Colossal Youth

Colossal Youth (1980) is a Cardiff post-punk record made by a band that lasted about two years. The songs are impossibly quiet — almost ambient guitar, drum machines instead of a drummer, Alison Statton’s voice sitting at the centre of arrangements that leave most of the space empty. It sounds like nothing else from 1980 and like the ancestor of a great deal of music made after it.

Kurt Cobain cited it as a top-three record. Hole covered “Credit in the Straight World” on Live Through This. The forgotten ancestor of the “minimal” tag across electronic and post-punk music: the idea that a drum machine, a guitar, and silence can be enough was not invented by techno, but Young Marble Giants got there first.