Forgotten electro-beats and sampling wizards finally given long overdue box-set overview
8/10
During the past few years, record-labels have been busy trawling their vaults of synth-pop archives with a view to issuing, reissuing, remastering and reduxing whatever happens to have been laying around the cutting-room floor. Some such albums are often never re-released for good reason - lack of demand, public indifference, copyright issues, an overlooked classic or down to one plain simple fact - it was just rubbish.
4AD's vaults must be packed to the hilt with worthwhile unreleased nuggets, not least from one of the labels' many heyday periods. With Colourbox, we find ourselves in the mid-'80s and the dreaded but mercifully short era of thudding electronic drums and wallpaper-stripping synths. Mainstay members, Martyn and Steven Young, plus Ian Robbins, early vocalist Debian Young and her more familiar replacement Lorita Grahame, managed to keep one step ahead of their indie-peers and ethereal label-mates by fusing some of the forbidden staples of the decade's occasionally cheesy aspects, blending them with hefty beats and top pop melodies and creating something of a credible hotch-potch of singles that borrowed from soul, reggae, dub, minimalism and hip-hop, as well as a seemingly bottomless pit of soundtracks and dialogue-samples. In their time, they were cooler than today's Hot Chip or Django Django.
For this 2012 revisit, their label has opted to steer clear of faffing about with re-releasing the band's sole full-length album with a few lame extras - they've scooped up Colourbox's entire output, minus "Pump Up The Volume", the Young's collaboration with stable-mates A.R.Kane (and a #1 smash, of course), added an unreleased mix plus some BBC session tracks and layered them in a typically arty box that bears a passing resemblance to the original album artwork. That aforementioned self-titled debut-album is here in all it's varied glory, with the singles "Say You", "Punch" and "Moon Is Blue", as well as Prisoner-sampling "Just Give 'Em Whiskey" and the solemn and unlikely opening instrumental, "Sleepwalker". As well as the more adventurous lyric-free tracks, Colourbox tended to shine better when they weren't trying too hard - "Suspicion" and "Arena" (both versions) being prime examples of two album-tracks that might have fared better with radio-play than the rather cluttered reworking of "Punch" or the bombastic cover of the Supremes' supreme "You Keep Me Hangin' On".
The other three discs are perhaps of more interest to completists and contain many of Colourbox's key moments. Disc 2 is predominantly comprised of 7", b-sides and rarities, such as minimalist chill-out homage "Philip Glass", "Hot Doggie" (from the "Lonely is an Eyesore" compilation), "Keep On Pushing", "Shadows in the Room" and the hard-to-find edits of both released versions of "Breakdown" and "Tarantula". As a stand-alone disc, this might have made a decent best-of, yet disc 3 also delivers the required goods, including the fantastic speaker-rumbling reggae-bassweight of "Baby I Love You So", its lengthy dubbed-out flipside, "Looks Like We're Shy Horse"/"Shoot Out", which borrows dialogue from "Once Upon a Time in the West" and their bonkers (and failed) attempt to get on the BBC with "Official Colourbox World Cup Theme".
The final disc rounds up the debut 1983 12" EP, also entitled "Colourbox" (a victim of the 'easily offended' - it was removed from retailers for having two shagging horses on the front), an extended version of "Arena" and several BBC session tracks recorded for Kid Jensen from 1982-84. The first session featured (then) new tracks, including three totally unreleased songs plus a far more subtle and superior version of "Punch", while the second session a couple of years after featured four cover-versions, one of which is probably best forgotten ("The Wanderer") and one that's certainly better than average ("Low Rider"). "Shotgun", from that debut EP, is a portent of the cut-and-paste genius of the Young's later material and remains an important chapter in their history.
Back in the day, Colourbox might not have sat comfortably with their sparkly and spangled label-chums, with their fate more aligned to what happened to Modern English, Wolfgang Press, Xmal Deutschland and Dif Juz (relative obscurity) than with Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance (global worship and sales), but their varied and innovative fare in this bargain-priced 4-disc set proves to be an absorbing testimony. Excellent package. Now can we please have the same sort of presentation applied to the catalogues of Modern English, Wolfgang Press, Dif Juz and Ultra Vivid Scene?