Words: Joe Muggs

It’s not hyperbole to call it a resurrection.

4AD was one of the keystones of global alternative music in the 1980s alongside names like Creation, Mute, Sub Pop and Rough Trade, with the singular visions of founder Ivo Watts-Russell and in-house designer Vaughn Oliver giving it one of the clearest identities of all. By the mid-1990s, though, following a move to LA, it was starting to lose its identity. For a decade after Watts-Russell sold the company in 1998, it drifted without a steady hand at the tiller – until, in 2008, Simon Halliday came in from Warp’s American offices, and the Beggars Group which owned 4AD began an aggressive campaign of expansion.

The label had not been without successes in the 2000s – the likes of Beirut, TV On The Radio and Blonde Redhead were indie stalwarts, and legendary louche maverick Scott Walker provided highbrow cred. But Halliday’s tenure very quickly saw it make a wide range of signings, from Bon Iver and Big Pink to the then distinctly marginal Ariel Pink, and continued diversifying with the arrival of Zomby, Joker and dark, doomy Florida hip hop rapper/producer Spaceghostpurrp last year sealing the sense of 4AD as willing to run the gamut of alternative music. Halliday appears to have managed to make 4AD a major force again, without rebuilding it in the image of its former self, but somehow with a sense of continuity still.

Maybe it’s the jetlag – when we meet in a west end café, he’s just flown in from New York, where he lives – or the vodka and lemonade he’s using to take the edge off it, but in conversation Halliday seems very unguarded for an MD. It’s clear that he’s a music guy before all else, and his responses are never prepared, but come in a flood of recollection, excitement and self-interrogation: more than once in the conversation he’ll pull himself up and ask “is that really true?”, running through a completely alternative viewpoint to what he’s just said as if to test the solidity of his own theories. He’s inquisitive, too; once the interview’s over he interrogates me about dance sub-genres and scenes, and appears to listen rather a lot more than others in his position often do.

“Imagine if you had an act like Cocteau Twins now, it would be fucking amazing!”

So, 4AD is a busy label now, and seemingly constantly changing. Are you ever able to take stock – to say “this is where we are right now”?

“Well, just recently we threw a big party. I’ve always thought that’s a really important part of being a label – after all, the music is meant to be enjoyed isn’t it? So we put on something in New York, officially a media presentation of our newest releases, just so we could have a party in the Skylight lobby of the New Museum [of Contemporary Art], which has got a great balcony, overlooks New York, and it was the longest day of the year. I’ve always liked June 21st, it’s – well, I wouldn’t say a spiritual day, but the longest day and I like the sun. So we had a party. We got the guy from Purity Ring to DJ first, then Brian DeGraw from Gang Gang Dance ended it off, and it was so good I didn’t even know what genre he was playing. Some of it was like tacky bhangra, some was electronic this that or the other, but it was all brilliant – and I’d ask him what it was and he’d be like, ‘I don’t know!’, or he’d ripped it from this bit of the internet or that badly labelled CD he’d picked up somewhere, and mashed it all up, and it was great, it reminded me of being young and of having a party just for the sake of it.

“When I first moved to London I used to hang out with the Wall Of Sound guys a lot, and it would constantly be, ‘Oh, let’s have a party – ten of us in the back of the pub, there, that’s a party.’ And it’s good. Play some tunes, some of your own and some not your own. And I like dancing. It’s a weird thing, but some people dance and some people don’t. When I grew up, me and my friends, we were soulboys and we just liked dancing. We grew up in Manchester and just used to listen to this guy Mike Shaft on the radio, he’d bring in all the latest US imports like Change and Eugene Wilde and Kleer and stuff like that. And that was us – early 80s to mid 80s, it was soul. I was a soulboy, and dancing seemed very natural to me – so when acid house came in and people were, like, ‘we dance now’, we just thought, ‘oh, we’ve been dancing all along’. It’s not a gay thing or a girly thing, just some people like to dance. It was there in London, with Caister and all that – all the early house people, the Boys Own crew and that, they were soulboys too. Having an E was just something extra, they were already dancing without any ecstasy.

“I mean I do like guitars – throughout my life there’ve been guitars on one side, beats on the other, and through the 80s, beats won without a doubt. After Echo & The Bunnymen, New Order, Teardrop Explodes subsided a bit, for the rest of the 80s, it was just hip-hop, house, techno, soul all the way.”

“People feel more comfortable with the past, they don’t like the present so much.”

And where did 4AD fit into this for you, as a listener?

“Well it’s funny because I kind of count them as being kind of dancey because it was on the electronic side all along. Even though that early stuff was quite gothy, I’m a huge The The fan, they get through…Bauhaus – gothy but great…Cocteau Twins, who are my favourite 4AD act of all, I count as an electronic act even though they’ve got guitars. I was always coming at them as an electronic, woozy sort of act.

Funny you say that, we listened to Heaven Or Las Vegas over and over when my son was born, and at one point I suddenly twigged that the production style was like a Luther Vandross album. Not indie in the slightest, but like a big, expensive, American soul record.

“I think so. It’s weird, it’s Ivo’s favourite record on 4AD, in his top ten records of all time in fact – and it’s close to that for me. But actually I think the first This Mortal Coil album is better even, and I suppose maybe modesty won’t allow him to say that’s the best record on 4AD. I love the Cocteaus though, and it’s odd, they don’t sell that much, it’s not like they’re a huge selling act, not like Pixies or The Breeders, but they were so influential – and I do wonder if they’ll have their time again, people will be like ‘wait a minute…’ Imagine if you had an act like that now, it would be fucking amazing!”

[interruption as one of the twink waiters belts out Snow Patrol, karaoke style, over the PA system and we move out to an outside table, laughing uncontrollably]

[he gathers himself] “It reminds me of one of Ivo’s stories, about when he first got the Cocteau Twins in the studio. He didn’t know Liz was the singer, he thought they were some experimental noise thing, then she started singing and it was just ‘OH MY GOD!’

She was a completely untrained singer, right?

“Absolutely, absolutely – and that’s probably why there are no restrictions from any training: it’s just all art, all flow, all her soul.”

And the Cocteaus were pretty rock’n'roll in their lifestyle too?

[smiles, eyes widen, but he says nothing]

“The whole concept of trying to be cool is uncool in itself, and all you should ever really do is just try and do your own thing.”

I mean, the image of classic 4AD was maybe quite arch, very arty, even precious, but that wasn’t the case, right?

“No exactly, there was plenty of partying going on, plenty of hedonism and plenty of – yeah – rock’n'roll actually. None of this ‘oh we’re going to create this and create that according to so-and-so agenda, and we’re too cool for school’, really they all wanted to go for it. Pixies were a straight-up rock band in many ways, and The Breeders were even verging on a crossover big act in the USA, they were a huge act. It’s always easy to look back on things and corral them, to think they all fall under one category, but it’s not like that. People feel more comfortable with the past, they don’t like the present so much very often. I’m sure what we’re doing now, in five years people will say ‘oh it must’ve been amazing in 2010 to 2015′, and I’ll be like ‘well, yeah, it was, but not in the sense of it being some magical period that stood out.’

“I think people don’t like the present, it’s just a natural instinct – people don’t like their own time, they’ll go back to the 60s, 70s or 80s…now the 70s and 80s were awful times, but people have a rose-tinted view of the past, and I think it’s similar with record companies. Now 4AD were cool at the time without a doubt, but I don’t think as cool as people perceive them to be in retrospect. They were never ‘in’, and they never tried to be. Of course, the whole concept of trying to be cool is uncool in itself, and all you should ever really do is just try and do your own thing.”

I certainly felt when I was 15 that the appeal of Pixies, Throwing Muses, even something like Colourbox, was that they were misfits, not that they were cool.

“Well that’s a great way of looking at it, and I think the people we have now are all misfits too. Going back to that New York presentation we just did – there was a valid reason to do it I guess, we were showcasing what we’d just done, what was happening now and what was forthcoming, and it was pretty diverse. But, presenting it all in one go seemed to give it a thread, it did feel like ‘oh, it fits together’. Even though it was coming from diverse sources – we’ve got an A&R team now, where Ivo never used an A&R team but did everything himself, I do use scouts, A&R specialists, and we do cover the ground, cover the world, and I think it’s important not to be too narrow, not that my taste is very narrow – there seemed to be a thread through it, and people remarked on it: from Scott Walker to Inc. to Ariel Pink to David Byrne, there was a loose thread…I dunno what it is…musically it’s quite different – I guess we’d like to say it’s quality, that the connecting thread is just ‘good’, that old cliché about music only being good or bad…”

“I think the people we have on the label now are all misfits.”

But it’s your good or bad, that’s what defines it?

“Exactly, completely.”

As you said with the Gang Gang Dance DJ set, you don’t know what connects the music but it is definably part of something by virtue of him drawing it together.

“[thinks] But would it still be the same if it was someone else? Are you just saying that because it’s 4AD so you think everything fits the aesthetic? If it was somebody else doing it would you think that or are you naturally biased because you know who’s behind it? If it was Warp doing it, would you think of a whole different set of reasons that the same artists were connected?”

This is the question! One of the things that’s noticeable about the current roster is that you have people who’ve come through other labels, often well-known ones, before getting to you: Iron & Wine, Gang Gang Dance, Zomby… yet somehow if you see them as “a 4AD act” then they are a 4AD act…

“Well, Gang Gang, I felt as if they didn’t have a home, but as if they were looking for one – they did an album on Warp, they did one on Social Registry, but I felt like they needed a proper home where they could settle. They’re a great act, and I don’t think they sell anything like what they should do, they’re better than people give them credit for. That last album – I mean, I know R&B and soul are kind of in at the moment, but I really felt that last album was like future soul, the production was like the 80s soul I was into as a little boy but put into a modern thing, with more of a house sensibility but really soul-y. But it didn’t get much credit, and I guess people felt they’re difficult or something…”

“I felt like Gang Gang Dance needed a proper home where they could settle.”

Well there’s the complexity, but also the fact that it’s easy for people to tar them with the word “hipster” – they’re arty, Brooklyn –

“Manhattan actually! They don’t even go to Brooklyn! But yeah, they’re really hip… although maybe they’re kind of not…”

Well, they’re into African music, they do gallery shows, there’s the kooky outfits, all things people associate with a hipster aesthetic – and if you say “hipster” then people assume there’s some shallowness to their interest in all these diverse things.

“True! But you know it’s not how they are. I actually think Brian DeGraw and Lizzie should go out and DJ more, as well as playing live, just to show they’re in the musical world fully – to show how immersed they are in it.”

Well, that’s certainly done no end of favours for Jamie xx.

“Exactly. It made him seem committed, it wasn’t just him and his band having a big album, it was him constantly doing it, making beats, DJing every night, and living it. It makes you take people more seriously I think. He’s a really great example actually, they could so easily have gone ‘oh we’ve sold a million records, fuck everybody’ but he loves it and he shows it – plus he’s a decent producer and remixer, which helps!”

And all that’s vital now, right? I mean, while the whole idea that all musicians’ income should come from touring instead of records is clearly flawed, the way it’s all set up now means they have to be more involved and plugged in on every level of their own careers to survive…

“Yeah and maybe that’s one problem with Gang Gang – they’re not very self-promoting, they’re not very organised, and they’re a bit… well rather than being hipsters, they’re a bit hippie. I’m not sure if I should be saying this on record, but they’re kind of a bit jam band-y, they do an amazing live show that is really hard to capture on record. They did that ATP that Animal Collective did, they were sandwiched between Atlas Sound and Animal Collective, who are good live acts, and they not only held their own but they did the business.

“It was just one of those shows where it was like Underworld right in the early 90s, where a dance act has that thing of being incredible live – Underworld had that for a while where it just transcended it being about their big tracks, it became a believable live music show. And even after I’d gone off Underworld, maybe their third album, they’d still be great live – I remember seeing them in Japan about five years after I’d stopped really being interested in their records and they were still amazing, and much more believable than, say, the Chemical Brothers. My god, though, some of Underworld’s early tunes were so monumental, those first Junior Boys Own singles…”

I remember going to free parties in the 90s, and the sound of ‘Rez’ coming over a hillside was like the most unmistakeable rave signal.

“Yeah, ‘Rez’ is huge, and it draws you in. I was working with Boys Own at the time, I feel really lucky to have been there. 4AD’s label identity gets stretched, of course it does, we’re covering a lot of ground – but you think about something like Boys Own and it’s very concentrated, like ‘we just do this’, and it’s great. You look at their first 25 records and every one is stonking.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, trying to set up a label myself, and looking at those classic dance labels where the identity was that tight – where you could see the section dedicated to that label on people’s shelves.  Guerilla, Junior Boys Own, Moving Shadow…

“…Cowboy, Underground Resistance…”

“4AD’s label identity gets stretched, of course it does, we’re covering a lot of ground.”

…Reinforced, whatever. You knew exactly what you were getting with those labels. And nowadays there’s a few: Hyperdub or Numbers or Night Slugs…

“All good, all good! We’ve been thinking about doing a series of twelves, there are some really good singles out there where you don’t want to do an album, but if you could do a few twelves in a house bag, a series of ten twelves and all of them were great that would be fantastic. It doesn’t happen very often, a lot of those labels tend to be short-lived – maybe because it’s a genre and subject to fashion…Red Planet was another, you get those ten Red Planet twelves, you know what you’re going to get, but they’re all good. Those first few Underground Resistance releases were like that, except not predictable actually, you’d buy them all because you knew it was a guarantee of quality and some would be hard as nails and some would be really girly housey, and they’d show you a different side of them.”

But Underground Resistance are still going!

“And I love that, I love labels with that tunnel vision, like ‘fuck what the world’s doing, we’re doing THIS’. It’s commendable. We’re not in that world, though, we can’t rely on a fanbase who are guaranteed to buy everything, we have to paddle in the real world of pre-releases, sales, having to make a certain amount of money to keep the whole thing afloat. Hopefully it’s not too artistically compromising, though – if you ever find you have to make a decision like ‘sign this act for the money’ then you’re going to come a cropper. Genuinely. Even if you think it’s nailed on, Sod’s Law it will fuck up then you’ll have a release you’re ashamed of.

“Far better to go down on a great release that sold fuck-all than go down on something that you’d just thought might sell, because we don’t have to do that, we really don’t. We have that freedom to put out the music we really want to – and you can promote accordingly. If you think something is specialist then you’re not going to spend a load on it. Spaceghostpurrp was never going to sell millions, all the people into it are 16, 17, they don’t buy records – he’s got a YouTube following, Twitter followers growing by the day, all this support, but where’s the sales? So we’re really proud to work with him, I love him, I think he’s a great producer and he’s only 21, he could be seriously great – but then you look at sales and think ‘hrrmm…’. Then you cheer yourself up, you think, well, a lot of these hip-hop guys don’t sell straightaway, they might not until three or four albums in and people realise what they’re about and they break through to that audience who do buy records. But young people don’t seem to…I’ve noticed.”

“Spaceghostpurrp was never going to sell millions, all the people into it are 16, 17, they don’t buy records.”

People think hip-hop is pure hype and overnight sensations, but of course really it’s about hard graft, and only a very few make it big.

“Of course. There’s a lot of good hip-hop coming out now on the younger side, and those guys work hard, maybe not on shows – all too often they’re pretty ropey – but on Twitter, on remixes, on putting stuff out there all the time, and they live it. And a lot of those – Danny Brown doesn’t actually sell at the moment, Wiz Khalifa only started selling after so many albums, Lil Wayne the same even. It takes a long time to build that stuff up. Selling records is tough!”

How did you stumble upon Spaceghostpurrp?

“Well, we listened to a lot of mixtapes! There’s a crew of us in the office – our LA guy, our London guy, and me…oh and Zomby, because he fucking loves Spaceghostpurrp…there were a bunch of us going ‘woah have you heard this track?’ They were great, dirty and heavy as well – and we were just into it as something to listen to first and foremost. We love hip-hop anyway, so we were just listening to it as one of those things along with A$AP, Tyler, the other things that were coming along at the time, and we thought ‘wow this guy’s got it – if he cleans up his sound and keeps up this quality he could be a big deal.’ So we got in touch and miraculously he wanted to deal with us. Although, I think it worked for him, because we didn’t impose any restriction on him, we didn’t say ‘we want it to be like this’ or ‘we want a hit’ or ‘we want more female appeal’ or anything – just ‘do what you want’. Apparently he had a big deal set up with Polo Grounds, which is RCA, and he said, ‘I don’t want to do it because they want to control me.’ But we were kind of surprised he wanted to work with us, he had no idea who we were…”

Not a Pixies fan?

“He didn’t have a clue. In his interview with Rolling Stone, I think, he said, ‘well, before they got in touch with me I didn’t know who they were but we had a meeting and they seemed humble, and legit – they seemed OK.’ Humble and legit! [laughs] Legit!”

Well those are fair enough criteria to make a choice on really…

“And then we said ‘do you want to do vinyl?’ and he said ‘what’s vinyl? Oh – those big things!’