23 Envelope Documentary [4AD, 1985]

❤❤❤

What the hell has happened to 4ad ?, they used to be the epitome of alternative

I still find it amazing that these completely awkward young people were almost randomly put together and then somehow it produced some of the most brilliant art and music of the 80's.

Best hour and 15mins on TV I have seen long time👍…especially the 🐠

It would have been awesome tho have seen the Pixies here.

🖤🖤🖤

4AD TE AMO ❤👏👏

was the cocteau twins video they are wanting to make at 32:00 ever made?

It worked! Those early This Mortal Coil covers & all of the CT album covers, well.... can you even imagine them otherwise? The mysteries within the mystery. Filigree & Shadow was a wonderwork for me. I might have bought it just for the cover at the time!!

Baked beans....ok.

Glorious. Esoteric goldmines like this is why I love the internet

Love that Colin Newman cover that plays during the credits. What a gem!

RIP Vaughan Oliver. What a talent.

Thanks for this hard to find documentary

why didn't they get spaceghostpurrp in this

Cocteau Twins ARE GOD

RIP Vaughan.

WHY HAD I NEVER HEARD THESE CT SONGS AT THEN END?!?! WOWWWWWWwwwwwwwwwww

Was Vaughan Oliver 20??

All this time, I never even knew what Ivo looked like!

Anyone know the location for the Cocteau's Garlands cover shot?

This was captured from a VHS tape I compiled, and attempted to sell locally (in Seattle) as a bootleg. Exotique Imports sold about 20 of them around 1990-1ish. How this ended up on youtube is a mystery to me, but here's the story: I'd bought a tape of the documentary from someone else through the mail and thought I'd be able to make a few bucks on the side- plus have the fun of compiling an entire product; packaging and all. I hacked together my own sleeve design from a scrapped 1990 v23 calendar and some typography generated on an original Macintosh laser printer; I've since become a professional graphic designer. I took it upon myself to sweeten the deal by adding content to the video as well. The 16 Days/Gathering Dust video was from a high school video competition, for which I won first-prize. Can you believe it? Ugh. After that, I pan the camera over my nascent 4AD collection (Posters, CDs, LPs, and other oddities). Then follows a bizarre "introductory video", another High School project- describing myself through abstract video... mostly myself and a friend being artsy with the camera. That's my little dog Bucko, my awful Ford Pinto with red racing stripe, my Bauhaus picture LP on the Dual turntable which I still own.

I'm not the biggest Cocteau Twins fan, but I reckon as long as they were around and on 4AD, the label and its music were great. When they split up after being for a short time on Fontana, Ivo left the label, all the great 90s band like Lush, the Pixies etc. were history. All was left was memorabilia. These days, 4AD looks like just the shadow of its former self and isn't even a Brit label anymore. I'll leave it to that. My interest is gone.

Wow- never knew they did a doc on them- thank you for posting! 4ad was a whole world to fall in love with and lose yrslf in.

WTF at 17:55 lol

thanks for the Post! 4AD and the Cocteau Twins Album COvers were worth the $$ alone..Love it!

@Niamh Cullinane Cocteau Twins The Spangle Maker

What's the song at the very beginning? It's great

Had never actually seen the entire documentary only short clips here & there.... Thanks so much for posting it its entirety! Love 4ad & this seems to be from '85, the peak period

Thank you so much for posting this.

I didn´t know anything about this documentary. 23 Envelope formed part of 4ad Story, cover art designs of groups like Xmal Deutschland or Cocteau Twins, people will remember it forever.

Ok heres the bomb. I just found this.  Can't believe I've never seen this before.  Never heard Liz laugh so much at one time either.  I am so grateful for this being on here. Thanks for posting this genius documentary.  

I have some of Vaughan Oliver's posters on the walls of my room. He is such an inspiration to me.

I'm loving the random stuff at the end almost as much as the doc. Bauhaus & puppies? Why not.

i've just put "Facing The Other Way: The Story of 4AD" down" and now i discover this ... pure bliss! (oh by the way get the book!)

OMG thanks for sharing this, I am a Huge 4AD fan.

I really enjoyed it... would be great if it were on Vimeo for sound quality. Thanks for posting none the less.

Read the 4AD book Facing The Other Way to really understand how Robin felt about 23 Envelope!

That last section after the credits, with the 16 Days/Gathering Dust music - I'm assuming whoever uploaded this added that, there's no way thats original, right? Regardless, they did a great job of the genre. Fabulous doco, I'm 42 and have been a 4AD fan for almost 30 years and somehow never seen this before. Great stuff.

4ad and factory were great labels.

muito lindo

There were and is no other sleeves like theirs. As pure and close to the emotions as the music from the bands they used to work with. Some kind of naturalism.

someone have this in perfect quality? or just 4AD have the original master of this?

Amazing piece of history. Just discovered they had a video for Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust, almost 30 years after...

Even though 4AD has moved away from its original Ivo-era influence, I still love the label. However, seeing this immediately brings up memories that make me fee like I'm 17 again. It'd be nice if 4AD could throw us old fogies a bone and put this doc,along with all the old videos from the 80s & 90s, onto DVD someday. Until then(probably never) good thing we have YouTube to tide us over.

Amen.

LOL ... "visual imagery is pretentious" ... Yeah!! Stupid sight! *Cuts eyeballs out*.... damn vision.

I ever loved 4AD since its creation. Ivo and his team are still in my mind...
23 Envelope still remain the most representative photographic home of the entire history of dark music.