he recalls. ‘The solo piece “Prïtourïtze Planinata” first did it. The more I listened to the album, the less interested I was in finding out how old the music was, or if any of the singers were still alive. The sound was all you needed, these incredible singers making sounds with lyrics that I couldn’t understand.’

  Ivo insisted Murphy help track down the origin of the tape, which led to him making an offer to license the album from Cellier. ‘I had to own the album rather than a fourth-generation cassette, and to make it available so that others could have the same emotional experience,’ Ivo says. ‘And, of course, to be part of 4AD’s catalogue. I’m so extraordinarily proud of having released that record. The circumstances are a reflection of the absolute purity that exists outside of the music industry.’

  Ivo also had permission to license Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares on to Virgin France and ‘most beautifully’ to Japan: ‘That made it a Bulgarian recording, through England, and to Japan, just because they’d heard a 4AD-sounding record! It was so quickly jumped on everywhere else too.’

  The album had no precedent outside of folkloric collections; the so-called ‘World Music’ movement hadn’t yet been conceived, with only African music making a dent in Western tastes. The Bulgarians simply fit the 4AD aesthetic of sound, but its uncanny and sublime power was enough to reach consumers and media outlets alike unaware of 4AD.

  The UK breakthrough came from DJ and former TV newsreader Richard Baker on BBC Radio 4, who had a much older and conservative demographic than BBC Radio 1. Baker had received one of the five thousand copies of a seven-inch single – ‘Prïtourïtze Planinata’ backed by ‘Polegnala E Todora’ – that 4AD had pressed for promotion. BBC Radio 2 subsequently playlisted the album and the choir – suddenly fêted outside of their usual domain – began to perform live, kickstarting a career that still thrives, albeit without the same media overkill.* The result was that 4AD had suddenly, unexpectedly, crossed over. ‘It was such an exciting time,’ Ivo recalls. ‘You didn’t know what could happen next.’

  What did happen next was a surprise turn from Cocteau Twins: an acoustic record. With Simon Raymonde on This Mortal Coil duties, Robin Guthrie had decided to embark on a project that he says was less about Raymonde’s position in the band than his own desire to record with just Elizabeth Fraser: ‘To see if what we did worked without the drums and the huge reverb and the big wall of sound. Did we have substance?’

  ‘I wasn’t particularly bothered,’ says Raymonde. ‘My pride might have been dented for a few minutes. But it was strange because I didn’t realise it was going to be released as Cocteau Twins. They could have asked if I minded. Of course I would have said no. It was their band, not mine. But people did start asking if I’d left the band.’

  Guthrie was also occupied in establishing a studio for the Cocteaus, so 4AD put them
in a residential studio outside London, where the duo cut just 32 minutes of material. After teething problems at the cutting plant where the reverb distorted, the album had to be cut at the faster speed of 45rpm, ‘to satisfy “Bat Ears” Guthrie, as the mastering engineer called him,’ says Ivo.

  ‘It’s fucking gorgeous, that album,’ says Bat Ears.

  Fraser named it Victorialand, a region in the Antarctica that also inspired many of the song titles, from places (‘Oomingmak’) and animals (‘Whales Tails’) to the elements (‘The Thinner The Air’). There was a third musician involved, with Richie Thomas’s occasional saxophone and tablas woven into the fabric of the album’s gentle serenity. It was obvious to anyone but the band that Cocteau Twins could work on a more intimate scale. ‘Victorialand is absolutely beautiful,’ Ivo agrees. ‘I also loved the fact that it didn’t sound acoustic, or like any other Cocteau Twins record.’

  Guthrie continued on a roll, accepting other offers of production, such as ex-Orange Juice frontman Edwyn Collins, British indie-pop artisans Felt and the American punk-blues band The Gun Club. But his increasing self-esteem, from recognition of his studio prowess and the money he was paid for production work, record sales and tours, was to give him the confidence to afford better drugs, and one effect of cocaine is an increased sense of confidence and bluster. As witnesses saw, Guthrie had the capacity for taking an awful lot of it, spurring him on to more work but also more dependency.