ATP: Young Marble Giants

Next week Young Marble Giants will take the stage at All Tomorrow's Parties in Minehead. Knowing the Great British Weather, it will probably rain. But, that's OK. YMG are probably more suited to a rainy day than a sun-kissed summer festival.

When I saw the re-formed band earlier this year in Berlin, they received a rapturous reception, running through most of the songs on their 1980 debut, Colossal Youth, and then, for their encores, re-playing the ones they'd messed up earlier. Few bands could get away with that, but they have such laid-back charm and such good will from having been away so long, that it worked. And the encored songs were better the second time around.

These days YMG don't get out much, their appearances limited to the odd invite. For their gig at ATP, they will perform Colossal Youth in its entirety, as part of the fan-curated programme.

ATP will mark the first time the whole record has been played live, as the Berlin set list left off a few songs that guitarist Stuart Moxham still needed to re-learn. The product of youth, insecurity and vivid imagination, the record still astonishes after 29 years, full of open space that allows the songs to breathe. Melancholia ages better than anger, and the record is full of wist and longing.

As a young band, they weren't so keen on performing live, being wracked with insecurity. Bassist Philip Moxham confessed to staring at the wall during gigs, while singer Alison Statton said she lacked confidence in life, let alone music.
Backstage before the Berlin gig, I asked them about their reunion and playing live.

KB: Why are you back?
Stuart Moxham: For the money.
Alison laughs.

So, it's a big post-punk minimalist sell-out?
Laughter.

SM: We originally thought it would be a good idea to try and do another album. We said whatever we do, we won't come back and be an '80s comeback band. But, as it happens, that is what we're doing.

Philip Moxham: It's largely, as well, because of the unprecedented enthusiasm for the record. People who have been listening to it for the last 30 years or so have said they are quite pleased to see us playing. Plus, there are a lot of younger people who are into the band.

Are there particular challenges to playing live?
SM: There are for me, because all the keyboard stuff is kind of difficult to work out. "What is that chord?" And the same with the guitar, because since this group I haven't played electric guitar, really. That's a long time ago.

How do you feel now performing the songs? Does it mean something different?
Alison Statton: It definitely means something different. In one sense it feels as if we never stopped playing and we're just a few months on, but in another way we're much more relaxed about it all. Just appreciating the music for what it is more, because we've had that time and that separation.

Young Marble Giants perform Colossal Youth at All Tomorrow's Parties, Butlin's, Minehead, Somerset, on 9 May.

Young Marble Giants

HAU2
16 January 2009

What this gig had to do with "music, money and society after digitalisation" I don't know but the opening night of the Dancing With Myself conference featured a gig by post-punk minimalist legends Young Marble Giants, a welcome return after their decades-long exile. "Was anyone at our last gig here?" Stuart Moxham asked. That would be the lone Berlin gig in 1980. "No? You're all too young."

And it was a surprisingly fresh-faced crowd for such a grizzled band, if one can call the unassuming YMG that. Certainly, bassist Philip Moxham is becoming a dead ringer for Samuel Beckett, with his spiky greying locks and chiselled features. Alison Statton, though, still looks like the shy teenager she was when the band started in 1978. They make an amusing contrast on-stage, the rangy bassist stalking the stage while the diminutive singer stands at the mic, poised for action that never comes and fixing the audience with an unwavering gaze. When not singing, she looked possessed.

By contrast Stuart Moxham, the primary songwriter and historically frustrated vocalist, kept a low-key presence, concentrating on his guitar-playing with a series of agonised faces, and on the lovely, spiralling organ that marked the band out from their metal and punk peers back in Cardiff. At the back, younger brother Andrew performed the difficult function of human drum machine, playing sampled sounds from the original recordings.

The audience was rapt, adoring, demanding more from a tiny songbook that only numbered one album and one single, plus the odds and sods that turned up on last year's compilation. In fact, so pressed were the band for material that they performed a second encore of songs they'd messed up earlier. And these were the gems of the evening: a transcendant "Choci Loni" complete with the guitar lines missed out earlier and a "Wurlitzer Jukebox!" that turned into a singalong.

In truth, the gig was a bit ropey, with Alison forgetting the words to "Eating Noddemix" (which she co-wrote), and Philip and Stuart flubbing a few notes. But YMG were never about technical perfection and stagecraft. The songs, lovely, delicate, full of open spaces, are still wondrous. And it was wonderful to experience it live.

I can't imagine when they started in Cardiff that YMG ever thought they would be playing at a festival named after a Billy Idol song. In fact, the HAU space is hosting two conferences in the immediate future: Dancing With Myself explores the music industry in the current climate of uncertain economics and relentless digitalisation, while the upcoming The Politics of Ecstasy looks at altered states of presence.

I keep conflating the two into one imaginary one called The Politics of Dancing. I guess these shebangs will just keep going until the supply of '80s song titles is exhausted.

Dancing With Myself runs thru 18 January at HAU.
The Politics of Ecstasy runs 23-31 January at HAU.

End of Year

This being the first full year of my blog, I shall give a brief round-up of things that made it enjoyable:

1. Berlin!!!: three visits were not enough but highlights included Ladyfest, the Berlinale, and shooting two films

2. Halloween with Kleenex/Liliput in Zurich: it was delightful to meet three of this pioneering band on their home turf

3. The Gossip at the Barfly: a small gig for this red-hot band

4. Young Marble Giants--Colossal Youth and Collected Works: a timely reissue for these post-punks underlines their brilliance

5. films at festivals: Caramel, Vivere, Brand Upon the Brain and the short Le Lit Froisse were standouts

6. first listens: Las Furias, Kaputt, and Grace and Volupte Van Van are ones to watch in 2008

7. catching up with: Girl Monster and Malaria!'s back catalogue were brilliant late discoveries

8. Tate Modern: Maya Deren's films, the slides, and Doris Salcido's crack made this a great visit for all ages

9. West Ham and Leyton Orient both staying up: hurrah for East London football!

10. also seen/heard: New Young Pony Club, Bat for Lashes, Duke Spirit, Ida Maria, Electrelane (RIP), Milenasong, CSS, Normal Love, The Lives of Others

Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth

Domino

Well, we've had Lou Reed performing Berlin and various artists playing old albums under the Don't Look Back banner. But the one nod to the past I would surely welcome would be Young Marble Giants performing their masterpiece, Colossal Youth. How about a Young Marble DLB at the Union Chapel? Or maybe the Capitol Theater in Olympia, Washington.

It almost happened. They were scheduled to do a reunion show with the Raincoats for Rough Trade's 25th anniversary, if memory serves, but illness put paid to that. And the group did reunite for a gig at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival some months back. But I have yet to see them play live.

Until that time, Colossal Youth has been reissued as part of a three-CD package collecting demos and a 1980 Peel session. And it is great. The album stands the test of time, as much a glorious oddity now as it was in the heyday of post-punk in 1980.

The Cardiff band combined the disparate elements of songwriter Stuart Moxham's choppy guitar and swirly organ, Philip Moxham's melodic bass and Alison Statton's dispassionate vocals to create an original, minimalist treasure.

Just about every Olympia band in the early '90s paid homage to YMG but they are still massively under-rated. Theirs was a delicate, anti-macho sound which didn't fit into the aggression of the times. Stuart describes their music as repressed while Simon Reynolds says in his liner notes that it was music by introverts for introverts. Were they the original quiet storm band? "Brand-New-Life" was about as rock as the band got, with its driving guitar. But they also made the Testcard EP, six instrumentals inspired by breaks in TV transmissions.

The Peel Sessions are a delightful find, almost a YMG greatest hits, including the apocalyptic "Final Day" and "Brand-New-Life". Alison's voice sounds particularly edgy on this session.

It's interesting to read that the band were adopted by the Raincoats on their arrival in London back in the day. How intriguing to imagine the two outsider bands with their cryptic lyrics, unusual arrangements and tense, prickly music palling around the grey, rainy capital. Let's hope that reunion gig happens.