R.I.P. Steve Young of Colourbox and M/A/R/R/S’ “Pump Up The Volume”
Steve Young—who, with his brother Martyn, founded both the early electronica band Colourbox and influential dance music flag-bearers M/A/R/R/S, both of which turned sampling as important a pop instrument as any guitar—has died of an undisclosed causes. The label 4AD, where Colourbox was an outlier during its short five-year run, made the announcement on its social media, calling Young a “true pioneer.” The cause of death was undisclosed, and it’s not certain how old Young was.
Colourbox launched in 1982 and almost immediately proved confounding. Its first single, “Breakdown”—recorded with vocalist Debian Curry, then re-recorded in ’83 with Lorita Grahame—mixed soul and electro-funk. A subsequent, self-titled mini-album released later that year (popularly known as Horses Fucking, for its cover image of horses fucking) brought in deeper hints of dub and reggae amid the new wave dance-pop, a direction the group would further explore with a cover of Jamaican artist U-Roy’s “Say You.” But more importantly, it featured the group’s first genuine experiments with sampling and scratching, which it would explore to greater effect on its sole full-length, similarly self-titled, released in 1985.
A thrilling, stylistic car crash of a record, Colourbox careens from the beautifully somber piano piece of the opening “Sleepwalker” headlong into tracks like “Just Give ‘Em Whiskey” —a propulsive, dance-rock number that frenetically piles up snatches of dialogue from Westworld, 2001, and The Prisoner—and “Edit The Dragon,” which splices and dices Bruce Lee action scenes and punchy synth hits into a dizzyingly panned head-trip. A club-banger cover of The Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hanging On” and the straightforward soul of “The Moon Is Blue” helped make Colourbox commercially successful, but it was the sample-heavy tracks that would prove most influential—and point toward the direction that the Youngs would head next.