| ZTT Zang Tumb Tuum | |
|---|---|
.png) ZTT Records logo | |
| Parent company | UMC (Universal Music catalogue) |
| Founded | 1983 (1983) |
| Founder | Jill Sinclair Trevor Horn Paul Morley |
| Distributor | Universal Music Operations |
| Genre | Various |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Location | London |
| Official website | ZTT.com |
ZTT Records is a British record label founded in 1983 by the record producerTrevor Horn, the businesswomanJill Sinclair and theNME music journalistPaul Morley.[1] They released music by acts includingFrankie Goes to Hollywood,Grace Jones, theArt of Noise andSeal.
In December 2017,Universal Music Group (UMG) acquired ZTT Records, along withStiff Records.[2] The ZTT and Stiff back catalogues were licensed toBMG Rights Management under Union Square Music until 2022, when Universal relaunched the label.
ZTT is aninitialism ofFilippo Tommaso Marinetti's sound poemZang Tumb Tumb, which described "zang tumb tumb" as the sound of amachine gun.[3] It is believed that they likely got the idea for the name viaJohn McGeoch, who produced the Swedish pop-funk band Zzzang Tumb's eponymous 1983 album around the same time as the label was founded.[4]
The majority of the creative team[clarification needed] at ZTT had first assembled when Horn produced the albumThe Lexicon of Love for the Britishpop bandABC. A precursor to ZTT was the short-lived Perfect Recordings label, spun off from the newly founded Perfect Songs publishing subsidiary ofTrevor Horn andJill Sinclair's company. Perfect Recordings only releasedthe Buggles'Adventures in Modern Recording, along with the singles derived from it.
In 1983, Horn, Sinclair andPaul Morley founded ZTT Records.[1][5] Sinclair was ZTT's managing director, while Morley concentrated on marketing.[3] In the same year, Sinclair and Horn acquiredBasing Street Studios fromIsland Records in exchange for distributing the ZTT label.[6]
ZTT's first signing wasFrankie Goes to Hollywood,[1] whose hits "Relax" and "Two Tribes" were among the best-selling singles of the decade.[7] "Relax" became the label's first number one single in January 1984,[7] and stayed on theUK Singles Chart for a full year. During the 1980s,Grace Jones andArt of Noise[1] were other ZTT acts to chart.[7] ZTT also helped define the structure and formats of the UK pop music scene; as part of their marketing efforts to prolong the life of a single release, ZTT issued multiple 12" remixes which charted at positions in their own right as a separate 12" single.[1] ZTT also licensed or produced T-shirts with graphic messages related to its artists' singles (eg. Frankie Say Arm the Unemployed), which themselves became 1980s icons.[1]
In 1984, the Horn-Sinclair family businesses were reorganised as SPZ Group, which then consisted ofSarm West Studios,Perfect Songs, and ZTT Records.[8] From the beginning, the majority of ZTT releases were published by Perfect Songs, and recorded at Sarm West Studios. The latter part of the decade was eclipsed by a bitter legal battle between ZTT andHolly Johnson, who fought his way out of the strict, long recording agreement.[7] Similarly, other ZTT artists, such as Art of Noise andPropaganda, were disenchanted and left the label. Propaganda's case was settled out of court; Johnson won his outright.[7]
By the late 1980s, ZTT began to focus on the emergingdance music scene.Manchester trance group808 State[1] would reach the top 10 withPacific State, and three other singles and one album during the early 1990s.[7]Seal[1] was the next major ZTT act to emerge in the 1990s, and the label also achieved hits with MC Tunes and Shades of Rhythm.[3]
ZTT Records have produced forty-fiveTop 40 hits in the United Kingdom, fifteen of which were Top 10hits.[1]
In May 2022, UMG released a new album by Propaganda vocalists Claudia Brücken and Susanne Freytag on the reactivated ZTT label. Credited to xPropaganda,The Heart Is Strange was recorded with producer Stephen Lipson, and received a generally positive reception.[9][10][11]
ZTT Records pioneeredmusic video andcover art as forms of high art in their own right. Morley commissioned videos from then-unknown directors, who would go on to become acclaimed in their field, such asAnton Corbijn andZbigniew Rybczyński. Morley also commissioned early ZTT sleeve design and photography to pioneers of the medium such asMalcolm Garrett, Corbijn,Mark Farrow andJean-Paul Goude.
The label's work in the visual field was profiled by Tony Enoch in Design Week, who positioned ZTT as "from a time when a record label meant something – a happening, a sense of belonging. Labels defined people's youth. Think Apple, Virgin, Beggar's Banquet, ZTT, and Stiff: small, independent British labels appearing to be able to do anything they wanted, reinventing the rules."[12]
In 2008, journalistIan Peel curated a first exhibition of ZTT sleeve art for galleries in London and Tokyo,[13] and in 2013, he curated the visual archives of ZTT and Sarm West Studios before the studios were demolished. In 2009, Peel compiled aDVD of the labels' most acclaimed videos, entitledThe Television Is Watching You, which received aBritish Board of Film Classification (BBFC) 15 Certificate.[14]
† as one-time UK distributor forTommy Boy Records
As part of ZTT internal cataloguing of releases, they maintained two series; the Action Series, and the Incidental Series. The Action Series was issued mainly to singles and albums by a majority of the label's artists. However, to confuse matters, the series also contains a booklet and a concert.
The Action Series paused in 1988,[16] and was restarted by record label manager Ian Peel in 2012.
| Cat. No. | Artist | Title |
|---|---|---|
| AS1 | Frankie Goes to Hollywood | "Relax" |
| AS2 | Propaganda | "Dr. Mabuse" |
| AS3 | Frankie Goes to Hollywood | "Two Tribes" / "War" |
| AS4 | Frankie Goes to Hollywood | Welcome to the Pleasuredome (album) |
| AS5 | Frankie Goes to Hollywood | "The Power of Love" |
| AS6 | Frankie Goes to Hollywood | And Suddenly There Came a Bang! (booklet) |
| AS7 | Frankie Goes to Hollywood | "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" (single) |
| AS8 | Propaganda | "Duel" |
| AS9 | Roy Orbison | "Wild Hearts" |
| AS10 | Various | The Value of Entertainment (concert) |
| AS11 | Art of Noise | Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise? |
| AS12 | Propaganda | "p:Machinery" |
| AS13 | Propaganda | A Secret Wish |
| AS14 | Various | The Shape of the Universe, Original Soundtrack |
| AS15 | Glenn Gregory &Claudia Brücken | "When Your Heart Runs Out of Time" |
| AS16 | Grace Jones | Slave to the Rhythm (A Biography) |
| AS17 | Andrew Poppy | The Beating of Wings |
| AS18 | Various | Zang Tuum Tumb Sampled |
| AS19 | Anne Pigalle | Everything Could Be So Perfect... |
| AS20 | Propaganda | Wishful Thinking |
| AS21 | Propaganda | "p:Machinery (Reactivated)" |
| AS22 | Frankie Goes to Hollywood | "Rage Hard" |
| AS23 | Frankie Goes to Hollywood | Liverpool |
| AS24 | Das Psycho Rangers | Starve God There's Choice |
| AS25 | Frankie Goes to Hollywood | "Warriors of the Wasteland" |
| AS26 | Frankie Goes to Hollywood | "Watching the Wildlife" |
| AS27 | Andrew Poppy | Alphabed (A Mystery Dance) |
| AS28 | Act | "Snobbery and Decay" |
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| National | |
| Other | |
