All the Young Broods: The 4AD Male Vocalist Poll

This title is funny.

I had to go with Brendan Perry, whose solo stuff I also love.

was tempted to vote for Momus, for the good times rite, but Nick Cave - especially the Nick Cave of Prayers on Fire - too big a deal for me. although! I have never really considered tBP a 4AD artist - it has always felt like an odd fit for me. really I can't imagine the Birthday Party belonging to any single label or fitting into any aesthetic other than their own.

xpost: oops, I forgot to denote him as a solo artist. And thus the emergence of errors and oversights begins..

aargh - and I just realized I counted Richenel twice.

Tempted to vote for a dozen of these, but my gut says Kozelek so there's my vote.

mark robinson for me, didn't have to think twice

quite a decent number of really bad voices in that list, as much as i love their records

ack this is difficult

oh what the hell, adebimpe it is.

Ian Masters for me, btw. For whatever reason, that angelic schoolboy tone never fails to give me the chills. See also: ESP Summer, a one-off collaborative LP b/w Masters & Warn Defever. A lost classic. Anyone know what he is up to, btw? Last I knew, Warn himself told me that he was conducting sonic experiments in some Buddhist temple or something? Maybe he's got Kendra Smith with him..

I didn't initially plan to run a companion to the 4AD ladies poll, but in the end, there really is just as much of an embarrassment of riches here. My runners up would be: Mark Kozelek, Mark Robinson, Black Francis & maybe even old David J (I just luuuuurve "Terror Couple Kill Colonel")

hafdis huld is a very pretty man.
i vote ian masters as well.

how many songs has warren defever sung? one? i stopped his name is alive after 'fort lake'. i know originally he sang quite a few of the songs but ivo told him to stop and that was good advice.

i don't listen to any of this stuff so momus gets my vote

where's my suggest ban button, I know I left it around here someplace

xxpost: i only know of one, on Livonia. Is it "How Ghosts Effect Relationships?" lol @ Ivo advice b/c he does sort of sound like a wounded mule.

he sang 'universal frequencies' on 'stars on esp and it's really nice.

you people are retarded if u dont vote for scott walker

Consider the venue.

xxpost: o yeah, forgot about that one. Will re-listen right now..

if we're talking 4ad-only stuff SW isn't really providing heavy competition

I dunno, The Drift is a fantastic album IMO, so 69 has a (subjective, cynical) point.

will anyone write in a vote for the Paladins guy? whatever his name was.

lol

xpost: Uh, did they have a vocalist? I guess the must have. I'd never heard of them, but, in the interest of being thorough, I did some research & was unable to come up with any definitive info that their music included vocals, to say nothing of an actual track. Also, I didn't see any microphones in any of the photos I ran across, so, in the end, I just assumed they were an instrumental band.

i wouldn't sweat it. the paladins album is IMO not only the worst album 4ad released, but possibly one of the worst albums i've ever heard

lol David Schwimmer as The Reverand Horton Heat? You know, there is just no competing with the ILX internet-research team.

Tunde Adebimpe & John Darnielle both emote so well. Tons of great & unique voices on this list, but no one else is has the ability to affect me personally like those two. Very tough to call.

^^^ I'm calling it sock

If it is a sock, they are doing a very good job of masquerading as stan of the current 4AD lineup with reasonable, if vaguely expressed, opinions. So yeah, it could go either way.

voted Ian Masters on the strength of In Ribbons and Flesh Balloon alone, but Tim Freeman gets a worthy nod (Sloppy Heart is quite possibly my favorite 4AD 12" ever) and i have a very sympathetic spot from Kurt Ralske's ubercool male-nico-whisper.

Koz would have gotten my vote, but he's wound up being such a prick over the years that it's made me actually enjoy his music less

Frank Black, Peter Murphy, Matt Johnson, Nick Cave, Brenden Perry - so many other good ones I could've chosen too...

Kozelek - with Kurt Ralske and Black Francis not far behind.

"4AD work alone" prevents Walker and Devoto galloping away with this. I think it'll have to be Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV. He hasn't exactly had a great solo career, but only the first two records were on the label (and the first of those was alright), so that's a pretty strong showing. He's also the only person on this list to have 10,000 people in a field in South London shrieking TAAAAAAMMMMMEEE!

my faves are mark k. , colin newman, and daniel ash. i just don't consider scott walker a 4ad guy. and i love unrest and everything mark does, but probably not so much for his vocals. which are fine. colin newman and daniel ash are two of my favorite rock singers, period. daniel ash has to be one of the coolest rock singers ever between tones, love & rockets, and bauhaus. much cooler than peter murphy. so it's a toss-up for me between those two dudes. i do like dead can dance face and those this mortal coil guys, but...nah.

i LOVE the male vocals on clan of xymox's medusa. you've got two guys up there for them. i thought it was just one guy. some sort of goth high point with that album. definitely one of my top ten 4ad albums.

and nick cave wins some sort of award from me for his version of "loose" on the live drunk on the pope's blood split with lydia lunch.

Gordon Sharp for Kangaroo.

was he the cindytalk dude? yeah, that voice is amazing.

'The Drift' is my faves Scott Walker album.

Actually it seems like something J0hn D. wld do a nice write-up of on Last Plane to Jakarta!

Yep, it's the Cindytalk dude.

There is an ilxor who is thusfar conspicuously absent from this thread.

Hmm. Actual amazing/unique vocal style makes me want to vote for Gordon Sharp or Brendan Perry. Consistently great band output makes me ponder Frank Black.

My gut/heart says Mark Kozelek though, so.

(mightve also considered Daniel Agust but the poll only counts GusGus and not his solo work).

Oh shit and Michael Allen and Pieter Nooten. Fuukkk.

i was listening to the first clan of xymox album on 4ad today and it's funny how all the right elements are there, but i just can never get into it like i do Medusa. Medusa is it for me. What a great album. I followed the more dancey initial Xymox releases, but i never dug them either. and i've never heard the 400 albums they've put out since then. kinda reminds me of when my beloved kissing the pink became ktp. a piece of me died when they shortened things. (i'll always have medusa though. and the first two kissing the pink albums.)

I love songs on Medusa where you get one chorus and that's it. Such restraint!

And I still have lots of time for Twist of Shadows, which is right up there with the self-titled LP and Medusa. Also essential is "Down to Earth" a b-side from one of the Phoenix singles... after that, they kinda crashed and burned.

That said, I voted for Ian Masters.

I am so guilty of neglect when it comes to 4AD...I voted Kim Deal in the women's poll bcz Kim wins all polls...I'm seriously thinking abt her as write-in candidate in the next presidential election...(just in case you were wondering)

this one: I voted John Darnielle

karin oliver should have won the female poll. but then i suppose part of the charm of early his name is alive was that they had a lot of singers. does ian masters get credit for spoonfed hybrid too since guernica was the 4AD farm club, their toledo mud hens or something.

if he gets guernica points then so should vincent giarusso

Yeah good point.

DOOOOOOOOOO I HEAR TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-ONE
ILL GIVE YOU TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-ONE

Tilt was on Fontana, I'm afraid. That would've swung it for Scott, I reckon.

daniel ash has to be one of the coolest rock singers ever between tones, love & rockets, and bauhaus. much cooler than peter murphy.

I agree until the last part. There's no way I'd take Ash over Murphy...

What about in a boxing match?

I'm voting Ian Masters. Certainly there's plenty of other great talents here, but he just happened to be extraordinarily gifted as far as the sound of his voice.

Clan of Xymox's Medusa album was great, but I don't think it's held up as well as the first one. I think I probably played it too many times and the sounds on it come off as dated now even though they seemed pretty unique and interesting at the time. That said, I still love "Back Door" a great deal. Did Pieter Nooten actually do any vocals with Xymox? I guess when I think about it, he might have and I just didn't notice. Scott is right that it always kindof felt like one dude. Even when the Pieter Nooten & Michael Brook album came out, I didn't understand that the guy singing on that wasn't actually the lead singer of Xymox. Him & Ronny Moorings have pretty similar voices, it seems to me.

"I agree until the last part. There's no way I'd take Ash over Murphy..."

don't get me wrong, i love what murphy did in bauhaus. i never really cared for the solo stuff or dali's car stuff though. but daniel ash is one of my favorite guitarists and favorite singers AND he was in three of my favorite bands of the 80's. so, you know, he's up there for me. (can definitely live without HIS solo albums though. same with david j.)

Kozelek's my easy answer here, although I gave some thought to Peter Murphy, whose voice is just ... there's some video somewhere of him doing radio sessions with NIN, doing "A Strange Kind of Love," and that voice is just ever more and more like a creaky old door in a very big house. Not a bunch of treatment on it, just lower and creakier than ever.

> Ian Masters for me, btw.
> See also: ESP Summer, a one-off collaborative LP b/w Masters & Warn Defever.

they've done a bunch of things together over the years. possibly. it's never been entirely clear. lots of the time stereo tape releases were rumoured to be ian (Pail Saint anyone? I'm Sore?). but i only have the esp summer one.

available here btw http://www.hisnameisalive.com/smmg/store/smmg017.html (that's 12 tracks from the cd, 6 from the 10", 4 from the 7" and 4 additional tracks that i don't have...)

> Anyone know what he is up to, btw? Last I knew, Warn himself told me that he was conducting sonic experiments in some Buddhist temple or something?

exactly that, there's a cd of the session available and a picture here http://www.dfuse.com/spoons/mos.htm (not heard it)

the institute of spoons mailing list sends me an email about once a year, generally ian playing with someone like luminous orange somewhere in tokyo.

Koogs, do you have that Mountain, Ocean, Sun record? If so, what is your impression of it? I followed the link to the Time Stereo page, but MOS wasn't listed. Any idea where one might procure a copy or, if it is out of circulation, a digital file?

I am def a HNIA stan, but I gave up on trying to follow all of the Time Stereo stuff long ago. Oddly enough, a bunch of old Ann Arbor friends, many of whom are/were also in Nomo, have been played in recent incarnations of HNIA. They are pretty exclusively into the soul/funk/afrobeat leg of Warn's thing & don't really understand my love affair with the early records.

Never mind, I found it on the CDR page: http://www.timestereo.com/catalog.php?nice_day=CDR (still wouldn't mined the digi-files, tho, if anyone's got 'em..)

*mind

Matt Johnson for shoor

Hafdís Huld (Gus Gus)

am I really the first person to point out that this is a woman

There was bound to be at least one such misstep. She is guaranteed at least two votes.

gus is totally a dudes name cmon you arent fooling anyone

"(not heard it)"

it says it's for sale here on their website:
http://www.timestereo.com/spotlights/mountainoceansun.shtml
but when that was updated, anyone knows. (xpost)

a lot of ian's 'solo' stuff leaves me cold tbh. trifles, trifles light as air.

i could bore for britain on the pale saints and related bands. but i reckon fhazel here would give me a run for my money 8)

of the half a dozen of these i've seen live (including him out of Spirea X, albeit in his Adventures In Stereo guise) bottom place goes to Kozelek who was just dull at the 13th year itch concerts. pixies were terrible when i saw them too.

it's a tossup between kurt* and ian**, i think. or neil***. argh.

* the borderline, as cool as fuck.
** a bunch of times with pale saints, including once as spoonfed hybrid at the sausage machine.
*** a couple of times as slowdive and once at an acoustic instore at aron's in LA to about a dozen people.

(warn and john d being the other two)

(not heard it) - sorry, missed that

pail saint is ian, it's really not good, just him noodling about for an hour or so. mountain ocean sun only has some scant harmony vocals from ian on it so i never actually saw the need for getting it but maybe it is great. he released an 'i'm sore' cd sometime, i think, musical saw. it just seems a loss for me, humanity, whomever, for him to not use his voice. does he sing on the winged disk stuff he does/did with mark tranmer? he plays with luminous orange and on their records too. the oneironaut single was very good.

It's Peter Murphy vs Black Francis for me. Haven't decided which one yet.

kozelek by a pretty substantial length if simply due to the depth of great material he's put out.

scott walker deserves a special mention though.

boring answer, but nick cave.
his voice in The BP is so dramatic and emotional (as oppose to his solo career imo), it's hard to choose someone else.
also, what about the other dude singer in Tv On The Radio?
almost tempted to vote for tunde adebimpe.

kozelek - too kitschy
walker - if it was for his early period - u'd choose him

> the oneironaut single was very good.

there were two, but i only have the english one (Derby Records?). i think there's a track from each on their myspace page. a year or so ago he went and created pages for all his projects and put up a bunch of tracks. iirc there's a link to each of them from either the dfuse page or the Pale Saints myspace page (via a blog entry).

oddly, the mp3 player shuffled up one of the Spoonfed Hybrid 7" single free with the album tracks on the walk home last night. (both those are on there)

I gave some thought to Peter Murphy, whose voice is just ... there's some video somewhere of him doing radio sessions with NIN, doing "A Strange Kind of Love," and that voice is just ever more and more like a creaky old door in a very big house. Not a bunch of treatment on it, just lower and creakier than ever.

Thanks for mentioning this nabisco, I'd never heard it before. It's a great example of a Murphy vocal, he seems to have three different singing voices and uses them all here.

(video here)

Echoing a few posts, but it had to be Kozelek with only a rizla paper between him and Kurt Ralske. I'd probably take UVS over RHP/SKM if it were "bands", mind you.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Surprise Walker upset (I figured Frank would steal this pretty handily). More on this later..

2 for BP is def o_O

maybe i shoulda voted for rowland

These results are mighty irritating.

I am frankly stoked to get the four votes I got & would like to thank my supporters, and to say to Nick Cave and Peter Murphy that I will completely pwn them next time around

daniel ash > peter murphy fwiw

I would have voted for Murphy possibly, but I thought the point of these 2 polls was it had to be strictly re their 4AD career output and nothing else. Which is why Im suprised Walker won. And Bauhaus only ever did one single on 4ad, which I never liked in the least.

J0hn D, you totally crushed Brendan Perry & tied with Nick Cave & Peter Murphy! That's gotta feel good.

xpost: Yeah, what can you do. ilxors don't like to be told the rules. Are you sure about Bauhaus having only one single on 4AD? I know they put out an issue of "Terror Couple Kill Colonel," which is why I included David J under Bauhaus, but I thought there was some other stuff too. Oh well..

I thought only "Bela Lugosi's Dead" was on 4ad?

... I could be wrong!

Oh I am wrong, the whole first album was on 4ad. Dunno how I forgot that.

So much for this post: Yeah, no, they def at least put out "Terror Couple.." & AMG has something called The 4AD EP listed, but there is no tracklist for it. BLD & TCKC, individually, make a pretty good argument for voting for either vocalist IMO, tho.

bauhaus on 4ad = 3 x singles 1 x album

bld was not among them

Yeah, BLD was on Small Wonder.

The 4AD EP just compiled single and b-side tracks. It seems that if you have the In The Flat Field CD w/bonus tracks, you don't really need it, except I'm not sure what the deal is with that alternate version of "Terror Couple..." I swear I don't remember there being two versions on that record. Was one live?

one is a remix

search returns this thread for all the ian masters talk. so here is some more:

the "long-awaited" sore & steal lp is now available, for free (donations welcomed), from limestereo:

http://www.limestereo.com/

no vocals in the bits i've just sampled. reminds me of eno's apollo.

if you want recent vocal work by iam then http://www.myspace.com/diveindex and listen to Hoko Onchi

and the wingdisk stuff that keith keeps asking about is partially here: http://www.myspace.com/wingdisk

Richenel passed away last night. RIP

oh damn, and only 62. RIP

btw, I wasn’t aware of the 4AD connection (don’t even know why I opened this thread, because it’s not really my thing), I know him from mid-80s Amsterdam nightlife, the brilliant “L’esclave endormi”* and his subsequent dancepop hits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1xxEeLRb_M

*only just found out that the 4AD connection was made through a remix of that song (which is a cover of an Armande Altaï song, another thing I didn’t know)

(also just found out that a still closeted George Michael wrote Riche’s “Are You Just Using Me” single under an alias)

again, RIP