Young Marble Giants

Young Marble Giants were a Cardiff post-punk musical trio formed in 1978. Their style featured minimal, but unmistakable instrumentation provided by brothers Philip and Stuart Moxham, which supported the cool, plaintive voice of Alison Statton. Stuarts songs were always insistently simple seeming, and the YMG's classic work was centered around a weird mix of Phil's steel-hawser bass, Stuart's haunting, rhythmic organ lines and punchy rhythm guitar (played on a rare John Lennon style blonde Rickenbacker), with Alison's slightly flat, plaintive vocals tentatively hanging in the space above.Very early in their existence, a fourth member of the YMGs was the cousin of Phil and Stuart, Peter Joyce, an electronics whizz, who had made his own synthesiser from a kit. This was a small touch-sensitive keyboard with an attache case-like box of circuitry, with several knobs and dials. It made sounds a lot like Eno's synths in the early Roxy Music, and Kraftwerk employed similar 'low-tech/high-tech' electronics. The YMGs used the synthesised rhythm machines available at the time (thet late 1970's) since they had no drummer. They were also interested in (by todays standards primitive) state of the art effects devices such as ring modulators and reverb units, and the emphasis was always on simplicity.While signed to UK independent record label, Rough Trade the YMGs released two EPs,Final Day and Testcard, and one acclaimed and very influential album, Colossal Youth (a reference to the Early Greek 'Kouroi' marble statues, from which the YMGs took the inspiration for their name.)The band toured and played in the US, Japan and Europe, and played in San Francisco, Vancouver, New York, Berlin. Touring companions included the band Cabaret Voltaire.Musical influences included Eno, Kraftwerk, Neil Young, Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground, Roxy Music, David Bowie, Can and others. The band were acquainted with Scritti Politti, the band of Cardiff native Green Gartside, and ended up signed to the same label, Rough Trade records. It was revealed in the 2003 book Journals that the band were, along with Scotland's The Vaselines, Kurt Cobain's favourite band. Courtney Love's band Hole covered the Young Marble Giants track "Credit In The Straight World". Stuart Moxham was a fan of Manchester guitarist Vini Reilly's early work.After the band split up in 1981, Stuart Moxham formed The Gist. Alison Statton and Phil Moxham formed Weekend (along with another of Cardiff's then most influential and creative musicians Spike, sometimes known as Wales' Greatest Living Guitarist) and several experienced jazz musicians including Larry Stabbins, the famous sax player. Phil Moxham went on to play bass for The Communards and Everything But The Girl, who were Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn's group. He features on one of their albums.It was rumoured that the band might reform in 2006 to make new recordings, but this project has not yet surfaced.