<< Click here or on the photo to listen to the Stuart Moxham part (48 minutes) of the Davey Hammond radioshow

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Stuart & Drew completed recordings for a new album in Valencia in May 2024.

You can read Stuart's report here

<< Click here to (pre)order

FROM THE STUART MOXHAM ARCHIVES!

A trawl through Stuart Moxham’s boxes of unreleased recordings has taken us many years but has now resulted in FABSTRACT, an album which covers his entire career, from early explorations as Young Marble Giants through to the present day & all entirely unreleased.

<< Click here to go to the special webpage with this radioshow.

Feb.3, 2024
1'58"

Stuart
Moxham
-solo-

Stuart Moxham
&
Louis Philippe
...................
TREE

The G!st The Gist was formed by Stuart Moxham from the Young Marble Giants and the first single came out just before the Young Marble Giants decided to split up,in December of 1980. Embrace the Herd, the group's lone LP, was released in May 1981. Reviewed favorably but not quite as glowingly as Young Marble Giants, the record shared a similar knack for dynamic but understated arrangements. A couple singles followed afterward, with the band dissolving by 1984 or so. For the Gist, Moxham recorded with a number of friends rather than a fixed set of bandmates. Former YMG members Alison Statton and Phil Moxham helped out, as well as various people from fellow Rough Trade artists Essential Logic and Swell Maps.

Indie Legend Stuart Moxham is Seeing New Life as The Gist
By Aaron Carnes .Sept. 18, 2017

The last thing Stuart Moxham remembers was stopping off at a gas station for fuel and some chocolate. His next memory is waking up in a hospital bed in Kettering Hospital, in Northamptonshire, four days later. “Both bones in my left lower leg [were] broken, with the bone sticking out and covered with earth and grass,” Moxham says. “Fractured ribs and a punctured lung; a fractured shoulder blade and four pints of blood lost. While I was there, I was evicted from my squat—it wasn’t my week.”

He’d been riding his motorcycle to his friend Wendy Smith’s flat in Nottingham, U.K. Once he woke up, nurses told him he was found by a police patrol car, roughly 30 minutes up the road from the gas station at which he fueled up.

The guitarist, who’s primarily known for his 1970s minimalist Cardiff-based post-punk trio, Young Marble Giants, was already in a weird place before the accident. It was June 1981, seven months after Moxham’s group disbanded, and he was nervously planning his next move. During the final studio session for Young Marble Giants, Moxham recorded a few songs for this new solo project, The Gist, and released a single, called “This is Love / Yanks.”

His label, Rough Trade, had agreed to release a Gist album, but he hadn’t started it yet. The accident changed that. Moxham settled in to Smith’s flat while she was in the U.S., and as he recovered, he started compiling the music.

“I wasn’t a happy chappy,” Moxham says. “I had this terrible accident. I was in the middle of nowhere. I was doing drugs. I was lonely. The only thing I could do was try to make this music. It kept me going, kept me sane. I couldn’t do much because I was on crutches and had a bloody great plaster all the way up my leg. I met people that whole year, who’d never known me without crutches.”

After its release, Rough Trade went through a major transition as a label. They dropped many of its more adventurous, slower-selling acts—like The Gist—and moved much of their resources to promote the Smiths, a band they’d recently signed.

But Moxham continued to record. Now 35 years later, upstart record label Tiny Global Productions is releasing what could have been the Gist’s second album, Holding Pattern.Were the Gist not dropped by Rough Trade, it likely would have come out in 1984. Embrace the Herd ended up being the last thing Moxham released until his record under his real name, Signal Path, in 1992.

It’s hard to say what Holding Pattern would have looked like exactly if it were released in 1984. Label head John Henderson combed through roughly 75 tracks (including multiple versions of the same songs) from the period of 1980-1984 in order to make Holding Pattern. It’s surprisingly different, and more cohesive than the one Gist album Moxham did get released.

“This is an album that could have been the follow-up to Young Marble Giants,” Henderson says. “I think and Stuart thinks this is a much stronger record.”

< Stuart Moxham with The Gist in the Rock Garden, London,1983 (Photo: Jos van Vliet)

Henderson and Moxham have known each other since the ‘90s, and the process of releasing Holding Pattern began a few years ago. Moxham—suddenly aware that he was sitting on a mountain of unreleased music—one day decided to see if his old friend Henderson wanted to help him release it. It just so happened that Henderson was looking to launch a new label.

“I said, ‘How much do you have?’” Henderson recalls. “He said, ‘Really good songs? Maybe 30 or 40.’ It turns out it was closer to 250 songs. It became a bit of a joke. Because for eight months, once a week I would get a dozen songs. Now I think we’re up to 600-700.”.

Click here to listen to Stuart Moxham on Radio Cardiff (Oct 10, 2017) talking about the Gist (33 minutes)

The stuff Moxham was sending over spanned his pre-Young Marble Giants years all the way through to his present-day recordings. Initially, Henderson wanted to go through everything first and then decide what to release, but as Moxham’s archives piled up, the two decided it would be best to start compiling albums that seemed intended for release and go from there.

“There’s probably 30 albums worth of material that’s releasable. Of course, that would be absurd,” Henderson says. “If you released two albums a year, it would take you 15 years, and that’s if Stuart doesn’t do anything new. He’s always writing and recording. Quite a lot of it will probably never come out.”

This lost Gist album was the perfect starting point; for Moxham and Henderson, it represents the true beginning of Moxham’s solo career as a singer/songwriter. Despite being recorded so close to the first Gist record, it’s fundamentally different. Embrace The Herd is a scattered collection of mostly instrumental ideas that jump all over the place with almost no pattern or sense to it. The newly-solo Moxham wanted to rebel from the constraints of his previous outfit, and decided to go in a completely opposite direction.

“I was in a totally transitional phase. Young Marble Giants, we hit on a formula. I didn’t have a focus with Embrace the Herd,” Moxham says. “Looking back at it, I don’t know how I had the brass neck to take it down to Rough Trade and say this is what I’ve done.”

Album sales for The Gist’s album were modest, but like Young Marble Giants’ Colossal Youth record, it’s gained a cult audience over the years, partially because it’s so weird and different from Colossal Youth. Herd’s legacy is single “Love At First Sight,” which was covered by French singer Étienne Daho in 1986 (called “Paris Le Flore”) and became a Top 40 hit. “I always ask French friends about it, and no matter their age, they all know it,” Henderson says.

Much of the Holding Pattern tracks were recorded after Moxham moved back to Cardiff in 1982, after recording Embrace The Herd in Nottingham. Moving back felt especially grim: He’d just been dropped by Rough Trade, and to top it off, he was living in the town he worked his whole life to get out of.

“Two years later, here I am back in Cardiff, getting pissed on by the constant rain,” Moxham says. No money to speak of. A failure. It was the prodigal son returning, eating humble pie.” He moved in with his brother Andrew, who occasionally played drums on Gist’s studio tracks and in the band’s live setup.

GO TO ALBUM As Moxham pondered the Embrace The Herd release, he ultimately made a decision to no longer “demo” songs, but to create “album-ready” recordings no matter what, even if he didn’t have an album for the songs to go on.

This was the third single form the Gist in 1983 (and it's also a part of "Holding Pattern" CD)

The Gist in the Rock Garden, London,1983 (Photo: Jos van Vliet)

“Because I started this process of recording things definitively, it really helped me cause I had a focus again,” Moxham says. “I’m a songwriter. So I write songs. I record them because you have to do that. You have to get your voice and guitar down. Then you hear the bassline in your head, and bongos, whatever. So I carried on doing that. I didn’t ever think about.”

The songs on Holding Pattern are a true reflection of Moxham’s solo songwriting. Embrace the Herd felt to him like recording experiments. Holding Pattern was Moxham learning how to write, record, and sing completed songs with a focus.

In 1985 The Gist made a cassette "Square one" and one of the songs was "I Wish". This song did not appear on 1 of the 3 The Gist albums, but did eventually appear on the 1996 solo album "Fine Tuning".

< Stuart played 11 may 1990 "I Wish" live in a local TV program "Berghjournaal" in Noordwijk (the Netherlands)for people with an intellectual disability. It is one of the few videos of Stuart Moxham solo in the nineties.

The next Moxham release will be The Devil Laughs (Scroll down to read more about this record), a collaboration Moxham did with Louis Philippe five or six years ago. Other future releases include Plan A (For America), an unreleased early-‘90s album recorded in Chicago, and a box set of odds and ends from Young Marble Giants to Moxham’s present-day solo material.

Among other things, Henderson hopes people learn just what a true auteur Moxham is. He’s famous for such a small amount of music, and many people don’t realize that he’s been such a prolific artist. In addition to all this music, Moxham is working on a book about the Gist called Hybrid Vigour, which Henderson will also release. He’s writing a memoir about his musical life called Boy, Walking Backwards. (There’s a shortened version of Hybrid Vigour included with the Bandcamp mail order version of Holding Pattern.) It only scratches the surface of the incredible story behind Moxham’s Gist project.

“My philosophy [was], if you do something good, it’ll create traction—someone will want to put it out,” Moxham says. “It was naive. It worked with the Young Marble Giants. But I really thought that was how it worked. In the real world, things move on.”

—Aaron Carnes.

The Gist - Interior Windows (2019 release)

Tiny Global Productions are issuing Interior Windows, billed as the “third and final compilation of tracks by The Gist”. It’s as cute and occasionally as odd a grab-bag of tunes and styles as you could hope for.

Opener “Yanks” has the fragile bedroom introspection you’d expect. It has a sweet, ramshackle charm. So far, so expected; but second track, “Stones and Sunlight #2”, is a much weirder prospect. Its highlife guitar, echoey, girlie vocals and background chanting come across as the haunted offspring of Strip-Mine-era James and the weird echolalia of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich’s “Zabadak”, with a little J-pop too. Like I said: weird.

“This is Love” runs along the rails of a busily chorus-pedalled, characteristically 80s’ bass and choppy chords, with a smokey, lounge bar vocal; “Green Grass” is an instrumental sketch, in which a tiny Casio bossa holds up a strummed 12-string essay; “Public Girls”’ echoey guitar sounds like El curveballs Death By Chocolate. In fact Mike Alway would’ve been the perfect mentor for Moxham. Then “How To Be” is a sad, four-track, doowop plea. It’s quite a journey.

Interior Window is a proper lo-fi grab bag. By turns it’s synthpop, indiepop, cutey-pop, experimental; hell, at points, Interior Window even tacks its sails for Shuggie Otis. If it was some bright, bearded young thing from out on the Ginger Line, Stuart Moxham would likely be hailed as a new pop prankster.

Stuart Moxham & the Original Artists Signal Path (1992)

Stuart Moxham, the main man behind cult favorites Young Marble Giants and the Gist, returned after a decade of silence with Signal Path, a collection of recordings made with a full band during the intervening years. Listeners might expect a masterpiece given the amount of time between projects, but Signal Path is merely good, and much more conventional than Moxham's previous efforts. Hewing to a generic folk-rock sound for the most part, but occasionally recalling the Gist's singles, Signal Path is pleasant but unspectacular. Highlights include "Knives Always Fall" (a duet with his former YMG confederate Alison Statton) and the jaunty "No One Road."

Stuart Moxham Random Rules (1993)

Stuart Moxham here is not the stark miniaturist that he was in the late '70s and early '80s. He's now an alternative rock singer/songwriter, singing homey, folky, diversely arranged songs with a full band. It's okay, but wouldn't excite much comment if not for his more illustrious past.

Stuart Moxham & the Original Artists Cars in the Grass(1995)

Cars in the Grass appeared during the veritable onslaught of Stuart Moxham material that surfaced during his brief mid-'90s revival. From the recording notes it appears that this album, like Signal Path, was recorded piecemeal over a period of time, but Cars in the Grass achieves a more consistent sound. The album might be the best of the full-band albums released under Moxham's name, although the jangly, introverted guitar rock style he adopts here is too bland to be fully satisfying. The melodic "My Criteria" is a highlight, while the ersatz Afro-pop "Night by Night" and vaguely countrified "The Appropriate Response" add some variety. Two of the 11 songs are instrumentals, including the closing track, "Drifting West," which rewards Young Marble Giants fans with a cheap drum machine rhythm.

Stuart Moxham Fine Tuning (1996)

A career-spanning batch of acoustic recordings originally intended as publishing demos, Fine Tuning is an intimate yet offhand look at the work of one of modern music's more enduring underground figures. Touching base with both Moxham's early work with Young Marble Giants as well as later material written for his band the Original Artists, Fine Tuning works well as both a career overview and as an introduction for those yet to discover this gifted artist.

Stuart Moxham Personal Best (2010)

'Personal best' covers every corner of stuart moxham's post-young marble giants output over the last thirty years. truly a mixed bag, it features unheard outings from the g!st of the early 80's, through his solo albums of the 90's, including the mysteriously unreleased american sessions for 'plan a', to previews of the latest stuff.

The Huddle House
released: April 3, 2007

Stuart Moxham: vocals, guitars, bass, percussion
Louis Philippe: vocals, guitars, bass
Andrew Moxham: percussion

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Ken Brake at Regal Lane Studio, Primrose Hill, London
Produced by Ken Brake, Stuart Moxham and Louis Philippe

What do you do when you’re too old to be a Young Marble Giant? You form a new band, The Gist, go solo and now, finally, record with Louis Philippe, The Devil Laughs. The genesis of this album dates back over six years, with the fruits of this collaboration with soccer writer and broadcaster Philippe only now seeing the light of day. The question one should have upon hearing this music is, what took so long to get it released?

With an upstroke on guitar, the latest chapter begins, gentle acoustics mix with an electric as Tidy Away unfurls a tale of depression. “So many ways of filling up the days and closing doors,” speaks volumes, yet the music is as warm and gentle as a summer breeze. A sliding bass line and acoustic piano lead into Day Must Come, where the narrator makes it clear, “Girl I want to thank you now/ As strange as it seems/ Because by saying no/ You keep alive my dreams.“ Later in the track, they sing “fun” as if it were a Brian Wilson symphonic serenade. Bass and drums form a heavy beat for Love Hangover, lightened slightly by the acoustic guitar and keyboards. Yet this is a tale about endings and the bones one still has left to pick. And despite it all, the vocals soar as the song makes its way to the finish line.

Ken Brake and Louis Philippe making "The Devil Laughs"

Stuart Moxham & Louis Philippe

A brash blast of keys leads off Untitled #2, a brisk and brusque insinuation of a song. Played in bursts, Come To Me Nancy begins with a gentle keyboard and bass, yet the song takes on a slightly darker tone as it continues growing louder after having sung, “I never thought that/That this could be/ More broken hearted/ Down on my knee.”

Lightening considerably, Head In A Song unspools a tale of past love, “You were the sight of a million ideas/ I was confronting my fears/ Looking for light in a tunnel so tight/ Trying to see through the tears,” over a bed of guitar, bass and the synthesized flute. The harmonies that open Singing Out are played out against a single guitar, suggesting a kind of universality to some of life’s moments, “Is there music for where you are/ On the soundtrack to life so far?/ In a desert away from home/ Or a train when you’re on your own/ Something magic something true/ singing out not just for you.”

Through The Devil Laughs, Stuart Moxham and Louis Philippe have created a mini-masterpiece. While it has lingered unreleased for the past six years, rejoice in the fact that music of this magnitude is finally being released to a world that has never needed it more.

Stuart and Derek have been friends for many years. They met when Derek was recommended to Stuart as an excellent local guitar fettler and builder. He is also, perhaps not surprisingly, a very accomplished and soulful player and writer on the instrument. They began writing in 2014 (when Derek asked Stuart if he'd like to try writing lyrics for some instrumentals he'd composed) and now sport a clutch of very different songs which are all unmistakably "M & H".

This debut album, from Stuart and Derek is chock full of treasures which defy genre description. Some border on folk, others on murder ballad; all have a Pop sensibility. They are minimalist in arrangement; short, melodic and as varied in form and content as you would expect from the man who gave you "Credit In The Straight World" and "Love At First Sight".

Stuart: Vocals; 2nd guitar; percussion; harmonica; bass
Derek: Guitar; vocals
Ken Brake: Recording/Mastering; treated harmonium on 3; portrait photo Johnny Bull: iPad doodle
Produced by: White Cravat

Tree

This 2012 project was built around Stuart's songs and the vocals of his daughter Melody Moxham...

"The Coctails" - When I come Around (1996)
He also produced the 1994 album "Peel".

Ana da Silva
and
Stuart Moxham
From the solo album The Lighthouse (2005) by Ana da Silva of The Raincoats.

The Lighthouse was written and recorded by da Silva alone in her flat using a Yamaha QY70 sequencer and a Roland 8-track digital recorder, except "Modinha", which was recorded with Stuart Moxham at his house, originally for a tribute album to Antônio Carlos Jobim.

Click here for a fascinating interview about his personal life in 2017 and a review of the tribute CD.

(In three languages!)

Click here for a nice interview with Stuart Moxham for "Tone Glow" (December 2020)

In July 2021 Stuart found the time to talk with Deviation Street about his musical past, present and future.(click here)

(Click here for more interviews)

<< An audio interview with Stuart Moxham.

Nov.25, 2023
1'07"

Click on the image for the link