by Martin Aston
Another solo project that had finally come to fruition, with very bad timing, was Brendan Perry’s album. Eye Of The Hunter had been in the works for six years, since his 13 Year Itch debut solo show, until he had finally considered it finished and handed it over, with a release date of October. That meant it was to fall in the period between Ivo’s departure and the arrival of a potential replacement.
Perry’s album eschewed the songs that he’d unveiled on Dead Can Dance’s live album Toward The Within,† though he did include another Tim Buckley cover, ‘I Must Have Been Blind’. Although Scott Walker’s measured gravity was still part of Perry’s DNA, the album’s eight ballads included a newfound falsetto inspired by his Tim Buckley covers. ‘When I moved to Ireland, I found a big folk scene, and I started using Buckley’s songs as a template to develop my own acoustic guitar technique and the range of my voice, from high to low, which helped bring it out,’ says Perry. ‘It was a real transition for me.’
The constant re-working of tracks, occasionally daubed in pedal steel guitar or strings, was Ivo’s given reason for why he felt slightly disappointed in Eye Of The Hunter. ‘I didn’t hear enough of the human, organic feel that Brendan’s songs have in concert. But his singing was absolutely stunning. I’m still confused as to why singers with half his talent are twice as successful.’
It would have been fitting had Perry provided the end of a tumultuous year, decade and even a lifetime of Ivo’s steering of 4AD. Perry had been a 4AD artist for fifteen years, making decisions based on intuition not on any concept of market share, just as Kristin Hersh had, and as Ivo preferred. Perry’s former foil, Lisa Gerrard, would have been an equally perfect way for Ivo to bow out, except that her and Pieter Bourke’s soundtrack for The Insider was released in 1999 on Sony Records, not 4AD. ‘It was still a big deal, the first soundtrack to a big movie done by a 4AD artist,’ says Ivo.
As it was, with one last resounding note of irony, a Cuba single closed up shop. ‘Starshine’ was to fare no better than ‘Black Island’ and Christopher Andrews’ boast to Dotmusic that Cuba had the potential to emulate Pixies as 4AD’s biggest band felt horribly premature. ‘We had swagger, and we really thought we had something,’ Andrews recalls. ‘I still think we could have been a really big band, but the stars have to align.’
In that same Dotmusic feature, Lewis Jamieson had been quoted as saying, ‘The ethos at 4AD is that if you sign a band or a musical project and you value it, it should have the legs and the ideas to develop over time.’ The ethos was already out of date, and 4AD cut Cuba loose after contract negotiations for a second album stalled. Rather than claim they were misled by the non-declaration of 4AD’s porous finances, Ashley Bates and Andrews both shoulder responsibility. The contract negotiations, Bates says, had been fundamentally flawed: ‘4AD were cutting their losses, but it didn’t help that our management were asking for more money than we’d originally signed for.’
‘I was shell-shocked when Lewis said 4AD was pulling out, but I have to take some blame myself,’ Andrews continues. ‘We were negotiating too hard for an advance that included a reasonable share of licensing deals, and tour support. It was a real shame because I genuinely think we’d have hit our stride on the next album. Other labels were calling us too, but when we didn’t re-sign with 4AD, our publishing deal wasn’t renewed either, and the interest dried up. Labels easily move on to the next thing, and we lost momentum. Things stagnated and I decided to go off travelling. But I still think of 4AD as music lovers running a business that was more than a record business.’‡
Both Tarnation and Scheer had already been informed that 4AD was not going to continue the relationship. Tarnation had only signed a two-album deal, and without supporters at the label, it didn’t make sense to continue. Singer Paula Frazer immediately saw what would happen without 4AD’s protection. ‘Reprise offered to put out an album if I went with a country Nashville sound and a producer of their choosing. But I said no. I’d heard enough horror stories about that kind of set-up.’
Scheer had recorded a second album, but they’d also lost key support with Colin Wallace’s departure, and it was clear that 4AD didn’t know what to do with them. ‘The writing was on the wall,’ says singer Audrey Gallagher. ‘No one fought on either side.’ In any case, Gallagher and guitarist-boyfriend Neal Calderwood wanted a change, and veered off into the realm of dance music, bearing no grudge. ‘Compared to our experiences since, 4AD was a caring label that wasn’t just out to make money,’ says Calderwood. ‘They did have genuine belief in the music and the bands. We just joined at the wrong time.’
It would have been the most poignant sign-off of all had Ivo been the instigator of the final release under his stewardship. But Underarms, a Hope Blister album of instrumental out-takes, had been released in April, the second in 4AD’s mail order operation, and the last. ‘There was a lack of belief, or leadership, particularly out of the UK office,’ says Robin Hurley.
As was Ivo’s perverse way, in a fuck-you-tiger manner, the inspiration for the album title was a voicemail message left by the wife of the album’s Swedish studio engineer. A dominatrix (according to Ivo) calling herself Sheena Bizarre had called the studio and left details complaining about her journey into work. ‘She had been standing there next to people with stinking underarms,’ Ivo recalls. It was both a very strange title and association for the seven dark, dreamy neo-classical instrumentals, part strings and part ambient drone, but it was a fitting conclusion to Ivo’s recorded output, a textural soundscape of restless, withdrawn beauty, just for its own sake.§
Mission accomplished, money in the bank, Ivo returned to his beloved dogs that he and Brandi were still regularly fostering from the animal shelter. Walks, house training and finding new homes for them took priority over trying to find musicians and singers a safe space in which to be themselves.
News of 4AD’s new structure under Martin Mills was only publically announced in November, five months after the staff had been told. ‘4AD HQ returns to London,’ ran the headline in Music Week.
‘4AD has a profile, reputation and image which I hope will be enhanced,’ said Mills. ‘I hope 4AD in the future will be more so and better. The spirit of 4AD will live on.’
While a large part of the world was wondering if the end of the millennium would end in Armageddon, or at least a technology meltdown that would redefine life, Ivo saw it as a chance to begin again for the better. ‘I felt relaxed and off the hook, and no longer guilty about not being available to people whose future depended on me,’ he says today. Ivo had finally found the right plot of land outside Santa Fe on which to build a sanctuary, to clean up, to calm his tempestuous mind, to heal. He had no clue as to the future; neither did the record label he was leaving behind.
In 1998, when he was still living in LA, Ivo had been contemplating a move to the desert while considering the tracks to be covered for The Hope Blister project. He decided against ‘At Last I Am Free’ by American R&B legends Chic, which Robert Wyatt had made his own with a cover in 1982. A second discarded idea was ‘Place Of My Own’ by Pink Floyd’s progressive rock contemporaries Caravan. Ivo thinks the lyric could have been written for him today.
‘Yesterday’s face is not the one I choose to see/ Nor is the face of someone who gets much too close to me/ I’ve got this place of my own where I can go when I feel I’m coming down.’
The year 2000: Forward?
* The dotcom boom and crash of the late Nineties and early Noughties meant that Atomic Pop’s IPO (Initial Public Offering) to issue shares never took place, and the day that the Atomic Pop label’s first artist (Slum Village) made the Billboard Top 100, its staff were let go. ‘Martin, as everyone knows, is a pretty tough negotiator and he got Atomic Pop to agree to a clause that allowed the rights to revert to 4AD should their company go bust,’ says Ivo. ‘That’s exactly what happened! Luck of the devil, that man.’
† ‘Sloth’ had been performed on stage with Dead Can Dance, and a 1993 radio
session from 1993 was released on the box set Dead Can Dance (1981–1998).
‡ The experience was enough for even a ‘vibesman’ such as Christopher Andrews to get disillusioned, and he became yet another signing to abandon music after his relationship with 4AD disintegrated, switching his swagger to the advertising industry.
§ Ivo had a huge boost when working on Underarms. ‘The track “White On White” was recorded and mixed the very last day at Battery in New York,’ he explains. ‘Originally it was called “Dali Herzog” but I sent it off to Bauhaus, who were just about to commence their first reunion tour, with a suggestion that they use it as their intro music on the assumption they would be kicking off live shows with “Double Dare”. They were and, much to my delight and surprise, they used it throughout the tour. I also gave the track to my then neighbour Harold Budd, who said that he was jealous and wished he had written it. Can you imagine how I felt?’
chapter 24 – the noughties
Full of Dust and Guitars
I’m full of dust and guitars. The only work I’ve done the last two years is interviews. I’m very good at it.
(Syd Barrett, 1971)
‘We’re at the foot of the future and it’s kicking us up the past’
(‘Don’t Even Know Which Day It Is’ – Edgar Broughton Band)
If the spirit of 4AD was to live on, as Martin Mills had suggested, it would have to do so not just without Ivo but without trusted lieutenants Simon Harper and Robin Hurley. The latter had been offered the chance to run 4AD from Beggars’ New York base, but he didn’t want to move back to the east coast, and he didn’t feel it was a viable option. ‘I realised that I would really miss Ivo and I had no confidence that 4AD would thrive without him.’
Like Ivo, Hurley believes that 4AD should have changed tack, to survive and even thrive – as a back catalogue operation. He suggests Ivo could have made that a condition of the sale: ‘The purchase price from Martin wouldn’t have been noticeably lower.’
Mills knew that particular course of action would have been financially prudent. ‘We needed to generate an income from 4AD, and the easiest way over a period of time would have been to run it as a museum piece, knowing 4AD was Ivo, and it could never be the same again. But that would have been a waste. There was something great there that we couldn’t just give up on. I wanted to reinvent 4AD in Ivo’s image, a label that he would continue to be proud of. I don’t know if we succeeded, but we tried.’
With Simon Harper making his move to the USA, Mills needed to find someone to head the label.* Just as 4AD’s A&R team after Ivo’s move to America had been plucked from the warehouse, Mills looked within the company rather than bringing in an outsider. Chris Sharp had joined Beggars Banquet’s press department in 1995, progressing to head both Beggars and XL press operations after successful high-profile campaigns including The Prodigy. ‘It was an incredible opportunity,’ says Sharp. Given his incisive business brain, communication skills and good taste, he was a capable choice. Responsibilities were to be shared with new head of A&R Ed Horrox, now that Beggars Banquet’s subsidiary label Mantra had been shut down.
Sharp’s first task was to examine 4AD’s existing contracts and accounts, and to visit the relevant artists to discuss the future. He made contact with Kim Deal, Warren Defever, Tanya Donelly, Kristin Hersh, Brendan Perry, Lisa Gerrard, Mojave 3, GusGus, The Thievery Corporation and Vinny Miller – not a bad roster to inherit.
Sharp was confronted with mixed reactions to Ivo’s departure. ‘Ivo didn’t tell me he was leaving, I heard it from Brendan,’ says Lisa Gerrard. ‘I was devastated. I had tried calling Ivo a few times in the Nineties, but Brandi began to ask why I was calling – she felt I was putting him under pressure, and so I’d stopped.’
Sharp says Hersh and Donelly appreciated the fact that someone was now offering a sense of direction. Warren Defever was more suspicious, adding: ‘His view was that His Name Is Alive had been releasing records with diminishing returns, so could I still pursue my vision to make R&B records? And did anyone at 4AD truly care?’ Thievery Corporation’s Eric Hilton was the toughest negotiator: ‘He wanted 4AD to drop them so he could make lots of money if they could re-sell the overseas rights to a second album,’ says Sharp. ‘But we wanted to keep them.’
There was just one person Sharp couldn’t reach: ‘Kim Deal was off the radar. She was in the thick of her drink and drugs period, but she popped up a year later.’
Vinny Miller’s case was even more complicated. As starry smooth hound, he’d received an advance for an album that remained unfinished, three years on. In Sharp’s mind, ‘Ivo had given Vinny the spiel, that he was a genius, and that he was a rough diamond that Ivo could polish. But he never did, which left Vinny in limbo. Ivo’s hands-off approach had left a few people potentially unprotected.’
Sharp was as obsessed with music as Ed Horrox, and the connection that Horrox had made with Ivo regarding Low showed the potential for a continuity of Ivo’s original spirit. ‘I was aware of this label that had been as great as any other, and incredibly attractive,’ says Horrox. ‘It was a case of just trying to sign the things that you love, or that you see as important. I loved how key records on 4AD went their own way.’
As a teenager during, he says, ‘one blissful summer’, Horrox had been entrusted the family house on his own for the first time – the soundtrack to this time was dominated by This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins and Le Voix Bulgares. Horrox’s own path shows how the times had changed, as he dived deep into club music, from house to Madchester. He’d tried, and failed, to forge a career as a jobbing musician but at least this provided common ground with the artists that he was trying to sign as an A&R man.
In 1993, Horrox joined Island as an A&R scout, moving to London Records and then Mantra, where his more imaginative and eclectic tastes could prosper. There, he signed The Delgados (pensive, orchestrated rock), Six By Seven (expansive rock) and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci (wistful, folky psychedelia; Ivo had once been keen on the Welshmen). He couldn’t sign Low, but he had turned Ivo on to their album Secret Name. ‘Ivo called to say the album had brought him to tears, and why weren’t people sending him this kind of stuff?’ Horrox recalls. ‘It was a nice little encounter, but we didn’t speak again until I was at 4AD.’
Martin Mills was again to take a hands-off approach. He says he hadn’t understood Colin Wallace and Lewis Jamieson’s promotions to A&R, or Scheer’s signing, but then he admits he didn’t get Pixies’ Come On Pilgrim either. ‘But I know Robin and Simon managed things to the best of their ability. And it wasn’t my role to second-guess their A&R.’
So could Sharp and Horrox rebuild 4AD by bringing in new artists to match 4AD’s original ethos, and also inspire those remaining artists that had initially helped create it? To begin with, nothing appeared to have changed on the surface. 4AD in the twenty-first century began with Kristin Hersh’s single ‘A Cleaner Light’ taken from Sky Motel. The reserved optimism sounded perfect for Ivo: ‘I was trying to skip out on this high … but in a cleaner light, it’s OK.’ Three live versions of Throwing Muses classics added continuity with the past.
A new album, GusGus vs. T-World, did much the same. It was a devious title as the tracks featured songs from remaining members Biggi Veira and Herb Legowitz recorded in their former T-World days. This explained the album’s series of techno instrumentals, with just seven tracks, the closing ‘Esja’ at 11 minutes long. And that was GusGus out of the picture.
Mojave 3 were content to stay, and released its third album Excuses For Travellers: song titles such as ‘Bringin’ Me Home’ and ‘Got My Sunshine’ expressed the simple sentiments and melodies, but Vaughan Oliver would most probably have refused to use the primitive and child-like drawing that ended up on the cover. The absence of v23’s visual flair was the most obvious difference between the old and new 4AD, without even a surface beauty to keep the doubters at bay.
After a second Thievery Corporation album, The Mirror Conspiracy, Rob
Garza and Eric Hilton were to follow GusGus. On 4AD’s side, the album suggested a new artful and budget-conscious outlook. The lead single, titled ‘Sound File 001’, was released only on ten-inch vinyl, fronted by a remix of the album track ‘Focus On Sight’. The following ten-inch single ‘Sound File 002’ was led by the album track ‘Shadows Of Ourselves’. Both releases had inexpensive videos, and there were no other remixes. With far fewer staff members and less overheads, there was less anxiety over bringing in money.
4AD’s first new signing since starry smooth hound was a sign of how things might be restructured; something esoteric, modern, select, with a touch of continuity with the past. It wasn’t folk, America, dance, singer-songwriter balladry or a sound built to compete with Creation, but one that paralleled the leading British independent Warp, at the experimental end of electronica.
If the movie Blade Runner had been made in the year 2000 and not 1982, it might have had a soundtrack by Magnétophone rather than Vangelis. Dark, dystopian and restless in mood, jagged and soothing in equal measure, Birmingham duo Matt Huish Saunders and John Hanson’s debut album I Guess Sometimes I Need To Be Reminded Of How Much You Love Me wasn’t the same ear-buzzing challenge as that offered by Warp’s prominent artists Aphex Twin and Autechre, but they nevertheless tapped into ‘glitch’, the sound of machine malfunction, hum and hiss.
Musically, Ivo would never have gone there: ‘A glitch was something I’d spent hours in the studio, or when mastering, asking engineers to get rid of,’ he comments. ‘To have it as the fabric of a piece, a style even of music, just didn’t suit my brain, and still doesn’t, but in many ways that’s good and proper. Each generation should be offending the previous one with its originality and disregard for what is acceptable. Unfortunately, most offend for the opposite reason – a complete lack of originality.’