Ivo Watts-Russell: The Man Behind 4AD

In 1999, I spoke with 4AD's founder and guiding light, Ivo (pronounced "eye-vo") Watts-Russell, about his company's history and about the debut release of his newest musical project The Hope Blister, an ensemble akin to his amorphous '80s studio project This Mortal Coil. His pioneering label has been responsible for launching the careers of truly alternative pop and rock acts like the Cocteau Twins, the Breeders, Gus Gus, the Red House Painters, and Dead Can Dance. And some of the music on his label has influenced movements like the Goth underground.

Ivo has never been a conventional musician or composer. Instead, he collects musicians he finds inspiring and works with them to create a special sound and a body of work unique to that group. For his work on The Hope Blister, he calls himself "Musical Director". While This Mortal Coil was an ever-changing body of musicians, The Hope Blister had a fixed line-up. It featured vocalist Louise Rutkowski, bassist Laurence O'Keefe, cellist Audrey Riley, sax player and drummer Ritchie Thomas, and on four songs, a string quartet consisting of Riley, viola player Sue Dench, and violinists Chris Tombling and Leo Payne. On ...smile's OK, The Hope Blister created striking ethereal folk and romantic ambient pop renditions of works by David Sylvian, Heidi Berry, Alison and Jim Shaw of the Cranes, Brian Eno, John Cale, Neil Halstead of Mojave 3, Chris Knox of Tall Dwarfs, and Slow Blow.

Featured below is a Q&A predominately constructed from material that was not included in the Mix feature but that was interesting nonetheless. A year or so after this interview, Ivo reportedly sold the company. Thus an era came to an end. But nothing lasts forever, right?

BR: I got the new Hope Blister CD and have enjoyed it very much. It's a very atmospheric, romantic album.
IVO: That was intentional, that was the hope, that somebody would respond to it because of that place that it would take you and keep you there. I like that with music. I never really understood why a song has to end, especially fade out, and be given silence before another song will start up. Silence can be very useful, but I also understand that the tradition is song-gap-song-gap.

BR: Your approach to music is unusual. For example, The Hope Blister album is full of mood pieces. It seems you're trying to get people into the ambience rather than merely assembling a collection of 9 songs.
IVO: I still have to resist the temptation to take it up a notch. One day I hope that I'll work on a record where I really keep it down the whole time and never have anything particularly dynamic coming in, but that it always sits in the background the whole time. But for some reason, I can't resist a degree of dynamics.

BR: I think it's also interesting that the music is very atmospheric and very different. It isn't like you're trying to create Top 40 singles.
IVO: I don't know, I couldn't spot one of those. I don't understand why 98 percent of the stuff that sells, why people want to buy it. I'm not really coming from that side of things. I still believe in music, I have a great respect for the depth of emotions that music can inspire and provoke in an individual or in me, and that's what really what I'm looking for. It can be a very broad range of emotions. I've always enjoyed music that helps create a personal connection between the listener and whatever is coming out of the speakers, as opposed to just a casual kind of relationship.

BR: How do you think your vision for the label has changed over the years?
IVO: I don't think that my vision or my belief has changed, I think that what has changed is my ability to fight with people, to stick to that vision or that belief. I think I find it easier to bend with people than I used to do, and I think that's something that gets reflected in the music. But luckily what the label stands for is just the same. The useful energy that you have, and the close relationship that you have with people when you're starving and you're starting, changes as time goes on. As I get older - and people who are making music now are a lot younger - the relationship is bound to be different.

BR: I've noticed that some of the new 4AD releases are folksier. Some of the early releases were ethereal and inspired a similar sound popular in the current Goth underground, with labels like Projekt.
IVO: Certainly there was a period when I was working with a bunch of individuals that had quite extraordinary voices. If they did sing in English, they didn't sing particularly clearly, and everybody enjoyed using a lot of reverb. I think that's the ethereal side. Ethereal and gothic are two terms I don't have any understanding of what they mean, but they get applied to a lot of music that we've released.

BR: Brendan Perry is working on a solo album. Is any of the material from those final Dead Can Dance sessions or will it be all new songs? IVO:There are some things when he was doing a solo show. There are elements of things he's been doing the past few years, [like] Tim Buckley covers and newer stuff. It's sounding beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

Eye of the Hunter

BR: He was the more pop musician of Dead Can Dance.
IVO: I'm still not even sure what was Brendan and what was Lisa. It isn't as cut-and-dry as it perhaps appears.

Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard

Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke

BR: She's got a great voice. Someone recently told me they thought she and Luciano Pavarotti were the closest we could get to heaven.
IVO: For me, Tim Buckley is probably the closest you can get to flying without taking acid.

BR: I saw Dead Can Dance perform at the Harborlights in Boston three years ago, and they attracted everyone from Symphony Hall patrons to Goths. It was a real cross-section of the public. I was also really surprised when the Cocteau Twins played the "Tonight Show" a few years ago. I never would have thought they would have gotten that big.
IVO: I never would have thought that they would have agreed to do it! I'm sure they wouldn't have if they were still on 4AD. I wouldn't have applied the right amount of pressure to make them do it.

Cocteau Twins

BR: Were you surprised at the breakthroughs of the Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and The Breeders?
IVO: I don't know. I can understand the specific mechanics with, for instance, The Breeders, when you've got a good song that's pretty unusual and a video that MTV wants to show. I understand the mechanics of the way that things work that will suddenly allow that to happen. But individualizing groups or where they are at a certain point in their career, of understanding why something can grow or not grow, I don't really have an understanding of. You can drive yourself crazy by looking at a certain band and thinking "why the hell are they selling millions of records when really they're a watered down version of X, Y, or Z?" I can't even think about that.

BR: You just do what you do.
IVO: Yeah, and either people relate to it or get it or they don't.

BR: With The Hope Blister, you chose to do covers, much like This Mortal Coil. How did you approach the album? IVO:With This Mortal Coil, there was always a basis with covers, and the original music that got attached to that grew as the project went along. I got more confident about writing lyrics or whatever. With The Hope Blister, I had probably about a dozen songs that were possible contenders. I had made the decision that I wanted this to be primarily voice, bass guitar, and string quartet. I approached Laurence O'Keefe. I'd enjoyed his bass playing - he's played live with Heidi Berry and Brendan Perry as well as Dead Dance - and I'd met him once. He seemed like a nice bloke, and he came highly recommended. I sent him a tape with some songs and told him what I wanted to do, and he said "count me in," so that was a start really. We booked studio time, and we went in and very basically started - a click track, worked out the chords, put something down, and then started to shape it around that.

BR: Why did you decide to do all covers for ...smile's OK?

IVO: I didn't really know what would happen. I hadn't been in the studio for years, and I had been saying forever and ever and ever "oh yeah, I'm going to do another project." I found myself saying it to Lisa Germano and she said "well when are you going to do that?" And I thought "if I don't start this year I never will." So I made those steps I described of talking to Laurence. I didn't really know what would happen. Would it be that we would do some songs, and like with [This Mortal Coil's] Blood and Filigree And Shadow I'd be inspired and want to create things in the studio? I had about a dozen songs, and when we recorded the eight that we did, I just knew that that was going to be the substance of the record. I think what happened, and I didn't realize it at the time, is that with the extension of some of the songs -

"Is Jesus Your Pal" and "Let The Happiness In," and a little bit with "Spider and I" - if you look at them and take [the remix EP] Underarms, this instrumental thing, I could almost put that together and it would be like Filigree and Shadow and Blood. Rather than creating new instrumental links or even writing songs, I think that I fulfilled that need within taking a song that lasts for three minutes and extending it into an 8 or 9 minute piece.

BR: Do you think you'll continue on with The Hope Blister?
IVO: I think about it all the time, but I haven't got to the point where I've got a collection of songs or ideas together that has prompted me to get on the telephone with a musician or two. At some point this year I will, I just have to decide which of several ideas I'd like to do.

BR: It definitely has its own feel. There's a stamp on there. Some of the things you probably hope for is to have something that holds up over time. Musicianship seems to have gone out the window in mainstream music throughout the '90s. I think that the last truly musical genre was heavy metal, and that broke through fifteen years ago. It seems like no one wants to work too hard at playing anymore.
IVO: I completely agree. One of the bad things about the legacies of punk...the good stuff was the attitude that anybody can do it, anybody can make music. I think that's really healthy. But one of the bad things that people don't seem to have gotten over is wanting to improve. Certainly with English bands, it's rare that you'll visit or be with an English musician that they'll have a guitar in their hands, just doodling around or playing for the fun of it. They're either on the dole or they want to be on the Top of the Pops. They don't seem to have a desire to want to work on it or improve.

Certainly in the '60s into the '70s, every band, whether they were English or American, would have this thing of an individual guitar player. What could they do about their sound and their approach that would be different? Guitar players in particular would push themselves. People don't really seem to want to expand as musicians.

BR: I don't think they appreciate it as much. It seems that in the '90s it hasn't been cool to be a band with a history, and it hasn't been cool to play very well.
IVO: It's almost uncool to take music seriously, I think, to really see it as something that is important. It's more of a throwaway experience. But as with everything about being alive, there's always an opportunity for discovery. You or I continue to discover music. I have been exposed to a huge amount of music in my life, and I can still discover things from the past that will blow me away. Hopefully there will be more role models out there suggesting to people that there's great value in music as opposed to simply hearing something and identifying with it and wearing a T-shirt that says "I'm cool because I have such-and-such a name's band on my chest." There's a lot to be discovered within the expression and the soul for music.

© 2001 Bryan Reesman