Colossal Youth is the only studio album by Welsh post-punk band Young Marble Giants, released in February 1980 on Rough Trade Records. Young Marble Giants were offered the opportunity to record the album after Rough Trade heard just two songs by the band on the local Cardiff music compilation Is the War Over?[11]
Young Marble Giants developed from an earlier band, True Wheel, (named after a song by Brian Eno from his 1974 LP Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). Alison Statton (vocals), Philip Moxham (bass) and his brother Stuart (guitar and main songwriter), formed Young Marble Giants in 1979. Signed by the Rough Trade label, the band recorded Colossal Youth in a studio in North Wales.[11][12]
Recording
Colossal Youth was recorded in five days at Foel Studios, located near Welshpool in Mid Wales. The album was engineered by the studio's owner, former Amon Düül II and Hawkwind member Dave Anderson.[11] Young Marble Giants had no prior knowledge of formal music production, and as a result the production on Colossal Youth was kept deliberately simple, with the final record featuring many of the band's first takes, as well as minimal overdubbing.[13] The only two overdubs on the record are a slide guitar on "Include Me Out" and distorted vocals on "Eating Noddemix". Each track was mixed in around 20 minutes.[11]
Legacy
According to critic Richie Unterberger, Colossal Youth is "one of the most highly regarded indie cult post-punk recordings, with a unique hushed and minimal atmosphere."[13]Nirvana singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain said in a 1992 Melody Maker interview that Colossal Youth was one of the ten most influential records he had ever heard,[14][15] and he also included it in a personal list of his 50 favourite albums.[16] In the aforementioned interview, he spoke of his admiration for the album:
This music relaxes you, it's total atmospherics. It's just nice, pleasant music. I love it. The drum machine has to have the cheesiest sound ever. We're going to be on a Young Marble Giants compilation, doing "Credit in the Straight World". I had a crush on the singer for a while—didn't everyone? I didn't know much about them—the Moxham brothers, right? I heard they might be getting back together again recently. Isn't it weird how, when you hear something like that, you still get excited, even though you know you shouldn't? I first heard Colossal Youth on the radio, after I started getting into K music when I lived in Olympia. It was a year before I put out the Bleach album.[14]
Domino Recording Company released Colossal Youth & Collected Works, an expanded reissue of the album, on 9 July 2007.[17] In May 2009, Colossal Youth was performed live in its entirety by Young Marble Giants as part of the All Tomorrow's Parties-curated Don't Look Back series.[18]
In 2020, Rolling Stone included Colossal Youth in their "80 Greatest albums of 1980" list, praising the band for "creating an arresting, quiet sound ".[19]
Track listing
All tracks are written by Stuart Moxham, except where noted.
The 1993 reissue includes the following bonus tracks, taken from the Testcard EP, the "Final Day" single and the various artists compilation Is the War Over?:
"This Way" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 1:41
"Posed by Models" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 1:25
"The Clock" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 1:39
"Clicktalk" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 2:42
"Zebra Trucks" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 1:33
"Sporting Life" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 1:04
"Final Day" – 1:43
"Radio Silents" – 1:53
"Cake Walking" – 2:49
"Ode to Booker T" – 3:03
Personnel
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[20]
^"Young Marble Giants: Colossal Youth". Uncut. p. 121. [With] shadows of Eno and Kraftwerk in their sound, which pitted the fluid bass and spiky guitar of brothers Phil and Stuart Moxham against the clicking pulse of a homemade drum machine.
^Cross, Charles R.; Gaar, Gillian G.; Gendron, Bob; Martens, Todd; Yarm, Mark (2013). Nirvana: The Complete Illustrated History. Voyageur Press. p. 70. ISBN978-0-7603-4521-4.
