Young Marble Giants - "Live @ Les Bains Douches, Paris 17/06/1980"

To round up our brief sojourn through Welsh DIY/Post Punk, here's proof that you could actually escape from Wales.
No doubt hailed as 'les génie minimaliste anglais'(the French could never understand the concept of the United Kingdom and Ireland being anything other than English), YMG got about a bit on the road during their short existence, and here we find ourselves in the legendary 'Les Bains Douches' in Paris. 
You can see why the French liked Young Marble Giants despite the lack of the usual reasons, like having a song or album with a French Title; as did, for example, The Police who are never off French Radio or supermarché muzak systems; if you are liked in France you stay liked, no matter what you do).An achievement that YMG would be rather envious of, given their minor obsession with background music or muzak.
YMG could easily pass for french, except the Moxham's were about a foot too tall;but Alison Stratton looked and dressed like a Parisienne Art student.
Worth their place in the Louvre, YMG treat us to some muffled lo-fi recordings of tunes from their classic Rough Trade album,and accompanying EP's.
Voila!Les génie minimaliste Gallois.

Tracklisting:

1- The Man Amplifier
2- Choci Loni
3- Radio Silents
4- Wurlitzer Jukebox
5- Music For evenings
6- Colossal Youth
7- Salad days
8- Ode To Booker T.
9- Include Me Out
10-Final day
11-Cakewalking.

DOWNLOAD,listen in the bath or shower and imagine you're in Paris HERE!

Young Marble Giants ‎– "Colossal Youth" (Rough Trade ‎– ROUGH 8) 1980

If there is a chance nobody here has heard this classic record, then here it is for download.
The best thing to come out of Wales along with the aforementioned M4 motorway.
A lesson in originality, individuality, the power of subtlety, and the beauty of stepping sideways. A perfect career in modern music,a brief flash of brilliance, then disappear.
A silence that is louder than the noise.

Tracklist:

A1 Searching For Mr Right
A2 Include Me Out
A3 The Taxi
A4 Eating Noddemix
A5 Constantly Changing
A6 N.I.T.A.
A7 Colossal Youth
B1 Music For Evenings
B2 The Man Amplifier
B3 Choci Loni
B4 Wurlitzer Jukebox !
B5 Salad Days
B6 Credit In The Straight World
B7 Brand - New - Life
B8 Wind In The Rigging

DOWNLOAD this colossus HERE! 

Weekend ‎– "The '81 Demos" (Vinyl Japan ‎– TASKCD 47) 1995/1981

Cravats, Ray Bans, beige slacks, stools.....the sitting on variety, not the specimens one provides to a doctor.
Who do these Weekenders think they are?????.....The Style Council?
The Demo's that Weekend made were far less 'jazzy' than their debut LP, and as a result a lot more palatable.Dare one suggest that they sound like a more tuneful and dreamy Young Marble Giants?
These chaps could have easily been The Style Council if they had bothered.Instead they became 'Working Week',which is worse.

Tracklist:

1 Drumbeat 3:29
2 Red Planes 8:56
3 Nostalgia 5:26
4 Summerdays (Instrumental) 3:35

DOWNLOAD the found weekend HERE!

Weekend ‎– "La Varieté" (Rough Trade ‎– ROUGH 39) 1982

If Young Marble Giants flirted with Testcard music, then Alison Strattons' post-YMG group, Weekend, actually made Testcard music, disguised as parisienne café jazz......which is also Testcard Music I suppose?

Its some type of trendy indie spliced with the kind of limp jazz that plays in the background of pretentious restaurants.Its quite pleasant and inoffensive, but who wants to be that?

Again this is the kind of wet student music that Cherry Red specialised in at this time; the Pillows and Prayers crowd. Rough Trade should have swapped this lot for the Nightingales, who didn't really belong alongside Everything But The Girl and The Marine Girls.

Having said that, being an oficionado of Easy listening, I like it!
If this was a lost volume of Library music from some East-European TV station I would be praising it to the hilt; but as its some kind of attempt to be a retro-cool hybrid, it has to be treated as such. Recycling the past to an audience ignorant of what has gone before is basically a cop-out.If i wanted to listen to some mellow Café chic I'd dig out an old Antonio Carlos Jobim and Astrid Gilberto album.Which is a fuck of a lot better than this pale imitation by some welsh post-punk refugees.To think Spike used to be in Reptile Ranch?
There were lots of sterile bands like this around 1982,Blue Rondo,Carmel,Matt Bianco, Working Week, EBTG.....terrible stuff. This carried on evolving and we ended up with the uber-trendy 90's Acid Jazz format, as an alternative to the endless intravenous feed of House music.Luckily this led onto more interesting area's like Loungecore, Jungle, and the Incredibly Strange Music phenomenon.
As a reaction to Punk and NWOBHM, Weekend scores quite highly. The high point being Alison Stratton's reinvention as the new wave Astrid Gilberto, by singing in exactly the same style as she did in the Young Marble Giants. 

Tracklist:

1 The End Of The Affair 3:05
2 Weekend Stroll 3:23
3 Summer Days 2:53
4 Carnival Headache 2:51
5 Drum Beat For Baby 2:57
6 Life In The Day Of Part 1 3:49
7 Life In The Day Of Part 2 2:23
8 Sleepy Theory 2:52
9 Woman's Eyes 2:49
10 Weekend Off 3:20
11 Red Planes 4:46
12 Nostalgia 3:50

Bonus Tracks:

13 A View From Her Room (12 Inch Version) 8:11
14 Leaves Of Spring 2:40
15 Past Meets Present 3:38
16 Midnight Slows 2:03
27 Drum Beat For Baby (12 Inch Version) 4:17

DOWNLOAD the weak end of post-punk HERE!

The Gist ‎– "Embrace The Herd" (Rough Trade ‎– ROUGH 25) 1982

Stuart Moxham's first post 'Young Marble Giants' album is a mixed experience.
First up we have an instrumental that sounds like the theme tune to an upbeat Schools programme, followed by the classic mellow anthem, and Moxham's most successful song, "Love at First Sight", which luckily escaped being covered by one of those terrible Grunge stars who lauded his previous group. It was however featured in some shit american film, and was a hit on the continent after it was covered by an identikit french chanteuse.
The record struggles to create its own identity ,and sounds like its just a bunch of different songs bunged together,that doesn't work as a cohesive album; but it does have more high spots than low points.
A star studded guest list which included a Swell Map, a member of This Heat, and Alison Stratton late of...er.....Young Marble Giants; helped jolly it all along, and water down the records self-identity. Listen to this and you wouldn't immediately think, 'Aha!...thats The Gist'.
This is the Cherry Red CD reissue by the way, which is appropriate because it  sounds like it should have been on that label rather than Rough Trade back in '82.

Tracklist:

1 Far Concern 2:51
2 Love At First Sight 3:44
3 Fretting Away 2:19
4 Public Girls 3:28
5 Clean Bridges 3:09
6 Simian 2:55
7 Embrace The Herd 2:41
8 Iambic Pentameter 2:53
9 Carnival Headache 3:52
10 Concrete Slopes 2:22
11 The Long Run
12 Dark Shots 3:05
13 Problem Attics 3:20 (previously unreleased)
14 Light Aircraft 3:05 (previously unreleased)

15 Love At First Sight [Demo Version] 3:40
16 Four Minute Warning 3:56 (B-side of Love at first sight)

DOWNLOAD and embrace the heard HERE!

The Gist ‎– "This Is Love" (Rough Trade ‎– RT 058) 1980

To be in The Gist, it seems you had to have a sir name that begins with 'M'.
Stuart Moxham's post Young Marble Giants almost 'solo' project, was a warmer affair than his previous band. The minimalism is still there, but the stark emotional austerity isn't.
This stuff could easily have appeared on Cherry Red records alongside Tracy Thorn and that lot.
The A-side sounds more like YMG, mainly because the bass player was Phil Moxham; fronted by a mellow voiced Stuart.
The better tune has to be 'Yanks', which could have been an Everything But The Girl number, but thankfully wasn't.

Tracklist:

A - This Is Love.
B - Yanks

DOWNLOAD the gists of love HERE!

Young Marble Giants ‎– "Testcard E.P." (Rough Trade ‎– RT 059) 1980

It says, on the sleeve :"Six instrumentals in praise and celebration of mid-morning television made and played by: Stuart Moxham and Philip Moxham".
Which accurately sums up the music.
Nowadays, mid-morning Television consists of cookery programmes, and Insipid grinning presenters talking about Irrital Bowel Syndrome and vaginal discharges.
Back in the seventies and early eighties, there was no television before mid-day, and only three channels.
There were some 'programmes for Schools' on ITV, including the excellent 'Picture Box'(complete with creepy theme tune) presented by some creepy bloke.
But, on BBC1 and 2, except for 'Playschool' at about 11am, we were treated to 'The Testcard' which looked pretty much like the front of this record sleeve;most of the time with a weird picture of a little girl playing noughts and crosses(tik-tak-toe for our very silly american viewers) with a toy clown.(Re-live this experience, including music by clicking HERE!)
Accompanying this were endless streams of inoffensive background music which became weirder the more one listened to it on those days when we kids skipped school or were 'ill'.
In the mid-nineties i don't think I listened to anything else except library music, easy listening, and exotica(there were clubs where this stuff was danced to!).....it seemed a subversive antidote to the music of the hive mind that poisoned the planet, and is STILL here today!!!!????
Good to see that YMG were there in 1980,revolting against the post-punk mainstream with the power of 'Easy'.Nothing would get an Exploited fan more irate.
Alison Stratton had left to form Weekend, so this was the fitting vocal-less swansong for YMG.

Tracklist

A1 Clicktalk 2:40
A2 Zebra Trucks 1:27
A3 Sporting Life 1:10
B1 This Way 1:37
B2 Posed By Models 2:17
B3 The Clock 1:35

DOWNLOAD some mid-morning muzak HERE!

Young Marble Giants ‎– "The Peel Session 18/08/1980"

Well worth it for another version of 'Final Day'.

Tracklist:

Searching For Mr Right 2:35
Brand – New – Life 2:46
Final Day 1:56
N.I.T.A. 3:43
Posed By Models 1:31

DOWNLOAD the day after the final day HERE!

Young Marble Giants ‎– "Colossal Youth Demos" (Self-Released) 1979

Meanwhile,back in South Wales, we present some super-claustrophobic demos from Cardiff's own introspective minimalists, Young Marble Giants. A lesson in how to stand out from the crowd by doing the opposite of the rest of the hive.
The rest of the country were either reinventing Heavy Metal,playing funky post-punk,or slipping into hardcore sameness.
YMG were flirting with testcard music,clean sounds and space.
Alison Statton's plain, natural voice is a perfect focus for the music,and reminds one of the clean austere singing of folk legend Shirley Collins.
The sound of these demos suits the Giants probably a tad more than the hi-fidelity recording of the official Rough Trade album.Like we're shut inside a cupboard listening to them through the closed door.
Real greatness.

Tracklist:

1 Have Your Toupée Ready 1:09
2 N.I.T.A. 4:28
3 Brand-New Life 2:54
4 Zebra Trucks 1:33
5 Choci Loni 2:14
6 Wind In The Rigging 2:38
7 The Man Shares His Meal With His Beast 4:24
8 The Taxi 2:04
9 Constantly Changing 2:06
10 Music For Evenings 2:57
11 Credit In The Straight World 2:12
12 Eating Noddemix 2:02
13 Radio Silents 2:53
14 Hayman 1:28
15 Loop The Loop 3:04

DOWNLOAD these colossal demos HERE!

Young Marble Giants ‎– "Final Day EP" (Rough Trade ‎– RT 043)

The best thing to come out of Wales is normally the M4 motorway right?.......but, whats the best record ever to come out of Wales?
Tom Jones's "Delilah"?......no.......that Manic Street Preachers tune?.......definitely fucking NOT!.....Catatonia's "Road Rage", which is a strong contender as thee WORST song ever written....so it isn't that?!
I think you've already guessed, as this post is about The Young Marble Giants' colossal apocalypso ode to the creeping shadow of the nuclear holocaust.
If there was ever a video made for this, it should show devasting explosions vaporising children in slow motion. The contrast with the peace and tranquility of this darkly beautiful tune, would ram home the message better than any of the recent slew of post-apocalypse movies that seem to be de rigueur these days.
My favourite nuclear attack scene (everyone has one don't they?) happens to be from a BBC production called "Threads"from 1984 (click here to watch it),an epoch when total annihilation could have happened at any second. The moment when it goes silent as ET burns in the intense heat is just one part that would fit nicely in any video for "Final Day".
Thankfully, YMG came from an era when we didn't have any video's for songs by outsiders such as they. They could maintain that long lost aire of mystery that absolutely nobody has anymore. I was shocked to find out that the YMG's were real people, so alien was their sound,and they looked ever-so slightly android-like on the dim half-light cover of their lone album.
Such stealthy power in so short a song,and such a short lived group.

DOWNLOAD finally HERE!

Various Artists - "Messthetics #104: South Wales D.I.Y.'77-81" (Hyped2Death) 2008

Well if you liked "Is The War Over?(a Cardiff Compilation)", you're gonna like this.
A kind of  'Best of...' South Wales DIY compilation on that Hyped2Death cd-r label that did such a great job at reintroducing the British to their own forgotten culture. Rather like what the Brits have always been doing to the Americans since 1963.
Now we all wish that these same Americans would erase their culture from the last twenty years,that introduced such heinous crimes as Nu-Metal,Rap Metal,modern R&B,99% of all Rap nonsense, Dubya,Trump,Jay Zee,that other twat who i forgot the name of,Kanye West......OMFG...the list would go on but my brain is shutting down to protect my cerebral cortex from permanent damage.
This cd-r,however, has some absolute classics on it.......Notably The Czechs 'Suffocation', which seemed to have a drum kit comprising only of a Snare drum; and The Crash Action Winners' wonderfully incompetent  version of The Red Krayola's 'Hurricane Fighter Plane'......were they the welsh 'Prats'?...I say, yes.....yes, they were the Welsh Prats. I know Wales is full of prats, but in this instance I am referring to the group of Scottish pre-teens who made a classic session for the John Peel Show, and, from before that, appeared on Fast products 'Earcom 1' compilation.
There is another appearance by future Young Marble Giants as 'Table Table', and many other,ambitionless proto-indie castaways.
Them were,unequivocally, THE DAYS! 

Tracklist:

1 –The Czechs - Suffocation + 44 Seconds
2 –Current Obsessions -Fish
3 –What To Wear-The Robbery
4 –Tax Exiles - (I Don't Believe In) Miracles
5 –The Flying Brix- Uniform (I Don't Wanna Be Different)
6 –Immortal Invisibles - No Zip
7 –Spitfire Boys -Funtime
8 –Decadent Few- There's A Place
9 –The Sane - Arnold Palmer
10 –Discount Chiefs- In A Different Light
11 –Table Table- Magic Moments
12 –Crash Action Winners - Hurricane Fighter Plane
13 –Reptile Ranch- (Don't Give The) Lifeguard (A Second Chance)
14 –Addiction - Violence
15 –The Boy wonders- He Man
16 –Hugh Volk- Talk Of Town
17 –Decadent Few - Burning Caroline
18 –Ralph & The Ponytails - James Bond
19 –Janet & Johns - I Was A Young Man
20 –What To Wear - We're The Martians Now
21 –Ralph & The Ponytails - Splendid Stories
22 –Discount Chiefs- Smell Of Fossils
23 –Puritan Guitars- Making It
24 –Tax Exiles- Rough In The Valley

DOWNLOAD from the welsh valleys of DIY HERE!

Various Artists ‎– "Is The War Over? (a Cardiff compilation)" (Z Block Records ‎– ZA1) 1979

After Cornwalls' king of obscurity, Chorcazade,its only right to stay firmly in the south-west of the uk, and cross the Bristol Channel with another one of those local scene compilations that were definitely 'a la mode' in 1979 on that '...Isle full of Noises'...('The Tempest ActIII, scene II).
'...Be not afeared..."(The Tempest again!....i'm so well read ain't I???)This one is from Cardiff,which is in Wales just over the Severn Bridge from Bristol(where one of the best local comps came from,"Avon Calling").
As with all of these compilations, it is full of plodding student post-punk bands,'missed the bus' punk groups, and various spotty bedroom dwellers.
The lyrics are, naturally,full of sixth form philosophy, and art foundation course politics.The prize goes to The Riotous Brothers with this charming couplet: 
"Let's Blow up the Coloureds, let's blow up the Whites,lets blow up the politicians,just like Airey Neave"....I assume it was some crass attempt at being Ironic? The use of the word 'Coloureds' especially,places this firmly in a past where racism was accepted as part of normal life. At least we knew who the racists were back in them days.
Its not all like the Riotous Brothers on this record however.
Reptile Ranch at least show some competence, with an early Fall/Spherical Objects sound;mainly thanks to the cheapo organ which is always a winner.Its mainly the work of 'Spike', future leader of Welsh Indie-café Jazz crossover muzak legends, 'Weekend';with Young Marble Giants'chanteuse Alison Stratton churning out her classically passionless vocals.
But....of course, the main attraction of this collection are 'The Young Marble Giants' themselves. Post-punk deities, and inventors of 'Slo-Core', a decade before 'Low' were even married to each other.
The two YMG tracks are different,rawer, versions to those included on their Rough Trade album, "Colossal Youth".One of the truly great post-punk groups.....enjoy the silence.

Tracklist:

Black & White Side:

1 –Addiction-Violence
2 –Addiction-Stampede
3 –Addiction-Seek & Search
4 –Mad Dog-Killer
5 –Mad Dog-Someone Here Must Like Me
6 –Test To Destruction-Passive
7 –Riotous Brothers-Airey Neave
8 –Riotous Brothers-No Justice

Colour Side:

1 –Reptile Ranch-Waterhole
2 –The New Form - On The Edge
3 –The New Form - Boy
4 –The New Form - Blockhead
5 –Beaver-Mac The Knife
6 –Beaver-Kleptomania
7 –Young Marble Giants-Ode To Booker T
8 –Young Marble Giants-Searching For Mr. Right

DOWNLOAD some wails from wales HERE!