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Sun-Jul-2009
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Starter Guide: UK Label Samplers

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LABEL SAMPLER: Or how the sampler album changed the face of British alternative Music, 1978 – 1990

SOME WILL RECALL, before the interweb and mp3s, that music geeks perpetually fuelled their addiction by trading LPs, reading music ‘zines and hanging around grubby 2nd hand record shops. And nothing seemed to shed more light on this dimly-lit and infinitely undiscoverable world than the Label Sampler; records showcasing all of a label’s new hot bands at an affordable price! As a result these albums contain seminal works by many subsequently adored bands alongside a plethora of also-rans who gained a brief moment of wider attention. Indeed, during their 80s heyday one can almost tell the story of the UK’s alternative music scene through the lens of the Sampler…or at least that’s the contrived notion I’ll be exploring in this article.

ORIGINS…
Before the sixties the word ‘sampler’ was usually bandied around by craft enthusiasts to describe knitting patterns and after the 80’s the term came to mean using a bit of someone else’s music to make your own (a bit like the knitting thing really). For a brief couple of decades however, the Sampler was your ticket to music heaven. Gaining popularity in the late sixties, CBS’s The Rock Machine Turns You On, despite being on a major label, clearly targeted the sampler to a countercultural market. Island Records – one of the earliest labels that could rightly be called ‘alternative’ – followed suit in 1969 with You Can All Join In. And everyone duly did. The ensuing 70’s saw a spate of releases, mainly from ‘prog’ labels such as Harvest, Liberty, etc. It was the emergence of the DIY punk and new wave labels that turned the sampler into a staple of the UK’s alternative record business, serving a whole new generation of poverty-stricken youths pining to explore new, obscure and undiscovered sounds.

PUNK AND THE 80S BOOM YEARS
Stiff Records, smartly rebranding pub rock as punk & new wave, got in quick with their 1977 offering, A Bunch of Stiffs and thereafter the Sampler appeared to form an integral part of the marketing strategy for small independent labels. Many labels began life with the Sampler, notably Factory’s A Factory Sample Double 7” EP and Some Bizzare’s Some Bizzare Album (featured below). Sampler’s were often lost leaders for labels, sold at the price of a single - an alluring prospect to the penniless young record buyer, especially when, statistically, there should be at a least a couple of likable tracks. The problem for the music fan was having to then fork out your pocket money on all the bands you were suddenly into (just as the evil labels had intended!). The ‘genre sampler’ also began to play an important, for example the British New Wave of Heavy Metal pretty much started with the release of the delightful Metal For Muthas.

DECLINE AND FALL
If the eighties were a kind of golden age for the Sampler in Britain – a musical catwalk upon which sprightly new labels could parade their pop hopefuls - then the 90s were more of a geeky trade fair. While small labels continued to proliferate, the bigger labels had regained the control of the charts, pushing indie labels increasingly into ‘genre ghettos’ – and this was reflected in their samplers. Instead of a multi-coloured dolly mixture of sounds you could barely tell one act from another. Although this era still produced some important contributions, particularly within newly evolving genres such as dance and electronica; Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series being a prime example. In the 00s the sampler has further struggled for relevance. The internet now provides such wide access to music and is hardly coy in recommending new artists to you. Fierce Panda, whose founders perhaps grew up on the sampler themselves, have thrashed them out at a rate of knots, returning the emphasis on alternative pop. Other notable examples such as French label Ed Banger’s Ed Rec series also manage to transmit a certain sense of what that label’s all about. Others gave away samplers free – such as Matador’s excellent Draw Me A Riot from 2001 – making them closer in spirit to that other cult classic, the magazine freebie. Even the give-away seems a little wasted though, with websites like Last.fm providing music enthusiasts with endless means to hone their recommendations and the opportunity to share music themselves. So the Sampler, rather like the 3D-Viewmaster, doesn’t really cut it in today’s market despite its undeniable charm. I have humbly tried to keep the concept fresh through my involvement with the online-only release Crumby Lovers: A New Weird UK Sampler, although modesty prevents me from mentioning this. Also worth checking out (vis-à-vis my recent Chiptune article) is the Chiptune Alliances’ 2008 Tour Sampler – another example of a sampler put out by an artist collective rather than a label. The Sampler’s future is now in the hands of the listener, able to mix and match their own playlists, display their tastes and share it with everyone or no-one regardless of what label a band is on or indeed whether they are signed at all.

A SAMPLE OF SAMPLER ALBUMS: 1978 - 1990
As a devotee of the Sampler LP during its hey-day I have come to regard these records as more than just label adverts. The examples here, presented in chronological order, all demonstrate links on the evolutionary chain of British indie music from Punk to Britpop, they are more than simply a vehicle for hearing the music, they are statements about what that label represented and a freeze-frame of pop culture history that would be difficult to replicate on a retrospective collection. They also all happen to be records I own and I hope you can share their magic with me.


DEAD ON ARRIVAL: DEDICATED IN HIS ABSENCE TO THE NEFARIOUS CHAMELEON
Ostentatious 1978 double sampler LP from Virgin Records awkwardly poised on the cusp of progressive rock and punk.
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Piglet in red wellington boots on the cover and glow in the dark vinyl discs (x2). Some nice dub reggae on side 3.
As its pretentious sub-title implies, DOA is a sampler album with one foot (or one of its piglet’s trotters) firmly in prog rock, another in punk and (being a 4 legged animal) one in dub reggae and the fourth in esoteric pop. Indeed each of the four glow-in-the-dark-vinyl sides of the record is dedicated to each of these genres. Peculiar. The punx are bound to hate the prog bit and vice versa. There are no outstanding tracks on here really but it says a lot about the times and about Virgin records, who ultimately did triumph in the punk revolution but were clearly still in transition at this point. The scariest thing is how it ever got commissioned - the glossy gatefold sleeve, the hideous cover art, the disgustingly coloured glowing vinyl (which needs to be held up to a light for ages before it will glow, melting the vinyl in the process). It must have cost a fortune and is surely the rock folly of Sampler LPs!

MACHINES
1980 label/genre sampler (from Virgin again) featuring synthy new romantic electro pop, though not just from the Virgin catalogue …
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Cheapo sci-fi cover art so of its time as to make yearn and sigh for lost innocence. Features Fad Gadget’s ‘Ricky’s Hand’ and an alternative mix of OMD’s ‘Messages’. If you’re into this kind of thing then this album is simply a great listen. Apart from the appalling “Making Love To My Wife” by Henry Badowski (author’s opinion!) this is an enjoyable slice of synth-pop with the emphasis on electro. It was this record that introduced me to Fad Gadget’s ‘Ricky’s Hand’ (the second 7” to released on the Mute Label and produced by Mute founder Daniel Miller), a pop song about a man with a power drill for a hand with a hard 4-to-the floor beat and crisp chunky synths – making it sound not dissimilar to stuff coming out nowadays.

METHODS OF DANCE
Discothèque friendly Collection of 12” mixes of new wave/new romantic songs from 1981.
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: British rock critic and borderline existentialist Paul Morley’s beautiful sleeve notes and the 12” version of Japan’s “The Art of Parties” (the album title is also taken from a Japan song).

“It is so staggering as to be a mystery of existence equal to the establishment of supine political debate, that deliciously yet quite contrary riches as ‘Love Song’, ‘Soul Warfare’, ‘Art of Parties’ and ‘Fascist Groove Thang’ failed to be holy hit singles. Thinking about the failure of these dramatic vibrating structures to nobly charge into the sinning chart brings into me a sensation of anguish, a sort of dizziness…”

Thus continue Paul Morley’s sleeve notes; a sprawling emotional essay on the political and personal import of pop music and its relevance to the era in which he was writing – and all in an impossibly small font rendered illegible against the bright pink background of the cover art. The tracks are all great but I think Mr Morely’s notes are actually the highlight, in themselves reinforcing the cultural significance of the sampler LP. There is also a Vol. II, minus the notes but including an incredible disco interpretation of Bowie’s the ‘Secret Life of Arabia’ by B.E.F. and featuring characteristically over-the-top vocals by The Associates’ Billy Mackenzie. Pretty much the essence of how imagine one of Rusty Egan’s ‘Bowie Nights’ at the Blitz club.

SOME BIZZARE ALBUM
The eccentric Stevo Pearce (or Stevø as he is credited on the sleeve) kick started his successful Some Bizzare label with this 1981 sampler.
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Introducing the world to Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, The The and Blancmange… Contenders B-Movie and The Fast Set sadly didn’t make the grade.
Probing the weirder, darker and generally more unpleasant fringes of the new-romantic scene, it’s quite an achievement that Some Bizarre Album introduced so many subsequently chart-friendly acts, especially given much of the album is almost unlistenable. Depeche Mode’s ‘photographic’ is a dark and austere synth-pop gem but you can hear the basis of the subsequent catchy but samey material that brought them such consistently moderate success (sorry Mode-fans). However, Soft Cell and The The’s tracks are grim, really grim. I guess Soft Cell fans may be au fait with a little subversion but even tracks like ‘Sex Dwarf’ from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret would not prepare you for ‘The Girl With The Patent Leather Face’. The The’s track – which has no title, just a blank space, is an hideous nightmare-inducing monologue, typifying a lot of the music here – all the way to Blah Blah Blah’s revolting ’Central Park’. However, as the title of this track suggests, there is a New York art-scene influence here, certainly one might think of Suicide but there’s also a hint of the (Eno produced) No New York – a ‘no wave’ genre sampler that perhaps should have been included here! However, a notable forgotten band is B-Movie who’s inclusion ‘Moles’ is enjoyable but who are also worth seeking out for their one minor hit ‘Remembrance Days’. Unlike others on SBA though, the big time eluded them.


PILLOWS & PRAYERS (CHERRY RED 1982 – 1983)
Label sampler for Cherry Red Records
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Giving us Felt, The Monochrome Set, Eyeless in Gaza and Everything But The Girl. Five or Six and The Passage deserved more notoriety.
Some say that Cherry Red was a label with an identity crises – possibly true, but as a result this album has a wonderful eclecticism and a well deserved cult status. It also has a special place in my heart for introducing me to Felt. Five or Six were an amazing coldwave group who seem to be as disproportionately underrated as Joy Division are overrated (sorry Joy-fans) and The Passage’s caustic and uninhibited synth-pop is how the Human League should have sounded. I will be writing more about this album in another article here at AFIN later this month.

ANGELS IN THE ARCHITECTURE
Cultivated Editions EG sampler from 1987 showcasing the label’s backlog of material on the borderline between rock and modern composition.
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Possibly turning people on to Harold Budd and the Penguin Café Orchestra. Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Laraaji are my personal favourites.

“Mozart would probably have understood and might even have enjoyed the music contained in this compilation” – From the sleeve notes

I can’t vouch for Mozart but this album has been incredibly influential to me and the echoes of this tradition of experimental, non-classical modern composition continue to resound through subsequent examples of modern instrumental music from post-rock and ambient to what might be termed ‘contemporary chamber music’ in the form of Yann Tierson, Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhannsson et al. Familiar names from the (70s) rock world and mostly Island Records cohorts (EG being an offshoot of Island) including Bill Bruford (King Crimson, Yes), Robert Fripp (King Crimson again) Phil Manzanera (Roxy Music) and Brian Eno – demonstrate their more experimental sides, presumably as by this time they’ve been largely eschewed from the pop world. Excepts from Eno’s Ambient series such as Laraaji may now be familiar but for me the lesser known gem is Hans-Joachim Roedelius’ ‘Kleine Blume Irgendwo’ – a naïve chamber trio of piano, mouth organ and electric organ. Fans of this type of thing might also like to check out the wonderful Made to Measure series.



DOING IT FOR THE KIDS
“This is a label of love…” Declares Alan McGee on the reverse of his 1988 Creation Records Sampler LP
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: An introduction for many to House of Love, Primal Scream, Felt (again) and My Bloody Valentine. Talent kind of speaks for itself here, the soon-to-be-big names providing the best sounds.
This “LP for the price of a 7” single” encapsulates the transition from jangly-twee-shoegazing-indie to baggy-stoner-proto-grunge-neo-psyche that kind of happened around then. Simultaneously harking back to the sixties while embracing modern influences including dance and US experimental rock such as Pixies and Sonic Youth, you can sense the climate that would ultimately produce archetypal albums like Screamadelica and Loveless. The aforementioned Felt moved to Creation in the mid eighties and went on to achieve some of their best work, although sadly no greater recognition. Best track on here in my opinion is MBV’s ‘Cigarette in my Bed’ which, In-keeping with the transitional tone of the album, illustrates their own metamorphosis from jangle-pop to the soul coaxing and illusory world of liquid noise that would earn them their current status.


SHADOW FACTORY
1988 twee-pop sampler from Sarah Records
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Characteristically indistinguishable. Includes tracks by The Orchids and The Field Mice and other wonderfully named bands, if you can tell them apart.

“so when one dismal morning a new song turns up at our door, full of wrong notes and wrong chords but crammed with right Everything Elses, and my typical daydreamy swirl has their name at once scuffed out with reverence on each rain-splattered sandcastled beach from Chepstow to Bridgwater Bay …” – From the sleeve notes

Sarah Records, based in my native Bristol UK epitomised the sound that was, for a time, the very definition of ‘indie’ - soft, jangly, fey and indistinct music characterised by layered guitars, indecipherable vocals (seemingly without consonants) and an almost total absence of bass. The contrast-free monochrome picture on the cover sums up the sound. Sarah released a number of these compilations spanning ’88 – ‘95 of which this is probably the best, all named after local landmarks in and around Bristol that probably only us yokels would be familiar with (in this case, fact fans, the Bristol Aeroplane Company’s wartime factory) and reminds me of a city I was vaguely aware of during my childhood before it went all cool and trip-hop… It’s just a pity the music, whilst possessing a kind of pastoral psyche-pop charm, was just so (deliberately?) bland. You can hear the influence today in bands like The Clientele and I guess certain people, including myself, will always be drawn to this scene’s weirdly fascinating aesthetic… but after a while you may be itching to get yr freak on to some booty-bass.


HOME
Obscure 1990 sampler for the largely forgotten Manchester, UK based Sheer Joy label
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Providing a taster of the emerging ‘Madchester’ scene. World of Twist’s ‘The Storm’ is the highlight.
An odd album encompassing a kind of baggy, dancey indie sound indicative of the so called ‘Madchester’ scene which would ultimately be partly responsible for Britpop. Opening the record Swirl’s monosyllabic band name is instantly indicative the forthcoming era dominated by Pulp, Blur etc. There is a notable inclusion here from Mark E. Smith (not credited as The Fall) on a track called “Theme From ERROR-ORRORI” (now available on the expanded reissue of Extricate). My personal favourite is World of Twist’s “The Storm”, a luscious dancefloor friendly track shamelessly lifting the riff from Iggy and the Stooges’ ‘Penetration’ to perfect effect. Perhaps the nod to Iggy typifies pop’s eternal struggle between crude decadence and knowing restraint (illustrated later that decade by the Blur/Oasis rivalry) that is seemingly a pre-requisite in allowing music culture to evolve; each new scene erupting in a deliberately vulgar decrying of their predecessors lofty ideals until, after making some pious refinements of their own, they too succumb to the perpetual upsurge of youthful, primal rock and roll - thus creating the feedback loop that has brought us to our current cultural melange. Or something like that.

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