Young Marble Giants

Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth And The Collected Works

Young Marble Giants could easily have slipped off the radar, only to be heard in the closeted circles of extreme music hounds and the occasional college radio play. But our luck has changed. With a complete clearing of the vaults, we are now offered three discs of Young Marble Giants: a five-song BBC session for John Peel, an out-of-print collection of demos and rehearsal tapes, and their brilliant debut Colossal Youth. Arriving out of the UK in the early 80’s as English post-punk act like Gang Of Four and Joy Division sparked alive, YMG pushed their own D.I.Y. spirit by rejecting amplified power for an investigation of sparse, minimal production built around the trio’s voice, guitar, bass and often drum machine. Alison Statton’s monotone vocals are plainly understated, but in a similar manner to Miles Davis muted trumpet, the effect adds muscle by way of the lean backing arrangements. Simplistic in approach, YMG never-the-less introduced a new vernacular to modern rock and roll.