In the late '70s and early '80s, Ivo Watts-Russell, who moved to Santa Fe 3½ years ago, began working at the London record store belonging to-and downstairs from the offices of-established label Beggars Banquet. Bands dropped off demo tapes by the dozen each day, and Watts-Russell soon found enough materiel from them to start a label himself, 4AD. First under the umbrella of Beggars, 4AD soon parted with Beggars and 4AD partner Peter Kent left, leaving Watts-Russell to shape the label with his own specific, singular and recognizable aesthetic. You may not be familiar with the name 4AD, but you know its sound: Bauhaus, This Mortal Coil, the Cocteau Twins, the Pixies, the Breeders.
Watts-Russell and 4AD recently separated company, but one of his 4AD projects was reissued last month:
Underarms
, a project of Watts-Russell's band the Hope Blister, is a symphonic, seamless, textured and beautiful album, created from musical elaborations on bits from the Hope Blister's first album,
Smile's OK
. The
Underarms
reissue is accompanied by
Sideways
, a remixing of the entire album by German musician Markus Guentner. It's confusing, I know-I recently spoke with Watts-Russell to sort it all out.
How on earth did you end up here in Santa Fe?
Oh God, I'm here for one minute and I'm already going to get all mystical. Santa Fe was always just an idea. I finally came here-actually drove past on the way to Taos-and I remember looking and thinking 'What the hell is all that, some kind of military place' after seeing all the brown [buildings]. But I came back and something about it just felt right. About a month later I rented a house, collected my dogs and just stayed there. And that was in the southeast part of town, in Sunlit Hills, Arroyo Hondo. I ended up building a house because I really fell in love with it. It's the light. It's beautiful, simply. I don't live in town, I haven't lived in town, I don't want to live in town. I love the fact that Santa Fe is Santa Fe-in other words, there's a degree of culture here, an enormous amount of culture here.
4AD seems consistent in that it's just records you like.
Can you imagine a situation where you're working in a record shop and every independent-level release was worth listening to? It was so exciting. So really I was given a couple grand literally to start a label. [Beggars Banquet] was aware me and Peter would get these demo tapes people would drop off for the record company upstairs. They just said, 'Well, we'll fund them' and Bauhaus was luckily the first group that we signed and they made that first financial sort of stepping stone for 4AD, three singles and an album. I guess a degree of consistency somehow showed itself along with the whole graphic thing with Vaughn Oliver, who gave us a visual identity as well. The packaging was just as important. Boy, we certainly spent enough money on it.
I feel that 4AD is like David Lynch. If you say to somebody 'It's kind of like a David Lynch movie,' you kind of know what you're getting. It's like that in the same way for a certain period at 4AD, 'It's kind of like a 4AD record.' Actually, that probably meant it had loads of reverb.
I want to know what your current favorite downloads are, or what's in your CD player, or on your record player right now.
To be honest this is really why the
Underarms/Sideways
thing has come out properly. I just started listening to Stars of the Lid, who are on Kranky Records-beautiful, beautiful music. Years ago I went on holiday with Vaughn Oliver and we just had Brian Eno records. And we were in the mountains in Majorca, naked most of the time, and we had Brian Eno on a continual loop and it was absolutely astonishing, the effect-the environment, the music, it would slip in and out of focus. I have often tried to recreate this sort of wonderful calm with the environment and the music and I found within the first two days of being in my house I realized I had it, that environment. So I very definitely started listening to Stars of the Lid and looking for other instrumental things.
So,
Sideways
is formed from
Underarms
, which was formed from another already finished piece of work,
Smile's OK
-
And the packaging, which probably no one other than myself is aware, mimics that as well. It's taken aspects of photo session from
Smile's OK
, which is the proper Hope Blister record. So visually it's mirroring what it's doing musically.
With the Hope Blister
Smile's OK
thing I really didn't know what I was doing. I was really confused in America, really having a hard time with relating to the major label distribution thing, Warner Brothers and everything, it was freaking me out. I was kind of losing the plot, and it was just, 'I need to get back in the studio, I need to focus.' so I went back to London, armed with about a dozen or so songs.
Is it weird to see some kid walking down the street with black lipstick and white makeup and to know you had something to do with that kid expressing him or herself in that way?
I never really think about it like that. I've seen the stegosaurus haircut like I did the other day and I tend to end up like a grandpa: 'Do you really know what it was like back in England in the mid-'70s, and why people did that and why it spread so rapidly?' But I don't really think about how anything is connected like that. Anybody who, within the environment within they exist, who is slightly outside of the norm, I admire.
Do you find that in Santa Fe?
No, it's an escape for me. I'm here to be quiet. I'm alone most of the time. And I really enjoy being a consumer of music. I certainly hear as much music as I've ever done and I love the fact that it really doesn't matter what I like, whereas when you're running a label, you're full of attitude, and you've gotta have that 'Fuck everybody else, they're crap.' If you're involved with music as a profession, you've got to form an opinion very quickly.
Santa Fe Reporter