IQ 10, by Ian Peel
The following excerpt was extracted from the book accompanying Zang Tumb Tuum, The ZTT Box Set. The box set will feature Ian Peel's full 16,000 word “IQ 10” essay, featuring track-by-track notes, queries, questions and answers.
Across three CDs, one DVD and a book, Zang Tuum Tumb, The ZTT Box Set adventures through 25 years of music, art and film from one of the UK’s most influential record labels. When ZTT started out it could have become the next Factory, or even the next EMI. But it didn’t – it became a one-and-only, with a style and a sound no other record label has managed to equal.
From Frankie Goes To Hollywood to Seal, ZTT has somehow managed to not only discover brand new talent but also turn some of its artists into icons by the release of their second single. In the early days, ZTT shaped the formats and structures of pop music (its 12” remixes getting chart positions of their own, and some of it’s T-shirts becoming the uniform of the 80s) and turned every aspect of the business of pop into an entertainment – from sleevenotes to adverts. It also began with, and retains, a fierce spirit of experimentation, from classical minimalism to cut/copy/paste pop, and has always maintained a distinctly European outlook – this is the Future Sound of Manchester, Reykjavik, Berlin, Liverpool, Dublin, Brussels and the heart of ZTT, Sarm West studios in London.
Of course for every hit there has to be a stiff, and for every stroke of genius an experiment that goes bang. But that’s half the fun, and all the part of the adventure.
In an ideal world – a dream world – this box set would contain 25 CDs, one for each year the label has been active as well as a set of 11 singlettes (the original cassette format used for Trevor Horn’s 25-minute remix epics), four original FRANKIE SAY T-shirts, facsimile manuscripts of scores by Dudley, Horn, Poppy and Debussy, Nasty Rox Inc.’s Ca$h CD, an Art of Noise mask, FGTH’s Slave To The Rhythm demo reel, Act’s Chance 12”, Seal’s homemade mixtape for Trevor and Jill, a VHS of Moonlighting, compilation CDs on each of ZTT’s sub-labels (FRO, Zance, 7, SOR, Para.llel and Vision), Unedited ZTT Voiceover Tapes Volume One (John Hurt, Kenneth Williams, David Frost and Mike Read), framed prints by Anton Corbijn and John Paul Goude and four books by Paul Morley (And Suddenly There Came A Bang!, Words & Music, Compiled Zanglettes And Tumbometers and Art of Noise’s Wonderful World of the World). All wrapped with yards of tape from the day the analogue machines were ripped out of Sarm West in favour of direct-to-digital recording.
Its catalogue number would be IQ 100 but, for now, we have IQ 10, Zang Tuum Tumb from ZTT Ltd. a/k/a Imagination Unltd…