Colossal Youth

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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?[1]

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.[1][2]

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.[1] 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.[3] The drums heard on the album were recorded straight from a cassette player playing a tape of pre-recorded beats that the band used in lieu of their original drum machine.[3] 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.[1]

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."[3] 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,[4][5] and he also included it in a personal list of his 50 favourite albums.[6] In the aforementioned interview, he spoke of his admiration for the album:

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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.[4]

Cobain's wife Courtney Love would later record "Credit in the Straight World" with her band Hole on their second album Live Through This, released in 1994.[citation needed] Stephin Merritt credited the album as the main inspiration for his band The Magnetic Fields's debut album Distant Plastic Trees, and has recorded a cover of "The Man Amplifier".[citation needed] Australian band Toys Went Berserk covered "Brand - New - Life" on their 1989 album The Smiler With A Knife.

Domino Recording Company released Colossal Youth & Collected Works, an expanded reissue of the album, on 9 July 2007.[7] 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.[8]

In 2020, Rolling Stone included Colossal Youth in their "80 Greatest albums of 1980" list, praising the band for "creating an arresting, quiet sound ".[9]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Stuart Moxham, except where noted.

  1. "Searching for Mr. Right" – 3:03
  2. "Include Me Out" – 2:01
  3. "The Taxi" – 2:07
  4. "Eating Noddemix" (Philip Moxham, Alison Statton) – 2:04
  5. "Constantly Changing" – 2:04
  6. "N.I.T.A." – 3:31
  7. "Colossal Youth" – 1:54
  8. "Music for Evenings" – 3:02
  9. "The Man Amplifier" – 3:15
  10. "Choci Loni" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 2:37
  11. "Wurlitzer Jukebox!" – 2:45
  12. "Salad Days" (S. Moxham, Statton) – 2:01
  13. "Credit in the Straight World" – 2:29
  14. "Brand - New - Life" – 2:55
  15. "Wind in the Rigging" – 2:25

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?:

  2. "This Way" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 1:41
  3. "Posed by Models" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 1:25
  4. "The Clock" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 1:39
  5. "Clicktalk" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 2:42
  6. "Zebra Trucks" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 1:33
  7. "Sporting Life" (S. Moxham, P. Moxham) – 1:04
  8. "Final Day" – 1:43
  9. "Radio Silents" – 1:53
  10. "Cake Walking" – 2:49
  11. "Ode to Booker T" – 3:03

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[10]

Young Marble Giants

Additional personnel

Charts

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Chart (1980–81) Peak
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UK Independent Albums (Record Business)[11] 3
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Chart (2007) Peak
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References

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  1. ^ a b c d Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Reynolds, Simon (2007). Colossal Youth & Collected Works (liner notes). Young Marble Giants. Domino Recording Company. REWIGCD32X.
  2. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Young Marble Giants". reynoldsretro.blogspot.com.
  3. ^ a b c Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Unterberger, Richie (1997). "Stuart Moxham Interview". richieunterberger.com. Archived from the original on 13 January 2025. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
  4. ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Rebellious Jukebox". Melody Maker. 29 August 1992.
  5. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Cross, Charles R.; Gaar, Gillian G.; Gendron, Bob; Martens, Todd; Yarm, Mark (2013). Nirvana: The Complete Illustrated History. Voyageur Press. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-7603-4521-4.
  6. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Kurt Cobain's 50 favorite albums". BrooklynVegan. 15 November 2012. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
  7. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth and Collected Works – CDx2". Rough Trade. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
  8. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Phillips, Amy (11 December 2008). "Flaming Lips to Curate One Day of ATP NY 2009". Pitchfork. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
  9. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."The 80 Greatest Albums of 1980 What came out of all this was, arguably, the greatest year for great albums ever". Rolling Stone. 11 November 2020. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
  10. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Colossal Youth (liner notes). Young Marble Giants. Rough Trade Records. 1980. ROUGH 8.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  11. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Lazell, Barry (1997). "The Young Marble Giants". Indie Hits 1980–1989: The Complete U.K. Independent Charts (Singles & Albums). Cherry Red Books. ISBN 0-95172-069-4. Archived from the original on 14 May 2008. Retrieved 19 December 2020.

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