Facing the Other Way

by Martin Aston

  Since Colourbox in 1982, the number of British-based artists that Ivo had signed long-term was four: Lush, Pale Saints, Heidi Berry and Mojave 3.

  Given the heights Belly had reached, there was hope invested in Tanya Donelly’s debut solo album. David Narcizo played on the four tracks produced by Muses/Pixies buddy – and Donelly’s new manager – Gary Smith, and the drummer was to join the live band that toured the album across America alongside husband Dean Fisher on bass.

  Donelly’s new album emulated Belly’s debut and, in large parts, bettered it. Lead single ‘Pretty Deep’ and the follow-up ‘Bright Light’ were crunchy and effervescent, ‘Acrobat’ was tender and haunting and ‘Mysteries Of The Unexplained’ is a contender for the best ballad that Donelly has ever written. But MTV Buzz Bin wasn’t interested anymore and the wave that had carried Belly along had beached a long time ago. The video to ‘Pretty Deep’ was aired on the new MTV2 channel, set up to siphon off whatever popular music was deemed alternative, and also on MTV’s new ‘adult contemporary’ strand VH1. Both had much lower viewer figures than the main MTV channel, which was busy making itself over as a youth TV mouthpiece that preferred celebrity and reality TV programming. Donelly was an underdog all over again.

  The only chart placing Lovesongs For Underdogs won was Billboard’s Northeast Heatseekers chart, where it reached number 20. ‘I’ve given up trying to figure out what the music industry is about,’ Donelly told me at the time. ‘It’s so changeable; I can’t predict it. There were high hopes around 4AD and Sire, which I’m trying to stay away from! People need to have high hopes to get through the process, but in my own heart, I have to keep an even keel. I don’t want to make records to try and maintain a momentum; whichever way the wind blows this time, I’ll be OK.’

  ‘I very much liked Tanya’s album and I thought it would be enormously successful,’ says Ivo. ‘But it didn’t happen.’ Neither had the track listing that he chose for Donelly, which began with ‘Acrobat’. ‘Gary Smith’s response was that we didn’t want to scare people away from the listening posts in record shops,’ Ivo says. ‘A few years earlier, I’d have felt strong enough to express my emotional investment in a record and in Tanya, but Gary spoke louder to Sire about editing “Pretty Deep”, so they cut the reference to a “dead body” [‘Remember when we all went out to Fire Island/ You thought you saw a body on the beach’]. These were lovely and creative people doing the best to have successful records. With me at the helm or not, 4AD was never meant to be that. Let’s not forget why independent labels were created in the first place – as an alternative way of having an outlet, a career in the music industry, without following the sell-your-soul route to success.’

  In Ivo’s mind, and as Michael Brook had seen it, 4AD was predicated on Ivo’s purist way of working, or it couldn’t work … the present compromise in both the UK and LA offices certainly wasn’t sustainable. Lewis Jamieson saw a potential fatal flaw in Ivo’s continued absence. ‘The roster wasn’t renewed properly, so its once great strength, a unified vision of music, wasn’t present anymore. There was GusGus, Ivo’s bands, Scheer, and none of them fit together. The base of people buying nearly every release because it was on 4AD started to fall, and we didn’t have the marketing expertise to replace that reliance on label loyalty.’

  ‘4AD whore’ Craig Roseberry was one of those mad collectors of old who was about to call a halt to his obsessive need to own everything 4AD released, and filed in order of catalogue numbers. ‘After years of frenzied devotion to all things 4AD,’ Roseberry says, ‘things began to turn around 1995. Even if I hadn’t been in love with a release, I still felt it was interesting, collectable and a crucial part of the ethos of 4AD’s image and identity. But I could no longer see cohesion or unified vision. There were awkward transitional records by bands trying to figure out their next steps, and I found the rash of newer signings like Heidi Berry, Scheer, Tarnation, Air Miami, Mojave 3 and Lisa Germano lacklustre and uninspiring. But GusGus was a great signing – they were unique, interesting and “other”.

  But then everything changes. I had changed too. I was no longer that sullen and idealistic post-punk-goth-indie kid wanting to kick against the pricks and to cling to everything I felt embodied the same ideals. I was working as an artist manager and record exec in the dance and electronic worlds – I was more into acid jazz and trip hop, soul and deep house. And 4AD was not that. Many of the label’s later releases represented a significant page or chapter from my earlier life that was slipping away.’

  To counteract the loss of such core collectors, 4AD had to pursue marketing campaigns, even to the point of changing the emphasis of those record covers. Ivo attributes much of 4AD’s appearance of success to v23’s continuing sterling efforts. There could be dips in quality, arguably down to the office resources being unfairly stretched by the need for multiple formats. Artists were now more likely to be seen on record covers, such as on Lovesongs For Underdogs, which featured a functional, rather than imaginative, image of an outstretched Tanya Donelly, dominated by typography. The demand by GusGus singer Daníel Ágúst to have his image – underwater in skimpy swimming trunks and cap – on the front of Polydistortion scuppered v23’s own idea but Vaughan Oliver still had a lavish twenty-page booklet in the CD artwork in which to juxtapose stills from the band’s film and photo archive with v23’s own contributions.

  The tree husks of Mirador – photographed on London’s Hampstead Heath as there wasn’t the budget to shoot them in Oliver’s preferred Mojave desert location – were also memorable, but the Scheer sleeves and the silver oven mittens (the outline of Warren Defever’s home state of Michigan is mitten-shaped) of Stars On ESP and an accompanying image combining forks and whales were inspired. ‘We were still turning something banal into something exciting,’ says Oliver. ‘Warren allowed me to do the most random, surreal things, anything but just another record sleeve.’

  Defever recalls his periodic visits to v23 with great fondness. ‘Their dungeon office was always so much fun and filled with loud music, dancing and occasional screaming. I remember staying in the flat two floors above the office and hearing Vaughan howling like a wolf or a demon one night. I was too terrified to investigate. The next day, everything seemed fine and nobody mentioned anything. When I hear 4AD artists whining about their experience working with him, I always think, you fucking idiot, you have no idea how lucky you are, let me know when you find a better designer to work with.’

  Vaughan Oliver wasn’t the only one working hard. Despite what might have struck the 4AD staff as rehearsals for Ivo’s retirement, he had again been hatching plans for a follow-up to This Mortal Coil. ‘I found I was missing not having a project to obsess about, which to me was a good sign, because before then, I just wanted to get things off my mind. I remember telling Lisa Germano that if I didn’t start something, I’d forget about ever doing another record. She said why didn’t I just start it? So I did.’

  It couldn’t be This Mortal Coil, and it wasn’t to be Blood either. But Ivo still felt a covers project had legs, though it needed to stand apart from the past, which precluded John Fryer’s participation, and that of Jon Turner. Unable to commit to co-ordinating and engaging in prolonged sessions, a large and revolving collective felt too difficult and grand. What began to gel in Ivo’s head centred on the sublime bass playing of Laurence O’Keefe from Heidi Berry’s house band (and Brendan Perry’s 13 Year Itch performance). ‘For the sake of simplicity,’ Ivo says, ‘I thought of a record that would just be bass guitar and strings.’

  O’Keefe instantly wanted to take part, so on his spring trip to London, Ivo organised a session with engineer Alex Russell at Protocol studios, now that the trusted Blackwing had closed down, with a view to releasing an album in 1998. Eight backing tracks were laid down, with the subtlest addition of some sampled effects that Ivo had brought with him, such as ocean waves and his bedroom’s air conditioning unit (the tape of which helped him sleep when travelling). ‘Eight tracks wa
s all I wanted to do,’ he says. ‘And more than ever, I felt like [film director] Robert Altman, who said, “Once you have your script and cast, 98 per cent of the work is done”.’

  Ivo hadn’t intended to have just one singer after he’d heard what former This Mortal Coil contributor Louise Rutkowski had recorded for the demos. ‘It was to help me pick a direction, but I just fell in love with what she did, so we kept them,’ says Ivo. ‘Most were done in one or two takes.’

  Rutkowski had been working for the British Arts Council when she got Ivo’s call. Like other artists that Ivo favoured, she had struggled to survive making music after This Mortal Coil had given her the desire to put integrity before anything. She admits that she had virtually abandoned singing. ‘It’s much easier being independent nowadays, but back then, it was much harder because you had to rely on so many people – labels, managers and more. Being involved with Ivo, there wasn’t that level of falseness; it was about the music. He was like a film director in that he could capture some essence of oneself in a very true way, as I had nothing on the tracks to bounce off, which meant I had to work harder. Nothing that I’ve been involved in before or after working with Ivo has brought me anything like the same happiness.’

  Rather than use TMC foil Martin McCarrick, Ivo added string arrangements by cellist Audrey Riley, who had worked on Static & Silence, Ivo’s favourite album by The Sundays. With the odd vocal retouch and Richie Thomas’s modest contribution – drums on ‘Hanky Panky Nohow’, saxophone on ‘Sweet Unknown’ – an album was completed. ‘There were very few people involved and very little preparation,’ Ivo recalls. ‘I just played games of musical consequences, passing ideas around. I was less concerned with my tangible role and just delighted to be the enabler of the project. It was all so beautifully relaxed and easy.’

  Ivo hadn’t talked to John Fryer since the Blood sessions in 1994, but changed his mind about using his former ally for the album’s mixing in New York. ‘Why make life harder by not using John? I gave him much more freedom than with This Mortal Coil. Back in London, I’d also let Laurence stay on in the studio for a couple of nights to play whatever he wanted. But in the end, everyone who played on the album expressed surprise by how stripped down it became.’

  Ivo also retired the songs he’d tried out with Joanne Loughman/Blood, choosing songs either because they spoke loudly to him, or just because they had beautiful melodies and memories, such as Brian Eno’s ‘Spider & I’ and former Velvet Underground member John Cale’s ‘Hanky Panky Nohow’. The sessions’ third song by a British art rock icon, ‘Let The Happiness In’ by David Sylvian, did have a profound resonance – it had been the soundtrack in Ivo’s mind during his father’s funeral in 1987.

  Three tracks had concrete connections to 4AD. Slowblow’s ‘Is Jesus Your Pal?’ was chosen purely for its melody, but the message in Heidi Berry’s ‘Only Human’ seemed all too clear: ‘If anyone should offer your heart/ Could you give the same way?/ You’re too afraid/ You’re too far gone/ But you know you’ll find a way to be.’ The meaning inferred in Neil Halstead’s ‘Dagger’ was open to interpretation, however: ‘The sunshine girl is sleeping/ She falls and dreams alone/ And me I am her dagger/ Too numb to feel her pain.’

  ‘I’d rather not be too literal,’ says Ivo. ‘Songs just resonate, don’t they? “Only Human”, well, we are, aren’t we? I chose “Dagger” for the atmosphere. I’m not sure I know what it’s about.’

  That left two tracks. ‘Sweet Unknown’, written by British shoegazers Cranes, echoed ‘Song To The Siren’ in describing the inevitability of lost love: ‘I loved it when you would hold me tight/ And for a while our world seemed bright…/ And I hope one day you find the things you really need …’ But it was only ‘The Outer Skin’ whose lyric was included in the artwork. The song had been written by Chris Knox of the inventive New Zealand art-pop duo Tall Dwarfs. The lines locate the narrator in the grip of isolation, with a black-eyed dog barring the door: ‘We’re as close as two coats of paint on a windswept wall/ But we’ll never know what sits at the other’s core’, as well as, ‘Self-obsessed on a crumbling couch for hours/ Quite alone as is usual for the things we are quite unable to go beyond what’s ours/ And it feels like nothing on earth has ever got in.’

  The name of this new project was The Hope Blister, a phrase that had popped into Ivo’s head while he sat in a traffic jam. ‘I wanted two words that worked together that normally don’t. It means different things to me, but the meaning is pretty much contained within the name, simultaneously positive and negative. Like waiting for the agony to stop and letting the happiness in. Virtually everything in life is like that.’

  But the aftermath of Ivo’s visit to the London office was much more about agony than happiness. The ongoing round of financial trimming that had affected artist tour support and design projects finally had staff numbers in its sights. ‘Memos had been going around,’ recalls Cliff Walton, ‘that we’d not had the success we’d hoped for, and a reference to the label being supported by Ivo’s own money.’ (Not true, he says.)

  In June, Robin Hurley flew to London to announce who was to be let go; those staying were to double up on duties, for example Tim Hall would take over record plugging. ‘I was told how to do the job in two hours one afternoon,’ he says. Colleen Maloney was to run international PR as well as the UK side – and single-handed too, as Tony Morley had already left to concentrate full-time on his record label Leaf.*

  A&R also had to be cut down. Ivo naturally wanted to retain Colin Wallace, his old friend who had been employed longer than Lewis Jamieson, who Ivo didn’t get on with anyway. But he was persuaded otherwise. ‘Lewis’ character jarred with what 4AD was used to, like he’d get shitfaced with the bands like a Creation Records A&R man would do,’ says Hurley, ‘but Lewis came with GusGus.’

  Wallace, of course, came with Scheer. It was no contest. And he had signed precisely one band at 4AD during three and a half years in the job, while his and Jamieson’s Detox Artifacts imprint had only lasted a year, to no noticeable effect.† ‘Ultimately, we did make a choice to go with Lewis, based primarily on the overall artistic direction 4AD seemed to be heading towards, coupled with the fact Colin didn’t seem very happy with that direction,’ says Simon Harper.

  Sixteen years earlier, Wallace had chauffeured Cocteau Twins from Grangemouth to London and beyond, seen his pals Robin Guthrie and Liz Fraser help mould the template for 4AD’s success, and witnessed, close hand, the success of M/A/R/R/S and Pixies before finding himself helping Ivo steer a way forward. The Cocteaus had first slipped away and now Wallace was himself removed.

  ‘4AD was my second family, where I absolutely loved working,’ he says. ‘It must have been unbelievably painful for Ivo and Robin to cut everyone loose. Martin Mills told me that 4AD resembled a Rolls-Royce being run on the budget of a Citroën 2CV, which was unsustainable. I thought it would go on for ever, and get bigger and better, but in the end, I was seeing my friends and colleagues leaving one after the other, some in tears, and it was just very, very sad. I was taken care of financially, and the next day after I left, I went to Jamaica, smoked lots of sensimilla, and had a fantastic holiday.’

  Cliff Walton, and Simon Harper’s assistant in the International department, were also let go, while v23’s Paul McMenamin had already moved to LA. Vaughan Oliver admits that morale was down in every department of the label, and despite the workload, he realised he could no longer depend on a privileged safety. ‘At one point, years earlier, Ivo had told me that things would end at a certain point, after he’d made his mark. I was shocked that he’d have an end game in sight. I felt secure enough, but it still felt devastating, to have this amazing galleon that was charting new waters and getting lost – and then the captain might want to stand down? Other people can take the helm, but they weren’t big enough, and they still had Ivo over their shoulder, thinking, what would he like?’

  Ivo: ‘Vaughan was angry that I had never discussed moving to America, and
he was now working for a company that was populated by what he regarded as fools. I wasn’t thinking clearly or honestly when I allowed them to let Colin go, because he was my friend, but I was doing something in order to save the company, to follow the vision to sell records at any cost. Shame on me for agreeing.’

  But Ivo had come up with no other alternative. He hadn’t signed the right artists, so what were the remaining staff members to do in that absence? On top of Ivo’s new studio project, he had been busy on two others, both of which had no tangible commercial portfolio, but then that was never his consideration. Ivo had expressed to Robin Hurley his interest in working on a film as music supervisor: ‘Seventy-two hours later, Robin called, saying, “You won’t believe it, I’ve just been asked if you’d be interested in working on a film called Joyride”. The director was a big 4AD fan.’

  The crime thriller starring Tobey Maguire (with Benicio del Toro in a supporting role) was screenwriter Quinton Peeples’ first stab at directing. Assisted by 4AD LA office co-ordinator Chris Staley, Ivo assembled a soundtrack of fourteen 4AD tracks, taking the opportunity to use personal favourites such as Tarnation’s ‘Game Of Broken Hearts’, This Mortal Coil’s ‘Ivy And Neet’, Lush’s ‘Desire Lines’ and Dif Juz’s ‘No Motion’. He also added three slices of suspenseful ambient darkness from German artists Baked Beans and Oliver Lieb. ‘It was an interesting, if frustrating experience,’ Ivo recalls. ‘I used far too much music that served no purpose and ultimately was barely audible in the film. I do like the opening credits using “Spirea Rising”, though.’‡

  The Joyride soundtrack was only released in America. The second project wasn’t even on sale in record stores, only in bookshops.

  The self-titled Tom Baril book had finally come together after a series of meetings. The photographer, born a year before Ivo, did have more in common with Ivo than simply the work; Baril had grown up making a racket in the family basement with his brother, aping James Brown, The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds, before progressing to jazz. He hadn’t heard of 4AD when Ivo got in touch; Ivo, for his part, must have kept very quiet about 4AD’s music, as Baril says he still doesn’t know who This Mortal Coil are. But he did get acquainted with 4AD’s commitment to production: ‘It was clear Ivo was detail-orientated, and I knew he’d do a special book, and do it right, with the best paper and printing. It was hand-bound, and it got very expensive.’ Baril says that the book almost didn’t happen: ‘Ivo knew how he wanted the book to be designed, these very small prints, only two or three inches high … he was into precious little images. But most of my work was large-scale. We compromised in the end.’