Martin Grey casts his retrospective internet again 40 years to 1985 and revisits the exceptional debut album by (now nearly forgotten) 4AD act COLOURBOX – a schizoid, genre-defying recording which touched on so many bases that it sounded just like the work of a number of totally different bands.
Just a little teaser query: what do the next movie and TV individuals have in widespread? Joan Collins. Patrick McGoohan. Bruce Lee. Gareth Hale and Norman Tempo. Keith Allen. Hector Escaton. Stumped you there haven’t I? The reply is just not what you may anticipate: all of them function as visitor voices on the debut full size album by Colourbox (launched in August 1985 on 4AD information), within the type of sampled dialogue snatches. Intrigued?
For anybody who may need been fully unaware of the existence of this group and their output within the first half of the Eighties, right here’s a bit little bit of historical past.
Again then, 4AD information have been largely famend for releases by their preliminary roster of artists comparable to Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, The Birthday Get together, Fashionable English, X-Mal Deutschland and Dif Juz. Ceaselessly related to its progressive and intensely intricate album sleeve paintings largely produced by 23 Envelope (Vaughan Oliver and Nigel Grierson), it appeared that the label was nearly a sub-genre in itself: often spoken of in tandem with adjectives like ‘ethereal’, ‘mysterious’, ‘quasi-mystical’, ‘neo-folk’, ‘gossamer’, ‘crepuscular’, and certainly ‘goth’. Though the post-punk likes of The Birthday Get together have been much more visceral and confrontational, so that they have been already the wild playing cards of the pack in a way of talking.
Colourbox, nonetheless, have been a completely totally different proposition altogether. Fashioned in 1982, they have been a unit that initially grew from its founder members jamming with ‘nondescript’ punk / indie outfits earlier than an abrupt rethink noticed them assimilate a extra numerous array of genres and sounds – mainly from absorbing the music they have been surrounded with on the time: dub reggae, funk, the emergent hip hop sounds, soul, lovers rock and electro / synth pop, along with the same old indie guitar fare. Taking their title from a 1937 animated movie, they felt that in itself was fairly apt in reflecting their multi-faceted and consciously experimental strategy to recording.
Comprising London-based songwriter/producer brothers Martyn and Steven Younger, along with third writing associate and producer Ian Robbins and a feminine vocalist Debian Curry (later changed by Lorita Grahame, initially from Leicester, from 1983), the Colourbox quartet defied all pigeonholing with their preliminary releases, which touched upon a full gamut of various types and incongruous musical influences. They have been releasing experimental pop music and sound collages set to punishing electro beats lengthy earlier than others have been doing so and as such have been steadily greeted with bafflement and indifference from most mainstream radio stations and programmers, mainly as a result of their materials didn’t ‘slot in’ with any neat and tidy bundle that could possibly be simply digested by the plenty.
Nevertheless, that was to not say their music was uncommercial. Removed from it. Unconventional perhaps, however nonetheless very a lot accessible. Greater than half of the fabric on their debut 1985 full size album might fairly conceivably be large hit singles in a parallel universe, if there was any justice (i.e. correct airplay on daytime radio – which sadly eluded them) while the opposite half transcended all categorisation and sometimes hurtled off into fairly esoteric orbits of their very own. There have been elegaic instrumentals, cut-and-paste beat-box dance exercises, ferocious electro-punk slammers, weird sample-heavy interludes, and rousing soul numbers – all nestling cheek-by-jowl in opposition to each other.
Should you have been uninitiated, you’d swear that this was the work of a number of totally different bands and also you have been listening to a varied artists compilation album. However therein lies its power: Colourbox have been something however predictable. They positively delighted in messing along with your perceptions (or preconceptions) and fallacious footing you accordingly – making it tough so that you can second guess their subsequent transfer.
This maxim they adhered to proper to the top of their regrettably all-too-brief recording profession which concluded simply two years later in 1987 with a very astonishing finale, which no person – least of all of the band themselves – anticipated (of which extra later).
5 Years: Six singles, one EP, one album, one collaboration.
Breakdown: first model (single – 1982)
Breakdown: second model (single – 1983)
Colourbox (EP – 1983)
Colourbox’s output was comparatively small. In that 5 yr time span simply six singles (one reissued as a brand new re-recording straight afterwards), one prolonged play and one full size album was all they needed to present for his or her efforts and manufacturing experience. True, some parts of their sound could now, some 40+ years later, come throughout as reasonably dated (all the time inevitably all the way down to the drum machines and sure keyboard results), however to be truthful, they have been a band concurrently of their time in addition to forward of their time. It’s a lovely dichotomy.
Their introductory EP – a self-titled 4 tracker launched in 1982 – featured a garish false color picture of two copulating horses on the entrance cowl (reversed in order to make it look much less apparent however nonetheless perverse sufficient to get individuals speaking about it!). Facet One’s first two tracks Shotgun and Hold On Pushing have been cut-and-paste workouts that includes a complete array of chaotic parts comparable to stuttering drum beats, slap bass, liquid keyboard washes, cavernous reverb, backwards results and voices (some sped as much as disguise their identities – considered one of whom was 4AD boss Ivo-Watts Russell talking on the cellphone to one of many band members, the opposite being a snippet of David Bowie being interviewed).
Facet Two opened with Nation – a mammoth 10-minute dance epic which already at this early juncture hinted in direction of a whole lot of membership potential with its a number of breakdown sections and prolonged instrumental passages. This was adopted by closing monitor Justice – arguably essentially the most bizarrely executed quantity of all of them: an in any other case simple pop music is given an absolute pummelling through the publish manufacturing, which warps, distorts, disfigures and de-mixes the music to inside an inch of its life – Lorita’s vocals are variously pitch bent, twisted, reversed, showered with static, mangled and rendered nearly unintelligible by the gratuitously OTT tweaking, as if some devilish delight was gleaned from trashing the music only for the sake of it. It ends by spiralling off into echoing house. No different music launched on the time by any band sounded something like this.
By the point this EP was launched, Ian Robbins had already left the band to give attention to different initiatives, leaving the band as a trio.
Say You (single – 1984)
Punch (single – 1984)
The Moon Is Blue (single – 1985)
Colourbox (LP – 1985)
When the total size Colourbox album correct arrived three years later in 1985, nonetheless, all of the beforehand spiky parts and at instances over-complicated manufacturing gimmicks heard on the EP have been distributed with in favour of a extra direct, finely honed and concise, however no much less beguiling and eclectic, combine’n’match of types throughout the ten** principal tracks. The album was trailed by the discharge of three singles.
The primary of these was a canopy of the U Roy/Laggo Morris staple Say You, the trio’s first foray into dub reggae. Subsequent up was the boisterous sample-driven dance/synth/rock hybrid of Punch, adopted by the astonishing soulful showstopper The Moon Is Blue the place Lorita’s hovering vocals elevate the music to beforehand uncharted heights. It’s an beautiful 4 minute pop tune and the undisputed spotlight of Colourbox’s recording profession up to now.
(Verify the video footage beneath of Colourbox ‘performing’ the music at some European pop music pageant – fascinating as a result of the band have by no means performed dwell in any respect, which makes their look at this occasion, miming to the album monitor model of the one, all of the extra intriguing)
All three singles have been featured on the album in barely up to date mixes, the exception being The Moon Is Blue (most likely as a result of they’ll’t actually enhance on what was already perfection).
The album opens with two instrumentals, each of which couldn’t be extra totally different from each other. Sleepwalker is aptly titled: a superbly dreamy piano piece performed in waltz time which recollects Michael Nyman. It’s as sudden and deceptively tranquil a starting to any album as one might think about however simply when the listener thinks they’ve eased themselves into proceedings it cuts abruptly into a bit of sampled dialogue taken from the movie Westworld which heralds the beginning of monitor two Simply Give ‘Em Whiskey – a way more uptempo drum machine and guitar-dominated monitor which is filled with dialogue snippets taken from varied movies and Cult TV programmes.
Numerous enjoyable may be had from making an attempt to decipher all of those and to work out their sources but it surely’s fairly apparent that the majority of them come from Westworld, 2001: A Area Odyssey and The Prisoner, the latter forming what’s the monitor’s chorus with Patrick McGoohan’s unmistakable ‘I’m not a quantity! I’m a free man!’, repeated to more and more frenzied impact because the monitor climaxes with layers of noisy guitars and completely relentless and explosive drum machine blasts. Including to the incongruity, even Joan Collins makes a weird cameo right here when she purrs ‘Intercourse makes your pores and skin glow and your eyes sparkle’, inside the first minute!
Tracks three and 4 are the 2 earlier singles Say You and The Moon Is Blue and thus the primary look of third Colourbox member and vocalist Lorita Grahame. What’s presumably the album’s weakest monitor then follows: Inside Informer – however to be truthful that is down nearly completely to how robust the primary 4 tracks are anyway.
A remixed and partly rerecorded model of fourth single Punch kicks off aspect two. Within the context of the total album it sits properly because it retains intact its stressed beat field drum machine rhythm and nagging insistent synth riff. If something it’s considered one of two or three Colourbox tracks on right here that clearly reveals a small debt to the work of The Artwork Of Noise, with its sampled/scratched studio results that have been so in vogue round this time.
The album’s second shamelessly nice pop second then follows: Suspicion (not the Elvis Presley cowl), which if something demonstrates that when Colourbox play it easy with out all of the gratuitous cut-and-paste, scratch and warp excesses (that so blighted the highest monitor Justice on their first EP as an illustration), the rewards are simply as tangible. Lorita’s crystal clear vocals listed below are a delight when she sings sweetly about unscrupulous emotional parasites taking benefit and making an attempt to screw you over. ‘Battle in opposition to them or they’ll strive…attempt to betray you.’
Simply to additional illustrate how the album by no means settles with one type or tempo for lengthy, subsequent monitor – the aptly titled Manic – is a return again to the extra boisterous drum-machine / synth / guitar pushed template. A searing guitar solo courtesy of William Orbit (again then but to make his title as a famend producer) happens in the course of the half manner mark and the monitor good points rising traction, sounding prefer it’s about to climax earlier than it abruptly crashes headlong through a intelligent segue into the second cowl model featured on this album – an prolonged high-octane turbo-charged model of Holland/Dozier/Holland‘s You Hold Me Hanging On.
It’s fascinating to notice {that a} yr later in 1986 Kim Wilde scored an enormous prime 10 hit with *her* model of this identical music and it’s controversial whether or not Colourbox might have gotten there first had their model been granted the identical quantity of airplay. Mockingly, it was additionally featured on the B-side of their The Moon Is Blue single the place it seems in a nearly similar combine to the one on this album. However then maybe it’s simply all the way down to that traditional outdated adage of ‘fallacious place on the fallacious time’ for the trio, whose singles frequently scored extremely on the impartial charts however didn’t make any form of headway close to the official prime 100 hit parade.
Closing the primary album is the downtempo tabla-driven Enviornment, one other nice pop quantity with craving vocals from Lorita, which additionally options the eponymous percussion performed by one other visitor, jazz drummer Chris Karan, who famously carried out on the Get Carter soundtrack amongst an illustrious variety of releases by varied ensembles.
(Take heed to the vast majority of the Colourbox album [side four not featured] right here:)
**Preliminary pressings of this report have been augmented with a second 12″ mini album containing seven extra tracks, of which three have been prolonged mixes and different recordings of principal album tracks. It’s on this second LP the place Martyn and Steve Younger’s maverick spirit and fondness for pushing the envelope up to now that it breaks is at its most acute.
It kicks off with the completely demented Edit The Dragon – mainly nothing greater than a whole avalanche of samples filched from Bruce Lee’s Enter The Dragon painstakingly reduce and pasted onto cavernous beatbox breaks which themselves in flip are gleefully programmed into pure juddering chaos. The monitor opens with a snatch of dialogue taken from the Comedian Strip spoof The Bullshitters which stars Peter Richardson and Keith Allen. The latter may be heard shouting ‘Let’s Go!’ which is then sampled and made right into a stuttering ‘LET’S G-G-G-G-GO!!!’ chorus which is pitched in opposition to reverse whiplash sounds, shattering glass and all method of cacophonous noises, leading to fairly presumably essentially the most gleefully overloaded Colourbox composition ever.
After barely two minutes the monitor’s frantic and overdriven drum break slams into Hipnition – the final Colourbox music additionally co-written by former member Ian Robbins. It’s a mid tempo digital quantity with a mutant reggae undertow that however options vocalist Lorita in sombre temper, singing lyrics of ominous foreboding: ‘And I can’t oust the noose from round my neck / I simply can’t tear away from the rising gap…. / it’s hotter now than it’s even been and it reveals no signal of weakening / like a most cancers rising from inside / it’s hitting my thoughts like a grinding stone / it’s making me petrified of being alone….’
One other direct segue, this time into We Stroll Round The Streets, a short 25 second interlude that pilfers wholesale a sketch from Hale and Tempo set to the very same drum machine backing (tempo and sounds) as that heard on Edit The Dragon. Because the laughter and applause begins to fade it cuts once more like TV channels being switched into one other tackle earlier album monitor Enviornment – titled Enviornment II – however this time performed at a barely sooner tempo and likewise transposed right into a barely increased key.
The second half of this mini LP revisits Manic with an extended prolonged sequel (Manic II), adopted by one other cut-paste-scratch’n’stutter beat field dominated instrumental titled Quick Dump which maybe outstays its welcome by a few minutes because it tends to be a tad repetititititititive. Then the final salvo is an sudden reprisal of Simply Give ‘Em Whiskey – however this time minus all of the sampled movie dialogue voices from Westworld and The Prisoner and as an alternative we’ve got Lorita Grahame again on board with vocals, with the resultant monitor now retitled Intercourse Gun.
The lyrics are hilariously sleazy : ‘Intercourse and weapons, all in my face / for therefore lengthy, love has already gone / you have been pushed by your personal needs …… Our love is all that we knew / our love is swollen and blue / our love is violent and darkish / our love has no damaged hearts’. Similar to with the unique principal album instrumental model, it has the identical throttling breakneck drum machine blasts and now lays a good louder and extra unhinged electrical guitar solo over the ultimate blazing climax, as if to conclude the album by zooming off into the sundown and disappearing over the horizon with its engines and exhausts all aflame.
(montage of all of the Colourbox associated singles and EPs launched)
Child I Love You So (single – 1986)
The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme (single – 1986)
Colourbox launched simply two extra singles the next yr earlier than virtually disappearing of the face of the earth. Each these have been issued concurrently on the identical day in April 1986. The primary was one other cowl – however an impressed studying however – of Augustus Pablo‘s Child I Love You So…replete with deep dub basslines set to an exquisitely cavernous manufacturing and all method of samples (from Escape From New York) weaving out and in of the combo. Along with its equally superb Spaghetti Western indebted B-side Appears Like We’re Shy One Horse/Shoot Out, which ups the ante even additional with liberal lashings of dialogue from As soon as Upon A Time In The West, this technique of utilizing samples on their tracks completely pre-empted – or maybe impressed – the likes of Massive Audio Dynamite by a number of months.
The opposite single was completely instrumental once more (no Lorita this time, simply Martyn and Steven) – an infectious and naggingly addictive brass synth-driven anthemic piece that could possibly be adopted for both soccer, tennis or different sporting occasions. The duo toyed with the concept of submitting the monitor to the BBC to be used within the precise 1986 World Cup protection however didn’t fairly succeed. However, the BBC did use it for different incidental functions afterward so all was not misplaced. Apparently, this extremely pleasurable earworm of a fist pumping monitor was contrived regardless of each brothers having little to no actual curiosity in soccer in any respect….and what feels like a wild guitar solo occurring at common intervals is definitely a synth!
Its B-side was a curious volte face : a retreat into ambient instrumentals – impressed by the tinkling, twinkling, repetitive motifs of nice New York trendy classical composer Philip Glass. The titular monitor truly resulted within the brothers assembly up with the person in query who professed to being intrigued and flattered by Colourbox’s makes an attempt at replicating his trademark sound. It’s a stunning languid and soothing piece of womb music which sounds for all of the world prefer it was recorded inside a large goldfish bowl with its liquid bleeps and delicate pulsing atmospherics. The principle inspiration for it was Glass’s authentic rating to The Photographer, launched in 1982 based mostly on the life and story of nineteenth century movement image projection pioneer Eadweard Muybridge.
Take heed to Child I Love You So (12″ model):
Take heed to The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme (7″ model):
And that, evidently, would nearly be recreation over for Colourbox, who by no means actually acquired round to recording that additional album that they have been hoping to start out work on after these two singles. The truth is just one extra recording (one other Martyn and Steve instrumental, Sizzling Doggie, strewn with a good better number of sampled dialogue snatches) appeared in early 1987 on the 4AD varied artists album Lonely Is An Eyesore – that includes 9 of its roster of bands – Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Wolfgang Press, Throwing Muses, Lifeless Can Dance, Clan of Xymox, Dif Juz – all contributing one new unreleased/unique monitor apiece.
Nevertheless, later within the yr Ivo Watts-Russell come across an concept that Colourbox ought to collaborate with rising dream pop proto-shoegazers A.R. Kane for a one off single, in the event that they have been going to be so lax at engaged on materials for their very own second album. This new collaboration – taking its title based mostly on the primary initials of every of the 5 members of each bands (minus Lorita, who had since moved on to a solo recording artist) – would produce a double A-side dance monitor to be used within the golf equipment.
Little did both get together know what was going to transpire. Martyn and Steve laid down the foundations for the fundamental rhythm while A.R. Kane would contribute their guitar pyrotechnics excessive of it. Sounded simple sufficient sure? Nicely no….. Colourbox determined to enlist some associates who have been DJs on the time (Dave Dorrell and C.J. Waterproof coat) to supply scratching and drop in samples as they have been all very a lot taken in by the brand new hip hop sounds that have been beginning to infiltrate the golf equipment because the earlier yr (pre- the home music explosion later in 1987). A.R. Kane weren’t too enamoured with this concept and began to baulk on the realisation that they have been being shunted out of the body, regardless of already contributing rather a lot to the opposite aspect of this single.
When the one lastly landed in August 1987, it was issued beneath the title M|A|R|R|S. The A-side was Pump Up The Quantity (taken from a line in an Eric B & Rakim monitor I Know You Acquired Soul), a fairly astonishing bricolage of cleverly woven samples (there are at the very least 29 totally different samples featured on the completed remix of the monitor) and proto-house dance beats full with scything guitar assaults sounding like rockets detonating in house.
The AA-side was Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance) and was an excellent close to industrial sounding slab of sheet metallic guitars and attribute A.R. Kane spaced out dub fireworks constructed round a pummelling drum monitor programmed by the Younger brothers. Each tracks have been completely unimaginable and in contrast to something that had been completed earlier than and even since (although in fact the lasting affect of the A-side would take us into the subsequent decade and past and fully revolutionise digital dance music).
Much more surprisingly, this launch did in any case have the title of BOTH bands on the sleeve : ‘A Colourbox / A.R. Kane collaboration’, and while it was launched on 4AD, no person of their wildest desires would ever think about that it could be a success provided that neither band had ever troubled the official UK charts earlier than. However a success it was, because the dance golf equipment that picked up on it quickly meant it crossed over to the mainstream after which with copious radio airplay it despatched the one on a trajectory that – very like the band’s title – went positively stellar.
Inevitably, after additionally being licensed for launch Stateside on the 4th & Broadway label (fittingly the identical as that of Eric B. & Rakim whose pattern gave the monitor its title), the one turned an enormous trans-Atlantic membership smash as properly making critical inroads into all of the US charts (Billboard and specialised regional charts), to not point out worldwide.
AA Facet – Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance)
Everyone concerned – Colourbox and A.R. Kane – have been astonished and completely shocked on the single’s success, however the latter have been already starting to start out authorized proceedings in opposition to the previous and their collaborators (Dorrell and Waterproof coat), which soured issues a bit. Worse, additionally they fell out with Ivo and 4AD and after the one single they launched on the label (Lollita, a month earlier in July 1987), they jumped ship and signed to Tough Commerce in 1988 the place they launched three EPs and two masterful and extremely influential albums (69 and ‘i’) taking them proper as much as the top of the last decade.
Colourbox have been quickly dealt the final word ignominy from having this success. Lawsuits from Inventory Aitken & Waterman (for Dorrell and Waterproof coat sampling a tiny snatch of SAW’s Roadblock hit single) meant that every one publishing royalties from the hit needed to be rescinded and this sparked off a complete new authorized motion from the producer Waterman – and different publishers – who now purported that ‘sampling was wholesale theft’ and successfully meant that anyone utilizing unsolicited snatches of different individuals’s music wouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.
This dragged out saga of authorized issues brought about a lot disenchantment to Colourbox specifically – together with the grief they have been already getting from the mutinous A.R. Kane faction who refused to allow them to use the M|A|R|R|S title for any future recordings until they paid £100,000 for the rights of possession – that they retreated from public view and by no means launched one other notice of music once more: Martyn Younger now contented himself from this level on with manufacturing duties for a lot of different artists.
It appears completely surreal and unfeasible to see Colourbox – or a recording that includes members of Colourbox – at #1 within the pop charts in August 1987 (knocking Rick Astley‘s By no means Gonna Give You Up off the highest spot after his 5 week stint), however that was what occurred. And 4AD by no means had one other prime 10 hit of this magnitude ever once more (although that they had loads of prime 10 albums through the years – plus singles that grazed the highest 30 – from varied bands between 1989 and the late Nineties).
All this does is additional reinforce the truth that Colourbox have been a real oddity and anomaly, one which, by means of their very own blanket refusal to tour and as an alternative follow being a studio concern, perhaps hampered endlessly any makes an attempt of them breaking into the charts. However when that breakthrough got here with M|A|R|R|S, sudden although it was, it introduced with it a lot baggage that after once more, it soured fully any enjoyment that was to be gained from being a real one hit marvel. I usually speculate on the way it will need to have felt for Martyn and Steven to grasp that that they had unwittingly performed their very own vital half in making a bit of music that modified the course of common music historical past, regardless of being on the fringes of the entire circus throughout all that point.
Little is heard of Martyn Younger or what he’s getting as much as musically today, however sadly his brother Steven handed away in July 2016 from an undisclosed sickness. For anyone who’s curious concerning the legacy left by this most unpredictable and inventive of 4AD acts in the course of the label’s first decade, you may look no additional than to make amends for their music that’s now shared throughout varied platforms and make your personal minds up about how forward of their time they’re, have been, or may need been. The self titled 1985 album Colourbox might be the very best place to start out on account of its killer opening salvo of tracks. Then observe that up with the 2 sterling 1986 twin singles. And solely then, probability their first, extra experimental, EP if solely to completely grasp the evolution of this trio (or one time quartet) and their fascinating sonic journey which lasted all too briefly earlier than they vanished with out hint of their very own volition.
In 2012, every part they ever recorded plus two radio periods and one off remixes have been compiled right into a welcome 4CD field set – once more simply titled Colourbox. It’s lengthy out of print sadly, but it surely actually is price monitoring down. Keep away from, nonetheless, the disappointingly scant and unfulfilling 10-track compilation which was launched in 2001 titled Greatest Of 82/87, because it omits so a lot of their stellar moments touched upon right here.
Just like the voice says initially of Manic II: ‘Play some extra of that – that – Colourbox stuff!’
Colourbox essay written by Martin Grey.
Verify Martin’s profile right here for extra articles and evaluations.
Stream and hearken to Colourbox on Spotify (sadly no Bandcamp web page as but)
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