Here's the lowdown: Everything is deleted unless stated 1980 AD1 Fast Set - Junction One (7"). Crap synth pop like early OMD, without the tunes. AD2 Bearz - She's My Girl (7"). Crap power pop. AD3 Bauhaus - Dark Entires (7"). Three chord thrash, but effective. Their best single bar Bela Lugosi AD4 Shox - No Turning back (7"). More crap synth-pop. BAD5 Rema Rema - Wheel In The Roses (12"). Goth rock, but quite good. Various members went on to Adam & The Ants, In Camera, Mass and The Wolfgang Press AD6 Modern English - Swans On Glass (7"). Two chord thrash, but a good song nevertheless. AD7 Bauhaus - Terror Couple Kill Colonel (7"). More gothic wailing, but not a patch on Dark Entries. AD8 In Camera - Die Laughing (7"). A bit Joy Division-y, but nonetheless excellent stuff. BAD9 Cupol - Like This For Ages (12") Gilbert And Lewis from Wire get all avant-garde, and pompous. AD10 The The - Controversial Subject (7") Matt Johnson's debut. He didn't consider it worthy of reissue, but it's not that bad, and very rare. BAD11 Various - Presages (12") Compilation of unsigned bands. Spectacularly dreadful, although it does contain Red Atkins only vinyl outing (till the box set, that is) AD12 Birthday Party - The Friend Catcher (7"). Screeching feedback, churning bass, an absolute masterpiece. CAD13 Bauhaus - In the Flat Field (LP). Patchy, but still their best album. CD contains all the singles too. Still available. AD14 Mass - You And I (7"). Oh dear. Crap goth-rock. AD15 Modern English - Gathering Dust (7") Bloody marvellous. All thrashing bass, and hissing synths, but exciting nevertheless. CAD16 Gilbert & Lewis - 3R4 (LP). See BAD9. CD (called 8 Time) includes BAD9 and AD106. (B)AD17 Bauhaus - Telegram Sam (7"/12"). Rubbish bolan cover, backed with a really nasty John Cale cover (nasty as in very good indeed) AD18 Dance Chapter - Anonymity (7"). Awful goth b-side, but fine spritely a-side. BAD19 In Camera - IV Songs (12"). More post-punk shenanigans, but a good breadth. They had potential. 1981 AD101 Sort Sol - The Marble Station (7") Danish punks (The Sods) become Joy Division fans. It's quite good, actually. AD102 Past Seven Days - Raindance (7"). Kind of Gang Of Four meets Comsat Angels. Six minutes of brilliance. They could have been a great band, but split. AD103 My Captains - History (7"). Never heard this. CAD104 Birthday Party - Prayers On Fire (LP). Sporadically brilliant rockabilly/blues/swamp-rock. Still available. CAD105 Modern English - Mesh And Lace (LP). Forget the final track which is awful, this is Modern English's best LP, before they became a very ordinary new-romantic pop band. Still available. AD106 Gilbert & Lewis - Ends With The Sea (7"). Easily the best thing they did for 4AD. It has a tune, and a clever atmosphere - almost like Labradford! CAD107 Mass - Labour Of Love (LP). Ha ha ha ha CAD108 Colin Newman - Provisionally Entitled the Singing Fish (LP). Twelve quirky, but consistently interesting instrumentals, all called Fish. Still available on CD with CAD201. BAD109 Dif Juz - Huremics (12"). Durutti Column-ish instrumentals with more of a rock setting. Dif Juz were ahead of their time (see Pell Mell, early disco Inferno etc) AD110 Modern English - Smiles And Laughter (7"). They were beginning to get a bit formulaic. AD111 Birthday Party - Release The Bats (7"). A classic - they don't make 'em like this anymore (though lots of people try to) AD112 Hackett/Jay - Nothing (7"). Nothing would be preferable to this bit of codswollop. AD113 Matt Johnson - Burning Blue Soul (LP). Recently reissued as a The The LP, he never topped this. Another Boy Drowning is an astonishing song. AD114 Birthday Party - Mr Clarinet (7"). Dates from '79 when the band were in transistion from the off-kilter pop of 'Door Door' to the crawling chaos of 'Prayers'. Great song, though. BAD115 Dance Chapter - Backwards Across The threshold (12"). Not heard this either. BAD116 Dif Juz - Vibrating Air (12"). Collected with BAD109 on the still-in-print, vinyl-only Out Of The Trees. Just as good. CAD117 Various - natures Mortes (LP). Very rare sampler for the Japanese market collecting various bits and pieces from the above releases. 1982 - perhaps some other time. The Birthday Party singles all come as extra tracks on their reissued CDs, and most are on the brilliant 'Hits' compilation. All the In camera stuff is on a CD called 13 (Lucky For Some) The Modern English singles are all bonus tracks on their reissued CDs. Of the tracks no longer available, the pick is definitely 'Raindance'. All descriptions are, of course, ridiculously generalised, and terribly subjective, but that's history for you. - Dez Belatedly, but due to popular demand (I kid not), here's my rundown on '82. For those who may not have seen the first part, this is a response to a question - not just me showing off! CAD201 Colin Newman - Not To (LP). 12 short, quirky songs from the Wire-man including a cover of Blue Jay Way, and not including anything called Fish. Quite good, and currently available on CD twinned with CAD108 JAD202 Birthday Party/Lydia Lunch - Split LP. 4 live stabs of BP action, including a tortured cover of the Stooges' Loose. Not essential. Coupled with a droning 16 minute art-wank thing by the ex-Jerk and Beirut Slumper. Probably deleted. BAD203 Tones on Tail (12"). One of those dreadful Bauhaus spin-offs. No redeeming features at all. Deleted, and long may it rot. AD204 Happy Family - Puritans (7"). Inoffensive quirky pop from some ex-Josef K sidemen and Nick Currie aka Momus. Deleted, but available on CAD214 CD reissue. BAD205 In Camera - Fin (12"). A posthumous release of a 1980 Peel session. Notable for their meisterwerk, an eleven minute mantra called 'The Fatal Day'. Hypnotic, drone-like and finally dramatic - wouldn't sound out of place on Kranky. All IC stuff is collected on the 13 CD. CAD206 Modern English - After The Snow (LP). An example of the tenet that learning to play needn't be a good thing. Gone is the two chord thrashing and remedial basslines to be replaced by a greater sense of pop melody and texture - and all the charm goes out the window. CAD207 Birthday Party - Junkyard (LP). It's sprawling, it's chaotic, it's mysoginist, it's a mess. But it's a cracking album, nevertheless. Spitting disgust, spite, self-pity but in a perversely uplifting way. An essential album. BAD208 Modern English - Life In The Gladhouse (12"). Turgid and dreary. AD209 Colin Newman - We Means We Starts (7"). More goofy Newmanesque pop. BAD210 Howard/Lunch - Some Velvet Morning (12"). Nancy and Lee they're not, but this junked up version is just fine by me, and I Fell In Love With A Ghost is even better. CAD211 Cocteau Twins - Garlands (LP). Y'all know what this sounds like. Tinny drum-machine, tinny guitars and nonsensical warbling. But it does have a certain charm. They got better, of course, before descending into a candyfloss of blandness. AD212 Modern English - I Melt With You (7"). Long before it became an alterna-rock staple (the very fact which indicates how mainstream this is.) It remains a chirpy enough pop tune, but forgettable. BAD213 Cocteau Twins - Lullabies (12"). Not a huge progression from garlands, but a progression. CAD214 Happy Family - The man On Your Street (LP). Dubious concept album alert. Two wordy, and so the tunes are all fast and choppy, and often pretty annoying. March In Turin is just fine, but on the whole, crap. BAD215 Colourbox - Breakdown (7"/12"). The first version. Now rare, and certainly inferior to the remix, but not by that much. Time has been much kinder to Colourbox than a lot of their contemporaries. The records still sound great in an almost old school kind of way. That was 1982. I'm not going to go any further because a) most post-82 stuff is both well-known and freely available, and the original purpose of this was to provide some sort of clue as to what the early stuff sounded like. And b), I don't want to provoke flame-armageddon, because I reckon that between the end of the Birthday Party and the coming of the Muses, 4AD wallowed in ethereal self-parody. Colourbox aside, the label got bogged down in proto-goth and directionless cod-ambient rock, an image that has stuck (just witness the sneering comments in the dance press about the label whilst praising /gus Gus to the skies), and one that probably attracted a lot of listies here in the first place. Colourbox were fucking marvelous though.