Introduction: Mute Records

Introduction: Mute Records Richard Osborne and Zuleika Beaven Enjoy the silence Does any other label have a more pertinent foundation story than Mute? It has been recounted many times and is touched upon by several of the authors in this collection. With good reason, we shall also tell it here. This story resonates because it is epochal. Mute was founded in 1978; its beginnings have come to symbolize a key period in the history of independent music in Britain. The story is also auspicious. This book was compiled in 2018, Mute’s fortieth anniversary. The first release on Mute set the template for the label, outlining an attitude to business and a distinct sense of style. The details are straightforward. Daniel Miller purchased a Korg 700s synthesizer and a TEAC 2340 quarter-inch tape recorder and recorded two songs in his bedroom at his mother’s house: ‘Warm Leatherette’, his take on J. G. Ballad’s sexual fetish novel Crash (1973), and ‘T.V.O.D.’, which manages to fuse intravenous drug taking and self-broadcast within its four-line lyric. Miller billed himself as ‘the Normal’. Inspired by the punk group Desperate Bicycles, who proselytized about independent record production, he decided to selfrelease his two songs (Gates 2015). Touting test pressings of the disc around London’s independent record shops, he reached Rough Trade who urged him to manufacture ‘at least 2,000’ copies and offered to distribute the record on his behalf (Gates 2015). He called his label Mute. The single was a critical and commercial success, selling 10,000–15,000 copies within a few months (Gates 2015). Miller started to receive demo tapes, posted to his mother’s address, which he had unthinkingly put on the sleeve of the record. Yet there are many reasons why this release is both symbolic and prescient. First, there is Miller’s timing. He started recording in 1977, the year of punk’s breakthrough. He issued his single in 1978, the year in which punk-inspired DIY record production took hold. In the mid-1970s there were only about a Mute records.indb 1 17-07-2018 17:30:48 2 Mute Records dozen independent record companies in Britain, most of which called upon the major record labels for manufacturing, distribution and marketing services (Do it Yourself 2009). The impetus towards more resolutely do-it-yourself record production came from pioneering punk releases, such as the Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch (New Hormones 1977) and the Desperate Bicycles ‘The Medium was Tedium’ (Refill 1977). These acts were fully independent, using pressing plants that were not controlled by the majors and establishing their own means of distributing records. Their movement was self-publicizing and self-generating. ZigZag magazine documented the growth in business. In 1978 they published a Small Labels Catalogue, which listed 231 new independent labels. Two years later there were four times as many (Young 2006: 10). ‘The Medium was Tedium’ addressed the situation head on, informing purchasers ‘it was easy, it was cheap – go and do it’ (Osborne 2012: 74). The single by the Normal was one of the most notable responses. Second, there is the instrument that Miller employed. He had bought one of the first affordable synthesizers. Just as it can be argued that DIY labels provided the major business innovation of punk, Miller has suggested that synthesizers offered the musical revolution of the period: ‘I thought that was the future of where exciting music was going to come from and I wanted to be part of promoting that’ (Synth Britannia 2009). He was at the forefront of a new movement, as electronic music by Throbbing Gristle, the Human League, Thomas Lear and Robert Rental emerged at the same time as the Normal’s release. Miller has spoken of the confluence of ‘punk, cheap synthesizers, the timing. It was an historic inevitability!’ (Shaughnessy 2007: 6). Third, there are Miller’s partners in this release. Although he undertook much of the work himself, he did have notable help. His distribution deal with Rough Trade brought him into contact with the most important independent music company of the punk and post-punk era. The Rough Trade team were ethically driven. Their record shop operated on an equal pay–equal say structure and was a key hub for alternative music. In their capacity as a distributor they had even greater impact. They helped to spread DIY releases across Britain. In 1982 they instigated the Cartel, bringing together various regional record shops to act as hubs for the distribution of independent recordings. In doing so, they set up a viable alternative to major label distribution. Mute Records was one of the most prominent members of the Cartel, remaining loyal to this system until its demise in the early 1990s. Fourth, there is the name of the label. In calling his company Mute Records, Miller was again channelling the spirit of his time. Some DIY labels highlighted Mute records.indb 2 17-07-2018 17:30:48 Introduction: Mute Records 3 the rudimentary nature of their releases, giving themselves names such as Bent Records, Duff Records, Bust Records or Scratchy Records. Others liked to parade their lack of business acumen; the late 1970s brought us Boring Records and Flaccid Records (Osborne 2012: 79). While the name Mute Records chimed with both tendencies, it also indicated an art school bent. On the one hand, Miller gained inspiration from his own background in film production: he liked the word ‘mute’ having seen it ‘everywhere’ in the cutting room (Gates 2015). On the other hand, the term Mute Records was conceptually rich: recordings are full of sound, yet are silent when they are inert. In this respect, the company name overlaps with the work of the artist Christian Marclay, who has played upon this tension, notably with ‘Sound of Silence’ (1988), which consists merely of a photograph of the Simon and Garfunkel record of the same name. From its beginnings, Mute was a music label that engaged with wider artistic practices and thought. For Miller, the Normal’s music ‘was supposed to be visual’ (Synth Britannia 2009). Fifth, there is his subject matter. In 1978 there was a tendency to associate electronic music with outer space, the distant future and isolation. Phil Oakey of the Human League has recalled a movement of ‘alienated synthesists’ (ibid.). Gary Numan was representative. He stated, ‘I don’t speak for the people because I don’t even know them’ (ibid.). Miller’s songs were different. They had a sci-fi element but were set ‘five minutes into the future’ rather than some far-off time (ibid.). On display was a dark sense of humour, which Miller has maintained is the unifying aesthetic of Mute (Shaughnessy 2007: 12). That said, these songs introduce other themes that have persisted throughout the label’s history. They are bodily and full of sex. In response, Mute artists have not been alienated. Their music has prompted intense acts of fan devotion. Sixth, there is the name of the act. Miller chose to bill himself as ‘the Normal’ rather than use his own name. The band name is indicative of the Mute sense of humour: there is little that is normal about the subject matter of the songs, and the deadpan delivery of the lyrics is quietly unsettling.1 There are aspects here that are of their time: lack of affect was a strain within punk (‘psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?).2 There are also harbingers of the future. By adopting a pseudonym, Miller was able to operate at one remove. He could immerse 1 2 Mute records.indb 3 AQ: Please provide the closing quotes here. Miller has noted, however, ‘It was almost Normal Records, and the artist pseudonym was Mute, but I thought it was better the other way around’ (Shaughnessy 2007: 8). Talking Heads, ‘Psycho Killer’ (Sire 1977) written by D. Byrne, C. Frantz and T. Weymouth (Warner/ Chappell North America Limited). 17-07-2018 17:30:48 4 Mute Records himself in the personality of another; he could also mask personality. This has been a recurring theme among his artists. Time and again they have explored representational boundaries. Seventh, there is the success of the record. While hundreds of DIY recordings were released in Britain in the late 1970s, few were as popular as ‘T.V.O.D’ / ‘Warm Leatherette’. It gained critical plaudits. As one of our contributors observes, Miller’s record was reviewed as being ‘single of the century’ in Sounds. In addition, it sales performance vastly outpaced most independent releases. The success of the single was transformative in a number of ways. Miller was now poised between the mainstream and the underground, which is something that he welcomed. He was interested in the manner in which pop music and the avant-garde ‘feed each other’ (Shaughnessy 2007: 11). Moreover, as a result of his single’s popularity, Mute became an ongoing record label as likeminded artists began to contact Miller in the hope of similar success. He has stated, ‘I started to receive demos, which freaked me out a bit, because I didn’t really want to start judging other people’s music’ (‘Classic Album Sundays’ 2017). Nevertheless, some work did manage to attract his attention and he began to sign artists to his company. In the process of moving from artist to label manager, Miller was no longer doing things for himself. He was acting on behalf of others, or ‘doing-ittogether’ to use a phrase from the last chapter of this book. This list could go on – there is so much that spins out of this single release. What we have highlighted here, however, are some of the aspects of Mute Records that prompted us to compile our book. We have also introduced themes that resurface among our authors’ contributions. In the final section of our introduction we shall return to their work. Before then we offer a brief outline of the development of Mute. Double heart This book includes chapters that address all phases of the first forty years of Mute Records, from its accidental formation, through to its successful 1980s years as an independent record company, to its more difficult years in the 1990s and the partnership with the major label EMI, and on to its revival as an independent label in the present decade. Among the numerous demo tapes that were sent to Miller in the wake of ‘Warm Leatherette’ / ‘T.V.O.D.’, the first to chime with his tastes was made by Mute records.indb 4 17-07-2018 17:30:48 Introduction: Mute Records 5 Frank Tovey, whose 1979 single ‘Back to Nature’ was Mute’s second release. Like Miller, Tovey was a solo electronic artist who adopted a nom de plume; he operated as Fad Gadget. This role playing sensibility was taken further with the label’s third single, ‘Memphis Tennessee’. Miller played all the instruments and sang the vocals on this record but reasoned, ‘It doesn’t fit in under the Normal kind of name. And then I thought, what about if there was a group that were all teenagers and their first choice of instrument was a synthesizer rather than a guitar because that hadn’t happened yet’ (Synth Britannia 2009). He named his fictional group the Silicon Teens. Tovey was cast as the lead singer, Daryl, but did not perform on the record. It is notable that this single is a cover of a Chuck Berry song: Miller was the first Mute artist to cross racial and cultural lines, merging the white, European sensibility of electronic music with the blackness of rock ‘n’ roll. Thereafter, Mute began to widen its roster and entered a phase of seminal, challenging but niche releases. Non, DAF (Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft), Smegma and Robert Rental had all released records by the end of 1980. At this point Mute was developing into a well-respected label doing moderate business and contributing, alongside peers at Rough Trade, Industrial Records, Factory and others, to a coalescing national scene of aesthetic and entrepreneurial importance. The output was relatively small, however, and as DAF’s Robert Gorl noted there was ‘very little money’ (Spence 2011: 155). The next phase of Mute Records was set in motion in November 1980 when Miller caught the support act for a Fad Gadget show at the Bridgehouse in Canning Town. He had earlier come across Depeche Mode – a real life Silicon Teens – in the Rough Trade shop, but this was the first time he witnessed them in action (Shaughnessy 2007: 9). Within a year they had released ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ and Mute was running its first internationally successful act. On one reading, we have a second great ‘accident’ of the Mute story. Except in so many ways this was far from accidental: from the apparently unlikely decision of Depeche Mode to sign to Mute when Virgin and other labels had courted them, to the fact that they remained so long with label through worldwide success and the drawing around them of a body of cutting edge musical collaborators, all this was predicated on the reputation of the label and the standing Miller had swiftly built. From the first, then, the commercial pop success of Depeche Mode for Mute was inextricably linked to the avant-garde side of the label. As so often with the history Mute, contradiction was woven into its fabric. In this respect it can be argued that the release, over the course of just few days in February 1981, Mute records.indb 5 17-07-2018 17:30:48 6 Mute Records of such varied artistic output as ‘Dreaming of Me’ by Depeche Mode and Boyd Rice’s eponymous album is central to the ‘double heart’ of the Mute story.3 For the remainder of the 1980s, Mute had a string of commercial successes, including releases by Depeche Mode, Yazoo, the Assembly, Erasure, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Having long outgrown the backroom at Mrs Miller’s home, the label moved to its Harrow Road headquarters in 1986. This would be its base for twenty-one years until the partnership with EMI. During the heights of commercial success, Mute held true to its experimental tendencies with further releases from Boyd Rice and the addition of artists such as Einsturdzende Neubauten, Diamanda Galás and Laibach to its roster. During this period the label also began experimenting with imprints and sub-labels, such as Rhythm King and Nova Mute, which nurtured the careers of techno artists Richie Hawtin and Speedy J, and Blast First, which brought Sonic Youth and the Butthole Surfers to the UK. Although Blast First was rock- and guitar-orientated and a less clear fit than other sub-labels (‘I wanted to work with people who were starting to put out records that I liked but didn’t quite understand’, Miller recalls (2018)), the imprint was the original home of longtime Mute artists Liars. Long-term collaboration, all the more notable when coupled with the label’s single-album deals, is a particular feature of the relationship between Mute and its artists. During a commercially difficult period for the label in the mid1990s, this included supporting Moby while he experimented with a range of genres and released a punk album that might have been commercial suicide. Mirroring the time and space given to the nascent Erasure more than a decade earlier, Mute kept faith with Moby and were rewarded with the international hit Play in 1999. Miller had sought an international distribution deal in the late 1990s but it was the success of Play that enabled him to partner with EMI in 2002. During Mute’s EMI years, the label built a reputation as a repository for work by a number of seminal artists. Mute re-mastered and released classic back catalogue work by Kraftwerk, the Residents and Throbbing Gristle (for a second time). These releases brought the music of the latter two bands to a wider audience and are notable for high-quality artwork that is sensitive to original aesthetics. With EMI in turmoil and the departure of key contacts at the label, Miller sought an exit. In 2010, he negotiated a deal that saw Mute emerge as an independent company once more. This ushered in a new period for the label 3 Robert Rental’s ‘Double Heart’ was released by Mute in 1980. Mute records.indb 6 17-07-2018 17:30:48 Introduction: Mute Records 7 and more new music. Recent years have seen the signing and development of artists such as Arca. Since 2010 Miller has revived his DJ career and has gone back into the studio as a producer, including work on the 2012 album WIXIW by long-term signing Liars, which, with its extensive use of analogue synthesizers, is perhaps the most recognizably ‘Mute’ album of their career. As we complete work on this text in 2018, the newly re-established Novamute is releasing its first batch of 12” singles, showcasing a selection of emerging techno DJs such as Charlotte De Witte. Construction time again One of the distinctive aspects of Mute is that, while the output of the label reflects Miller’s singular vision, his artists are given a great deal of leeway. They have been free to experiment in accordance with their own artistic inclinations. Reflecting this, we sourced the chapters for this book on an artist-centred basis. Authors were requested to provide a case study of a chosen Mute act and to explore a theme related to the impact of the label. We have presented the responses in a chronological manner, sequenced according to the date at which the artist first released music with the company. (The final chapter, which addresses a different form of partnership with Mute, is the one exception to this rule.) To a certain extent the results have been fortuitous. We have received chapters relating to the majority of Mute’s most popular acts. Yazoo is the most significant omission, but Depeche Mode, Nick Cave, Erasure, Moby and Goldfrapp are all present. We have also received work on important leftfield artists, including Throbbing Gristle, Mark Stewart, Laibach, Ut and Swans. Reflecting the label’s pop–avant-garde split, we have eight chapters from each side of this division (as long as you consider the Normal’s music to be a commercial success, which we do). We also have key aspects of Mute’s history covered. The first two chapters address the first two releases on the label, while the last two examine two of the most interesting Mute artists of recent years. In between there are chapters that explore significant business developments, including the determined independence of the early years, the expansion of the label in the 1980s, and Mute’s relationship with EMI in the current century. There are also chapters that discuss Mute’s sub-labels, The Grey Area, Blast First and Rhythm King. In addition, there are conceptual themes that resurface throughout the collection. In this respect, though, the results are less fortuitous: unity was expected. As we Mute records.indb 7 17-07-2018 17:30:49 8 Mute Records have been stressing in this introduction, throughout its forty-year history Mute Records has maintained a distinct approach to business and art. Our book begins with the Normal. In the opening chapter S. Alexander Reed explores ‘Warm Leatherette’, foregrounding ideas of boredom. As part of his close analysis of the recording, he demonstrates how the song pits two conflicting philosophies of boredom against other. The first of these imagines boredom as productive and as giving rise to action (aligned with Heidegger, John Cage, the avant-garde and self-expression); the other sees boredom as oppressive and dehumanizing (aligned with Situationism and punk). Reed suggests that it was because of an unresolved tension between these ideas that ‘Warm Leatherette’ resonated with subcultural audiences of its day, and that this tension is key to its continuing importance with a wider audience. He also introduces subjects that resurface in this book. Reed argues that this merging of boredoms is a mirror of Mute’s merging of styles. For him, the genesis of the label is ‘the avant-garde crashing into punk’. Furthermore, his two boredoms reflect the polarities of the commercial and underground: one is ‘jittery and bland’; the other is ‘patient and strange’. Reed also notes Miller’s confluence of artistic forms. As well as the literary inspiration of Ballard’s novel, ‘Warm Leatherette’ was inspired by a visual aesthetic. It emerged from an aborted film script that Miller had based on Crash. While Chapter 1 concerns MUTE001, Chapter 2 looks at MUTE002. Giuseppe Zevolli focuses on the work of Frank Tovey, the first artist to be signed to Mute. Concentrating on key works in his discography and engaging with their reception at the time of release, here we see Mute’s commercial and underground tendencies played out across one artist’s career. Zevolli explores a conflict between anti-commercialism and anti-culturalism. He believes that, ultimately, this was a productive dialectic, characterized in the contrariness and in-betweenness of Fad Gadget’s work. With Tovey’s roots in performance art and his adoption of electronic instrumentation, he balanced accusations of artifice with an environmental concern. His first single, ‘Back to Nature’, is synthesizer music at its most unalienated. It is also redolent of the Mute sense of humour. The label’s deadpan mix of the commercial and the leftfield is captured in Zevolli’s description of this recording: ‘Although ultimately portraying a love encounter, Tovey depicts a post-apocalyptic scenario where bodies are left burning in the sun and a “capitalist aircraft” hovers above the protagonists, polluting the air’. Leon Clowes’ chapter on Depeche Mode looks at the advent of Mute’s most successful act and the transformation of the company into a rival to Britain’s major record labels. Clowes contrasts Mute’s situation with the parallel case of Mute records.indb 8 17-07-2018 17:30:49 Introduction: Mute Records 9 Some Bizzare records, who were contemporaneously enjoying success with Soft Cell. Where Mute retained complete independence, the latter label entered into licensing deals with major labels. Moreover, where Depeche Mode appeared comfortable with the mainstream and found it relatively easy to explore queer themes, Soft Cell struggled to maintain artistic integrity and were subject to homophobia. A second chapter on chapter Depeche Mode trains its sights on fans of the group, as witnessed in the films Depeche Mode: 101 (1989) and Our Hobby is Depeche Mode (2007). Here Andy Pope explores differences in presentation, recounted via the framework of fandom studies. He demonstrates how the cinema verité style of the first film implies an authentic and symbiotic relationship between Depeche Mode and their followers, whereas in the latter film the band is almost entirely absent and is presented in iconographic terms. He argues that the relationship between fan and band has shifted to one that is predominantly nostalgic. Depeche Mode and Throbbing Gristle represent inversions of each other. The former are a synth-pop group who went on to explore outré themes; the latter are a provocative art project who, as author John Encarnacao argues, became canonized within the history of popular music. His chapter looks at the group’s first four albums, which have twice been re-issued by Mute. There are good reasons why the electronic music of Throbbing Gristle fits with the label. First, there is instability of character. Encarnacao notes the lack of a unified persona or perspective in the vocals of Genesis P-Orridge. Second, there is the productive dynamic between the establishment and the underground. Encarnacao argues that oppositional art is inextricably bound up with the mainstream to which it is opposed: it owes its very existence to an established ‘institutional and discursive context’. In this sense, the tension within Throbbing Gristle’s work mirrors the wider tensions of the supposedly ‘independent’ music sector, not least because ‘creative work that receives attention and infamy becomes subsumed into the canon from which it initially wished to distinguish itself ’. With the arrival of Nick Cave at Mute in 1983 the label moved away from synthesizers and embraced traditional rock music instrumentation. Still present, however, were a dark sense of humour, cross-cultural immersion and a preoccupation with sex. Ross Cole’s chapter addresses Cave’s engagement with blues mythology. He demonstrates how this genre affords Cave access to a performative space in which he animates a series of malevolent alter egos, associating blues sonority with violence, masculinity, sex and inquity. In doing so, Cave is offering his own take on the authenticy-artifice dichotomy. As Cole Mute records.indb 9 17-07-2018 17:30:49 10 Mute Records argues, he ‘uses blues as a way to signify difference from the mainstream by simulating the guise of an exotic outsider’. With this racial role playing we have moved far beyond the playful cover versions of the Silicon Teens. Cole demonstrates how Cave’s blues-inspired work trades ‘on the wounds sustained by those stifled within the black Atlantic’s radicalized logic’. At the same time, however, he is able to view the blues as a positive source of identity and inspiration, seeing it is as evidence of Cave’s ‘unbounded creative imagination that ransacks history in the service of song’. Mark Stewart, the subject of Edward George’s chapter, is another Mute artist who has embraced black cultural forms. However, while Cave employs the blues as a route to exotic outsiderdom, Stewart has utilized dub for a politicized project. George finds a conceptual unity in the quartet of albums that he recorded for Mute Records between 1985 and 1996: ‘an envisioning, through song and sound, of capitalism’s rapacity and its dehumanizing effects on subjectivity and thus the body and the psyche’. This chapter also demonstrates how, at the same time that Mute was enjoying its greatest commercial success, with hit albums by Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure, it was also the ‘solitary outpost of major league postpunk expression and experimentation’. Stewart claims that Miller used the money from his hit artists and ‘invested it into cutting edge stuff, really out there shit’. He also notes the importance of the fact that Miller is an artist, believing that it is this sensibility that accounts for his commitment to alternative music. These ongoing links between out there shit and pop music are present in the transition to the next Mute act. George’s chapter addresses Stewart’s use of ‘dub’s law of erasure to produce and prohibit the clarity of meaning’. Brenda Kelly’s chapter is about Erasure. This link goes beyond mere coincidence of words, however. Vince Clarke is another of Mute’s shape-shifters; he has achieved success only to disappear and then resurface as a member of another group. He left Depeche Mode and then formed Yazoo, who he left to form the Assembly, who he left to form the aptly named Erasure. Accompanied by singer Andy Bell, his final group has gone on to have a thirty-year career with Mute Records. In her chapter, Kelly argues that this relationship is indicative of defining commitments for band and label, both to creative freedom and to the importance of independence in the music business. She usefully situates Erasure’s progress within the wider history of Mute Records, exploring the downturn in fortunes in the 1990s, the absorption within EMI in the 2000s, and the return to independence in the 2010s. She also demonstrates how Erasure are one of Mute’s acts who manage to be transgressive at the same time as they are popular. Mute records.indb 10 17-07-2018 17:30:49 Introduction: Mute Records 11 For Kelly, the band’s gay sensibility and theatrical subversiveness simultaneously challenge and encapsulate the conventions of pop music. There are nevertheless varying degrees of marginality. The following three chapters explore artists who operate at the furthest reaches of Mute. First up is Ieuan Franklin, who writes about Ut, a no wave act who were linked with Miller’s company via the sub-label Blast First, with whom they were signed between 1986 and 1989. His chapter illustrates the sidelining of Ut in the UK during this period. The band suffered from record label disinterest (from Blast First) and a weekly music press that frequently belittled or objectified female musicians. Franklin offers a timely reappraisal of the group, given the resurgence of interest in the contributions of female artists to the post-punk and no wave scenes. As well as exploring the relationship between Blast First and Mute, his chapter illustrates the different approaches of Mute and Rough Trade. Miller was willing to accommodate the provocative work that was produced by some of the Blast First Bands, whereas it had been objected to in their original Rough Trade home. This willingness is on display in the following chapter, in which Aténé Mendelyté addresses the work of the Slovenian/Yugoslav music collective Laibach, who have released records with Mute since 1987. She explores the manner in which the group deconstructs sound, making overt the covert mechanisms of desire, power and control that underlie the modus operandi of popular music. Through a close reading of two songs, Mendelyté discusses Laibach’s ‘meta-sound’, the group’s ability to draw upon and yet separate themselves from their sources in popular and political culture. And so, while Encarnacao posits oppositional art as being wedded to the mainstream, Mendelyté argues that meta discourse is one way in which outsiders can make outsider art. Laibach are nevertheless not entirely alone; Mendelyté contextualizes them within Millerʼs larger Kunstkammer of artists. She suggests that the Mute founder ‘has always thoroughly complicated such binaries as aesthetics/politics and experimentation/conformism’. In addition, Laibach offer more of the dark and provocative humour that Mute Records has foregrounded throughout its history. Michael Gira’s Swans, meanwhile, are arguably one of the least funny bands to have signed with Mute. They first joined the label in 1987 and have made two further albums for the company in the wake of its divorce from EMI. Swans do have Mute tendencies, however. In his chapter on the group, Dean Lockwood notes how the label ‘has consistently embraced diversity, refusing to be limited to any one style, aesthetic or ideological viewpoint’. They thus offer the ideal home Mute records.indb 11 17-07-2018 17:30:49 12 Mute Records for Swans, whose project has been one of ceaseless mutation. Lockwood focuses on Gira’s belief in musical labour, which the artist regards as a utopian, even spiritual, endeavour. Gira shares a kinship with other Mute artists in that his work critiques popular music. However, while most artists offer discourses upon the commodity form, Swans seek to escape it. Their songs are never finished; they evolve out of each other in concert. Mute release albums by a group who value performance over recording. Although Moby has sought to derail his career at various points, he has always been one of Mute’s more commercial artists. The musician arrived at the company in the early 1990s via its sub-label Rhythm King. In 1999 he released the album Play, one of Mute’s major successes. Richard Osborne’s chapter explores Moby’s sampling of African-American singers on this record. He situates this practice within traditions of minstrelsy, whereby white performers appropriate black cultural traditions and in the process perpetuate racial stereotypes. Moby’s work is also contrasted with the writings of his distant relation, Herman Melville, who examined minstrelsy and warned against its pernicious influences. The themes of this chapter return us to Cole’s work on Nick Cave, another artist who has drawn upon and channelled black musical sources. Moby is different, however, in that he adopts his black masks as a signifier of both identification and difference. Moby plays upon the idea that synthesizers are indicative of the future and alienation by layering his electronic compositions with black musical samples that represent the body and the past. Performance and personae are also central to the work of Goldfrapp, who signed with Mute in the year that Play was released. Our book includes two chapters on the group, exploring issues that they raise about gender and sexuality. In the first of these chapters Lucy O’Brien focuses on Country Girls, an art project that Alison Goldfrapp undertook with photographer Anna Fox between 1996 and 2002. Fox’s portraits display Goldfrapp in a series of ‘darkly humorous’ and violent images, far removed from the traditional realm of the female pop performer. Like other artists on Mute’s roster, Goldfrapp explore binary tensions: nature and artifice; glamour and violence; male and female; straight and queer. Glyn Davis’s chapter offers an overview of Goldfrapp’s career, framed through a queer perspective. He examines the three genres that Goldfrapp have engaged with most frequently: disco, glam and folk. Davis demonstrates how the group queers these forms. Disco’s historical links to gay culture are reiterated in a carnal register, glam’s questionable gender politics are probed, and folk is introduced to novel ideas of desire and politics. Mute records.indb 12 17-07-2018 17:30:49 Introduction: Mute Records 13 Arca, who released albums on Mute in 2014 and 2015, offers further explorations of these themes. Michael Waugh posits the performer as being the latest Mute artist to explore transgressive ideas of non-heteronormative genders and sexualities. He is another electronic musician who ‘celebrates the personal and the organic’. However, while other Mute acts have explored the tension of binaries, Arca moves beyond them. In his chapter, Waugh draws upon the theories of Judith Butler and demonstrates how the fluidities of gender and sex are reflected in Arca’s music. And so, while this book begins with Reed’s exploration of the tight musical framework of ‘Warm Leatherette’, it comes towards is close with an artist whose music escapes rigid musical structures. Yet this fluidity is in keeping with Mute. Arca is an artist who adopts ‘mutable performativity’. The story of Mute is one of continuity and change. Reflecting this, the final chapter in this collection brings us full circle and also moves us forward. Here Lourdes Nicole Crosby García explores the work of John Richards (aka Dirty Electronics). Richards has similarities to Miller. He is a product of the British art school system. He is an electronic musician who seeks independence from mainstream music. He is interested in the bodily nature of electronics – in his music-making he wants to get his hands ‘dirty’. Moreover, he has returned Miller to the world of analogue synthesizers, constructing the Mute Synth and Mute Synth II in conjunction with the company. However, whereas Miller’s first release was an exemplar of the punk DIY movement (he performed, sang and recorded the Normal’s songs on his own, as well as being responsible for the artwork for the single and arranging its manufacture), Richards’ philosophy is one ‘doingit-together’. He abandoned solitary home recording in favour of communitybased, participatory music. In some respects, his work has similarities with the recent output of Swans. Richards is interested in process rather than product. He takes this one stage further, though. His Dirty Electronics events are not tied to ‘product’. What they create instead are ‘temporary moments in space that are based on communal involvement and cannot be reproduced again’. Our final Mute Records collaborator does not make records at all. This brings us to one further point of genesis for our book. In 2014, Daniel Miller was awarded an honorary doctorate by Middlesex University. Subsequently he has undertaken a role as visiting professor. In this capacity he has practised a doing-it-together ethos beyond the day-to-day running of his label. He has worked with our students, inviting them to the Mute studios in Hammersmith, guiding them through the recording process of some of the label’s Mute records.indb 13 17-07-2018 17:30:49 14 Mute Records most significant releases, building a modular synth and providing workshops for how to use it, and so much more. For all of this, and for his inspirational spirit, we are extremely grateful. References Ballard, J. G. (1973), Crash, London: Jonathan Cape. ‘Classic Album Sundays with Daniel Miller founder of Mute Records’ (2017), Classic Album Sundays, 11 December. Available online: http://classicalbumsundays.com/ interview-with-daniel-miller-founder-of-mute-records/ (accessed 26 April 2018). Depeche Mode: 101 (1989), [Film] Dir. David Dawkins, Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, US: Mute Film, Pennebaker Associates. Do It Yourself: The Story of Rough Trade (2009), [TV programme] BBC4, 13 March. Gates, K. (2015), ‘Daniel Miller: “I Was Determined to Make Mute a Success”’. Available online: http://www.pias.com/blog/daniel-miller-determined-make-mute-success/ (accessed 26 April 2018). Miller, D. (2018), Communication with authors, 30 April. Osborne, R. (2012), Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record, Farnham: Ashgate. Our Hobby is Depeche Mode (2006), [Film] Dir. Jeremy Deller and Nick Abrahams, UK: Hudson Pictures. Shaughnessy, A. (2007), ‘Some Questions, Some Answers: An Interview with Daniel Miller’, Mute Audio Documents 1978–1984: Documentary Evidence, 4–12, London: Mute Records. Spence, S. (2011), Just Can’t Get Enough: The Making of Depeche Mode, London: Jawbone. Synth Britannia (2009), [TV programme] BBC4, 16 October. Young, R. (2006), Rough Trade, London: Black Dog Publishing. Mute records.indb 14 17-07-2018 17:30:49