Tuesday 23 February 2016

4AD Forever Ago

One of my friends is off to visit 4AD's headquarters today. Back when I didn't have responsibilities, I would happily spend all my non-book funds on anything produced by certain record labels: Fierce Panda, Ankst, Sain, Sarah and its successor Shinkansen, Duophonic, Secretly Canadian, Sub Pop, Darla, Bella Union, Postcard, Placid Casual, Chemikal Underground, Cooking Vinyl, Creation before it went rubbish, Rock Action, Rocket Girl, Damaged Goods, Domino, ElefantDeceptive, Factory (obviously), Fortuna Pop, Too Pure, Heavenly and a whole host of others. Topping this list was 4AD, particularly the early years that I missed through still being a mewling puking babe. If you know these labels, you'll know my taste in music (except for all the classical and folk which they don't do. You'll also know my age.

4AD though: the home of highbrow ethereal semi-goth. Pretentious, hypnotic, self-regarding and brilliant. I mostly learned about them from living with goth stoner maths'n'computing PhD students when I was but a callow undergraduate. So, for Matt, here are my favourite 4AD tracks







This will never fail to fill my mental dance floor:


















Tindersticks have been an obsession since I bought my first records ('Sweet Kathleen' and Gorky's Zygotic Mynic's Patio, both on 10") so their album on 4AD was a dream:



No Pixies? Depends what mood I'm in.

1 comment:

Dave M said...

Sorry I'm reading all your backposts ....tangential comment - I'm currently just about in a Band with Lisa Wrake - who was in "Sing-Sing" with Emma Anderson from Lush. If anything musical emerges - it will be at https://www.facebook.com/thelostremnantsband