After 1981's inexpensive instrumental album Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish, Ivo managed to come up with the funds for a proper Colin Newman album. Unlike its predecessor, Not To (CAD 201) was a fully-fledged album of songs that featured contributions from fellow Wire-members Robert Gotobed and Graham Lewis. It was followed later in the year by a 7-inch single (AD 209) which brought "We Means We Starts" together with an alternate version of Not To's title track.
The Birthday Party's started 1982 by releasing a split 12" EP, sharing the vinyl with seminal American No Wave figure Lydia Lunch (JAD 202). Both halves of the record were recorded live at London's The Venue, which provided valuable exposure for many of the label's acts via a series of "4AD nights" during this period. The Birthday Party's side, Drunk On The Pope's Blood, was, as its subtitle promised, "16 minutes of sheer hell" : an astonishing document of the band at its most chaotically brilliant. Lunch's side, "The Agony Is The Ecstasy", was a lengthy, semi-improvised performance featuring backing from Siouxsie & The Banshees' Steven Severin.
A further collaboration between the two camps was appeared later in the year : a Rowland S. Howard / Lydia Lunch single that coupled a wonderfully sinister version of the Nancy Sinatra / Lee Hazlewood classic "Some Velvet Morning" (BAD 210) with the evocative late-night original, "I Fell In Love With A Ghost."
The major Birthday Party release of 1982 was Junkyard (CAD 207), which would turn out to be their final full-length album. Emblazoned with an original cover illustration by famed "Ratfink" cartoonist Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, it captured the band at new levels of ferocity on tracks like "Dead Joe" and "Big-Jesus-Trash-Can." Even the more (relatively speaking) sedate moments like "She's Hit" and "6" Gold Blade" seethed with tension, pent-up violence and cold rage.
With Bauhaus still a going concern in 1982, guitarist Daniel Ash's first collaboration with Glenn Campling, the four-song EP "Tones On Tail" (BAD 203) began as a side project. When Bauhaus split the following year, Ash elevated Tones On Tail to full-time status, releasing a series of singles and an album on Situation Two and Beggars Banquet, before reuniting with fellow Bauhaus members David J and Kevin Haskins as Love & Rockets.
The Happy Family were the earliest vehicle for the cerebral songs of an Edinburgh university drop-out called Nicholas Currie - he was later to find his true vocation as a post-Brel, post-Gainsbourg "tender pervert" called Momus. Ivo's attention had been attracted by a demo which also featured ex-Josef K guitarist Malcolm Ross. A three-song single, "Puritans" (AD 204) - which, if truth be told, owed a rather large sonic debt to both Josef K and Orange Juice - was swiftly followed by an ambitious, complex concept album called The Man On Your Street (CAD 214). It was conceived as a sort of Brechtian musical, but 4AD lacked the resources to pay for the ambitious orchestrations that the band original envisaged.
By 1982, In Camera had disintegrated. The Fin EP (BAD 205) was their epitaph - a Peel session recorded in December, 1980 which Ivo licensed from the BBC. Despite its origins, the EP was easily the band's strongest release, not least because of the monolithic 12-minute epic "Fatal Day." Guitarist Andrew Grey remained associated with 4AD - he joined The Wolfgang Press in 1984.
Modern English returned with their second album, After The Snow (CAD 206). The album was produced by Hugh Jones - his work on Echo & The Bunnymen's recently-released Heaven Up Here had been much admired - and he played an important role in shaping the songs and exposing the band's latent abilities as pop craftsmen. Two singles were taken from the album : "Life In The Gladhouse" (BAD 208) and the classic "I Melt With You" (BAD 212). Although the group's U.K. profile remained low, Sire Records licensed the record for the United States, where "I Melt With You" enjoyed massive success in clubs and on modern rock radio, and was featured in the movie Valley Girl.
Without a doubt, 4AD's major new arrival in 1982 was the Cocteau Twins. Robin Guthrie and Elizabeth Fraser (bassist Will Heggie completed the lineup at this point) had given Ivo a demo while they were in London following The Birthday Party around on tour. Ivo first played it while driving back from a Dance Chapter session in Cambridge; the tape was poorly recorded, but he was immediately struck by the sound of Robin's guitar. That he had also stumbled upon one of the most remarkable vocalists of the decade didn't become clear until he invited the group down to London to record a single at Blackwing studios with John Fryer. Upon hearing the results - and Liz Fraser's singing - he immediately invited the group to record a full-length release (the two tracks from that initial session - "Speak No Evil" and "Perhaps Some Other Aeon" - remained unreleased for several years). The album Garlands (CAD 211), and the Lullabies EP (BAD 213) which followed shortly afterwards, immediately found a staunch supporter in the shape of the BBC's ever-influential John Peel, who invited the group to record a session for his show. That radio exposure, coupled with a string of live dates supporting The Birthday Party, quickly established an audience for the band.
The year ended with the debut single from Colourbox, a duo composed of brothers Martyn and Steven ("Scab") Young, whom Ivo had met through Ray Conroy (brother of Modern English's Mick Conroy) who was managing them. Their first single (BAD 215) featured two inviting pieces of danceable pop featuring vocals by Debian Curry - the energetic synth-grooves of "Breakdown" on the A side, and the dreamy, dub-inflected "Tarantula" on the flip. But Colourbox were creativelt restless from the beginning; within a few months, they had re-recorded "Breakdown" and remixed "Tarantula." These twin singles were the prelude to a series of technically inventive releases; Colourbox's music managed to anticipate musical developments still thought of as "cutting edge" fifteen years down the line.