Trevor Horn’s ZTT Records Celebrates Its 30th
For a period of time in the early 80s, ZTT (short for Zang Tumm Tumb) bit off a chunk of the UK charts with releases from Art of Noise, Propaganda and (especially) Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The Quietus has this interview with founder Trevor Horn.
Pop music needs institutions, that much is clear. Creative spontaneity and an anarchist ethic will only get you so far – sooner or later, if you want music to have longevity and work as social intervention, you need to create an institutional framework, an organisational structure that will provide a setting for genuine artistic freedom and intellectual development to flourish.
Right now, in our atomised, post-everything pop scene, the lack of a collective countercultural architecture is blindingly apparent. So it is timely that the catalogue of Zang Tuum Tumb Records (ZTT) – a pop institution if ever there was one – is being repackaged and re-released this month in the form of a series of well-designed, copiously sleeve-noted editions to mark the label’s 30th anniversary.
Continue reading. Then Frankie Says watch this.
