With the esoteric sounds of ’80s Scottish cold wave duo Vazz enjoying a well-overdue renaissance, the band’s multi-instrumentalist and producer Hugh Small reminisces about their origins, and how the Glasgow scene proved to be so instrumental to their musical direction.
The ’80s in Glasgow was a time of flux, when post-punk icons were turning into wave stars, when rockers would become goths, and when scenemakers embraced new technology, all cast through a DIY manifesto. Anna Howson and Hugh Small’s minimal, post-punk explorations as Vazz were but a drop in the era’s creative tidal wave–gone as quickly as they arrived.
Small and Howson started to make music in-between shifts at Glasgow’s Virgin music store. “Long before the suits and ties took over, [Virgin] was run like an independent store with specialist buyers in jazz and classical, and was a great outlet for all the independent releases of the day,” Small said.
Producing with whatever he could get his hands on, Small began to craft intimate electronic music that veered toward the baroque. Howson, with her angelic voice, provided the vocal touch and lyrics. Using drum machines, pianos, and guitars, the pair started to reimagine pop music, invigorating it with new boldness.
Many of their associates in the store were also in local bands, including Michael Rooney, who was the singer in New Rose Records’ The Primevals. He was a big influence and turned me on to a lot of esoteric jazz and blues,” Small said. New songs in hand, Vazz laid down their initial recordings at Glasgow’s notorious Hellfire Club studio, where cats would chase mice in-between the equipment.
I don’t think we were outcasts as such, we just never belonged to any scene in the first place…
From the get-go, Small saw Vazz to be an outsider group, hovering on the fringes of Glasgow’s ever-evolving indie scene. ““When Vazz first recorded in 1982 there was such a heady and eclectic mix of music going around,” Small said. “It was probably detrimental to wilfully attach yourself to a particular strand.”
Essential to the milieu was Postcard Records, which operated under the adage “The Sound of Young Scotland.” The label released music by artists like the likes of Josef K, Orange Juice and Aztec Camera until its demise in 1981. “We were never part of that scene, or even the post-Postcard scene, which quickly evolved around bands like Del Amitri and Lloyd Cole and The Commotions,” Small said. “I don’t think we were outcasts as such… We just never belonged to any scene in the first place so we were never cast out.”
It was Josef K’s manager, Allan Campbell, who signed Vazz’s first track “A Threat” for a compilation release on his label Rational Records. “That connection was made via a friend, Gerry McLaughlin, who sang with the band Article 58,” Small said. The cassette release, titled “Irrationale” also featured The Associates, Article 58, and Josef K. Without a doubt, Cambell and Josef K singer Paul Haig were formative in nurturing and growing Glasgow’s percolating scene.
Beginning in 1983, the duo bade goodbye to Hellfire’s mice and moved into Berkeley Street Studio, where they would record “Silver,” “Breath,” and “Violent Silence.” The tracks were picked up by Robert H. King, first on the Pleasantly Surprised cassette-only label, and then Cathexis Recordings.
“Robert H. King was an interesting character,” Small said about working with the Scottish icon. “We used to go round to his flat in Glasgow and help him put together the cassette packages he issued, which were always full of postcards. It was all a precursor to the type of packaging we used for the Vazz single ‘Breath’ in 1985.”
Vazz’s first release on Cathexis—“Breath” b/w “Violent Silence”—inevitably came with an old black-and-white Spanish postcard depicting a woman in old regions garb. It perfectly fit their wistful, almost shoegaze style. Mysticism became a common motif in Vazz’s work. Their dreamy chanting (“Mezquita”), Italian lyrics (“Violent Silence”), and almost cinematic compositions were evocative of something beyond the tangible. According to Small, Vazz was attempting to manifest a sonic world totally alien to the post-industrial epoch of the 1980s.
“I guess we were trying to escape the confines of our upbringings, which were both rooted in the industrial village of Newarthill, and the nearby Ravenscraig steelworks,” Small said. “Between the village and the steelworks lay Carfin Grotto, a Roman Catholic shrine dedicated to Our Lady Of Lourdes, and SS children, this was a little jewel amongst the grime. I think these shared memories stayed with us all the way through to Glasgow in the 1980’s, when Anna was reading a lot of Dante and visiting Rome where her sister lived.”
Vazz disbanded in 1987, when Small moved to Edinburgh and Anna to London to begin a career in civil service. Small has since left Scotland behind, making a new life for himself in the mountains of Andalucia. Although his new environment is very different, he’s still in touch with his former stomping grounds. Last year, Small collaborated with Anenon’s Brian Allen Simon for a release on Melody As Truth. He’s also working on a novella about life in ’80s Glasgow. “I’ve sketched out a diary of sorts relating to the period 1977, when I went to my first-ever gig (T.Rex at The Glasgow Apollo with The Damned supporting), up until 1987, when Anna moved to London and I moved to Edinburgh,” Small said about the project. “I dropped out of music for two decades and spent some time in the ’90s writing short fiction.”
The band’s music was rediscovered ten years ago by Forced Nostalgia’s Fre de Vos, who released Vazz’s earlier recordings on a split LP with Italian band La Bambola Del Dr Caligari. “Vazz would have disappeared without trace but for Fre,” Small said. The band’s first release in two decades created waves within the music community, with Boomkat listing it as their Album of the Week, and Andy Stott marking it as his Album of the Year in Pitchfork.
-Dan Cole
