Various Artists - Lonely Is An Eyesore

If the artsy British indie label 4AD had a calling card, it's June 1987's Lonely Is An Eyesore, featuring many exclusive selections from their late-'80s staples. Recorded at Blackwing Studios the album was engineered and mixed by John Fryer and produced by Ivo Watts-Russell. The album title comes from the track Fish by Throwing Muses, who at that time were the newest signing to the label. On the album you get tribal mysticism from Dead Can Dance (Frontier, The Protagonist), fractured pop mysticism from Throwing Muses, dream pop mysticism from the Cocteau Twins (Crushed), gothic mysticism from This Mortal Coil and Clan of Xymox (Acid, Bitter and Sad and Muscoviet Musquito, respectively), instrumental mysticism from Dif Juz (No Motion), sound collage mysticism from Colourbox (Hot Doggie), and pop art mysticism from the Wolfgang Press (Cut the Tree). It isn't exactly a sought-after independent label sampler in the manner of Rough Trade's Wanna Buy a Bridge? (still to come), and it's not as legendary as Factory's A Factory Sampler (also still to come), but it does offer some fine examples of 4AD's excellence, especially in the cases of the Throwing Muses and Dif Juz selections. The compilation was also released in a severely limited edition (try 100, of which only 30 were commercially issued), encased in a wooden box with a VHS supplement and a number of graphic prints. Priceless.