Throughout the 1980s, 4AD was both a record label and a mood. That number combined with those two letters signified music that was dark, dreamy, and decorous, its roomy reverb conjuring quiet drama of introversion. While the sound of Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, and Dead Can Dance more or less defined the label, 4AD also made room for the combustible punk of the Birthday Party, the fractured rhythms of Rema Rema, and eventually the gritty American indie of Throwing Muses and the Pixies.

Nevertheless, the imprint quickly became identified with a very specific emotional bleakness. In his exhaustive new history of the label, Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD, UK music journalist Martin Aston describes that mood as “beauty masking secrets, feelings buried, persisting in anxious dreams and suppressed fear, hope and anger; lyrics that don’t explain emotion as much as cloud the issue, penned by a carnival of beautiful freaks who didn’t want to be seen.” Aston covered many of these acts during the 80s and 1990s and spent an intense 18 months tracking down nearly every beautiful freak who passed through the doors at 4AD.

Ringleader among them was Ivo Watts-Russell, scion of faded aristocracy who co-founded the label in 1979 (its original name was Axis, after Jimi Hendrix) and steered it through the 80s and into the 90s. No businessman, he signed and funded acts regardless of their commercial viability. Some, like Cocteau Twins and the Pixies, became highly successful and proved incredibly influential. Others, such as Ultra Vivid Scene and His Name Is Alive, can be generously described as cult acts.

Just as Watts-Russell did not write them off for not selling hundreds of thousands of records, Aston similarly gives every 4AD artist their due, which means Facing the Other Way exceeds 600 pages. It’s a brick of a book, yet it proves generous in its scope and ultimately definitive in its detail. Its freaks are so colorful, so haunted, and so incredibly passive-aggressive that the repressed angst and barely-averted drama proves weirdly compelling throughout, whether Aston is recounting the rift between Watts-Russell and the Cocteau Twins or digging into the controversy surrounding M|A|R|R|S' unexpected one-off dance hit “Pump Up the Volume”.

Success at 4AD was often a fluke, yet it remains a highly influential label and the UK home to Bon Iver, Grimes, Spaceghostpurrp, and Deerhunter, among others. Still, during its heyday, the experience was harrowing for almost everyone involved, most of all Watts-Russell himself. He abdicated his position as 4AD’s guru and sold his shares in the label in 1999, then disappeared into the New Mexico desert. Years of therapy have helped him overcome depression and confront his memories of running the label, the aesthetic triumphs as well as the shattered friendships—all of which are brought to light in Facing the Other Way.

"Underneath the surface of these beautiful sleeves and this extraordinary music was all manner of dysfunctional relationships."

Pitchfork: In the book, you seem to give almost equal priority to smaller bands like In Camera and Rema Rema as you do to better-known acts like Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. 

Martin Aston: It was a joy to go back and talk to members of In Camera. It’s a small part of the story, but it is the story. The story of 4AD is not just the bands that sold lots of records. On what basis would you leave bands out? It doesn’t make sense that they shouldn’t be in the book because they were all facets of one man’s maverick obsessive vision. But then Ivo would never claim that he had anything approaching a vision or a plan. 

He loved the name 4AD because there was no aesthetic, no attitude. It was just music. He had no strategy. It was just things that he heard and responded to purely as a fan. He certainly wasn’t trying to sign bands that were part of a trend or would sell records. In fact, he often let the bands that did sell records go because it involved talking to them about what their next single was going to be or what kind of promo video they should make. He had no interest in that. He let Modern English go because he wasn’t interested in where they were going. He let Bauhaus go because they were putting out covers of T. Rex songs and he had no interest in that. It was never about the sales. It was about what Ivo liked. He just followed his nose. 

Pitchfork: On the opposite end of the spectrum from Ivo is Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins, who takes on a more antagonistic role as he descends deeper and deeper into a cocaine habit. There were so many extreme personalities associated with 4AD, yet no one is vilified in the book. 

MA: It’s like a swan. Above the water you see it effortlessly move—but underneath, the legs are paddling away. Underneath the surface of these beautiful sleeves and this extraordinary music was all manner of dysfunctional relationships and the kind of strife that goes on when artistic ambitions are tied up in that. It’s messy, but I don’t think 4AD is atypical of that messiness. You could look at other labels, like Factory. There was a family atmosphere with 4AD, because bands knew each other and played on each others’ records. [Throwing Muses'] Kristin Hersh used to call Ivo and his girlfriend—Deborah Edgely, who was 4AD’s press officer—"mom and dad." There was a paternal/maternal quality to the way they nurtured these bands. Unfortunately, children grow up and there’s tension in the house. It’s safe to say that Ivo could never have talked openly about this stuff at the time. He said he would have needed a ton of therapy, and a ton of therapy is what he had years later, due to his fragile state of mind. It seemed the best way of doing something was to react in a passive-aggressive manner and then mop it up afterwards.

Pitchfork: When somebody did take action, it was usually a very extreme action, like cutting ties with the label completely.

MA: Ivo chucked the Cocteau Twins off the label. They were his favorite band and they had just put out what was and still is his favorite 4AD record of all time, Heaven or Las Vegas. The fact that he would drop them two months later showed the extremity of things at 4AD. It was in reaction to something that Robin had said in an interview, but it came after so many years of arguments. During the whole episode over M|A|R|R|S and “Pump Up the Volume”, there were feuds and lawsuits. A.R. Kane never put out another record on 4AD, and Colourbox never wrote another single piece of music. They weren’t kicked off the label. They never left. That’s an extreme reaction all round. It just so happened that Ivo worked with a lot of people who had problems dealing with aspects of fame—the expectations and the public personae. Any band that sold lots of records never seemed to do so in a comfortable environment. The Pixies fractured pretty quickly after that second record. Belly didn’t like it after their first record. In the Breeders, Kim Deal had terrible issues over selling lots of records, then what? Then she did the Amps. 

Pitchfork: You talk a lot about 4AD’s collectability. Some fans would buy anything and everything the label released. Was that unusual at the time?

MA: What made 4AD so collectible was the record sleeves. They put such attention into the packaging and the production, and they had an in-house designer in Vaughan Oliver. I supposed you could say that 4AD and Factory were quite similar in the fact that people wanted to have everything on the label because it all seemed to follow a certain aural and visual aesthetic, though Factory had more bands that sounded like each other than 4AD ever did. Ivo had this thing about catalog numbers, and people used to want to collect all of them. Vaughan would designer calendars and poster sets, and every single one would have its own catalog number. When labels do that, it gives the items a certain cache. But you’re only as good as your last sleeve or your last record. Once the quality tailed off, which happened in the late 90s, people stopped buying every 4AD record. But for a while it was like a set of gorgeously bound books. You wanted the whole set.