Sunday 7 May 2017

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


9 comments:

michael said...

Good morning & thank you , Johnny!!!
Best,
Michael

Vaykorus said...

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

665+1 said...

Absolutely brilliant; this is the greatest music blog in the universe, btw.

Jonny Zchivago said...

I suppose in an infinity of parallel universes, it has to the greatest in one of them......so,why not this one? cheers.

dee_seejay said...

What 665+1 said ↑
Awesome work Jonny. This is beautiful actually; and I can dig the Shirley Collins analogy.

Mr Parsnip said...

Great stuff - your track list differs slightly from that on Discogs
https://www.discogs.com/Young-Marble-Giants-Colossal-Youth/release/7325461 (assuming that there is only one version of the cassette)

Jonny Zchivago said...

Yeah that frequently happens with these handwritten items.The pic is from discogs I believe.

Luis said...

Thank you so much!!

Anonymous said...

Mr Parsnip - this isn't sourced from the original demo tape, it's a much later CD reissue which omits a few songs but has much better sound.