This is the transcript of a coffee fuelled interview with MD and co-founder of Too Pure, Paul Cox - according to whom Too Pure grew out of chance meetings in a cluster of unsavoury pubs in North London. Read how each band joined the ranks, the highs the lows, the lurching and the pubs it all happened in and take it all with a pinch of salt. It's divided into chapters - just keep clicking on 'next chapter' to keep reading, and it's bristling with links to other relevant bits of the site....

Too Pure started in 1989 - how did it happen?
I was working at Pacific records, distributing acid house records, phoning up record shops, selling them Candy Flip, Rebel MC etc, and I met Richard there - he was label manager for Shut up and Dance records - legendary impossible to work with, but he seemed to do alright and before I joined the company I spent a year unemployed and while idle set up this indie club - The Sausage Machine. It had gone really well - turned into a weekly club - getting some good crowds down - Richard started to come down and got really into it and it became the catalyst for this idea 'Why don't we put out some of this music....

You put out 'Now That's Disgusting Music'
Half of it was bands that had played at the club and moved on - recorded records and got some success and we asked them to come back and record something for this LP - that was Silverfish, The Hearthrobs, Snuff and Megacity 4 - quite indicative of what was going on in the live scene at the time - and then we chose 4 bands that we enjoyed ....actually it's embarrassing cause one of them was the band I was in - The Unbelievers - I was always embarrassed about that, but Richard insisted we were on it on merit! That was me, Simon who now does sound for Stereolab and my mate Mike who drives a cab - the Lush cab (as a cheap publicity stunt Lush got Mike's cab all painted up with the cover design for their LP 'Spit'...lots of photo opportunities! It looked quite pretty) ....Lush did their early - probably their 1st gigs there - they never graduated to headlining the Sausage Machine actually! I would phone up Heavenly Records, where Emma worked to book their bands to play - East Village were really good; and she would answer the phone and say 'Oh can we play' so we'd let them, but at that time they were really not very good! It was a relatively meteoric rise - the 1st EP came out and 4AD got involved, so they went from shit support band to playing headline gigs in bigger venues....The first few live dates Th'Faith Healers did outside London were supporting Lush on their 1st UK tour - we'd just got involved with them - I don't even think the 1st single had come out...

So how did you meet The Faith Healers?
It was just how the gigs were happening - in North London there was us and Roger at the Falcon and we pretty much put the same bands on - we'd pass them on to each other, Silverfish, Milk, Th'Faith Healers...they wanted to play gigs. Actually I think they played at the Dublin Castle and my flatmate Andy Hoople saw them and came home and tried to describe them to me - they must have been all instrumental, because he described them as sort of mutant Shadows - twangy guitars, but also quite Sonic Youth-y - long drawn out thing...by the time we got to book them to play at The White Horse they had Roxanne on vocals; she was the barmaid at The Falcon where they were all hanging out at the time, I expect there was some drunken conversation - 'Ooh I wouldn't mind singing in a band'. Pretty soon, apart from half the people at their gigs walking out! They were just - one of the most striking bands of the time.

So - they were friends with Stereolab?
Well - it was probably about 18 months later - about 2 Faith Healers singles down the line - it was '91 and Joe Dilworth who was playing drums for Th'Faith Healers was friends with Tim Gane - probably from McCarthy days, so Tim, when he was putting the 1st line-up of Stereolab together (see left) invited Joe to play drums and they recorded a single to release themselves (on Duophonic) 'The Light That Ceases to Fail' and Joe being the cheapskate that he was gave a copy of his new single to Richard for his birthday, it was a while before they played any gigs actually - so there was just this single, which we liked - we went to see them and they were brilliant live:- Joe said they were looking for another label to release another record - did we want to meet them? So we did, and agreed to release their 2nd single...

At this point were you still running the label from your bedroom?
Yeah - we were still working at Pacific and it was going through real shit at that time - going down the pan...I was going into work and doing my own thing - do Sausage Machine or Too Pure stuff. In the end Pacific went bust and we lost a lot of money - we'd been working there unpaid for 3 or 4 months...

How did the PJ Harvey thing happen?
Well, that happened at exactly the same time as Stereolab. I got a tape from another West Country band, The Becketts. They played at the White Horse and this guy from the Becketts said 'Here's a band, they're friends of mine from Dorset...they really want to play in London, I think you'll like them...' I remember I thought the tape was really badly presented - really naff cover - a sort of out of focus black and white photo, really bad name - sort of Singer/Songwriter sounding - folky-ness. It just sat in the box for a few weeks before I even bothered playing it! But when I did play it obviously stood out because it was just not 'indie' and it was at the height of shoegazing... Everyone was shoegazing and Lurching.

It was like a rocky blues-y thing - a really weird mixture and I played it to people to get their reactions...and I wondered if it was too 'accomplished'...too good! Cause to a certain degree that turns me off...and everyone said like 'Wow - who cares! Who cares what genre it's in!'. There were 3 tracks on that demo - the first 2 were Dress and Sheela-na-gig - it's not surpising that everyone was impressed! It came at the same time as Richard getting that 1st Stereolab single and we talked about it and said 'Well, we want to do Th'Faith Healers, we want to do Stereolab, we want to do PJ Harvey...why not just throw everything behind this...and see if it works - go for broke.....I think PJ Harvey and Th'Faith Healers singles came out on the same day and Stereolab 2 weeks later, so it was a month of Big big deal for us! We had those 3 singles all in the top ten of the indie charts at the same time. Then the PJ Harvey thing just went crazy.... John Peel reviewed the single in the NME that week, made it single of the week and it all took off...

Where did you first meet Polly and the others?
Well - I missed the first time they played in London - I'd booked them to play at the Sausage Machine at the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead I booked a night that was Moonshake's 1st gig! Dave Callahan was a long time friend of Tim Gane's and he'd suggested that he got in touch with me to get a gig, so Dave sent me a tape of what was going to be the first single - the EP on Creation...I knew of his history in The Wolfhounds etc so it was a great gig to do - launching this new band....and we chose to put PJ Harvey on too. But I was away on holiday so didn't get to see them. Richard went....Tim was there - it was a whole load of Too Pure people - but nobody knew that then. Richard said PJ Harvey were great and I booked them again - for the White Horse and so we talked to them at that gig and asked them if they'd thought of putting any records out...said 'Well, we've got this label...' Polly knew of the label - unbelievably - She was a fan of Th'Faith Healers.

I didn't expect her to be so 'on the ball' musically - maybe because her music showed no signs of any indie influences - it sounded so unlike anything else. We had meetings with her and Mark Vernon, who was managing them at that time and in the second meeting, Mark Vernon threw this question at us 'I think the band are ready to record an album: Will you do it?'

We hadn't expected that! We hadn't recorded an album and couldn't afford to record an album and didn't know what to do, so just said 'Yes' - not knowing how we'd pay for it. And there and then Mark Vernon wrote down a letter of intent/contract on a piece of paper in the pub 'We agree to put out a couple of singles and an LP by the end of the year' sort of thing. We went away from that meeting panicking but knew we had to do it...

How did you? Was this when you got involved with Ivo at 4AD?
Well, yeah - at the same time as that, Dave Callahan had decided or been told that he needed some management and Tim Gane suggested me and Richard...we didn't really want to do management but we thought it would be a good thing to do; we liked Moonshake, it would be a real challenge - we thought it would be interesting to work with Creation. Sadly, within 3 weeks of deciding to do it, Dave, being Dave, decided that Creation weren't really up to the job and he wanted out of there, and without even asking us, handed in his notice there and we were without a label!

At this point Pacific had gone down, and Richard had gone to work at Polydor distribution.... I had to shop Moonshake around to get a record deal, because we couldn't afford to do them on Too Pure...it didn't really occur to us that they could release records with us - they were on Creation! Why on earth would they want to release a record on Too Pure! So I started talking to people like Dedicated and One Little Indian and 4AD.....I went down there with the Creation EP and a demo with 'Second Hand Clothes' and 'I'll Bring Tears' (an unreleased song written and sung by Margaret). Ivo really liked the stuff and he slowly pieced together that - he'd bought the Stereolab single and heard about PJ Harvey...he realised it was all coming from the same place....

There was a gig at the Borderline, with Moonshake headlining, PJ Harvey supporting ....So we got toghether with him before the gig - he said he was going away the next day and would call us when he got back in a week...But before he left, the next day, he rang and said 'Look I want to get involved in some way - I don't know how, but if you need help...let me know.' We realised this was a way that we could afford to get a PJ Harvey LP recorded, afford to have Moonshake - become a proper label! It was really hard to decide....I'd come to 4AD via the Pixies - Richard was a more long term 4AD fan:- Ivo was buying into the company, so it was a big deal....but he was coming across so well and it was a way forward. This was Christmas 1991 and sadly this was the time that Island was chasing PJ Harvey....Ivo made it possible to make an offer to her that actually matched the Island deal, over a period of time, but Mark Vernon was pretty determined to do the Island deal....Over Christmas PJ Harvey were recording the 1st album for us - at first in the Island studio in Chiswick. That wasn't working out and they abandoned those recordings. So there is an alternative version of the first album... I think we've got the tapes somewhere!

So they went and re-recorded it all down at Head's place (where they'd recorded the demo and the 2 singles)...We released it in .............1992 Later in '92 we got an office and Richard left his job just before the PJ Harvey LP came out....Just after that the Stereolab LP came out and then Th'Faith Healers LP came out....

So you were a proper label - and got some more bands! Who was next - Pram?
Yeah - Pram had been around for ages - I'd been playing their demos at Pacific and getting the tape ripped out of the player! It was the strangest thing anyone had ever heard! Everything including the kitchen sink was on there....We'd put them on at the Sausage Machine so during 1992 when they were working on Gash (1st LP by Pram - they released it themselves & sold it at gigs ) we wanted to put it out, but were busy with everything else....We'd given them some money to do some recording....I think we thought 'If we like it we'll put it out'....We'd got so busy with those 1st 3 albums that we almost forgot about Pram! And then 6 months later, we went back to them and said 'Are you still together?' - cause you know they just sit in their house in Birmingham, listening to Can and doing whatever it is they do - making their music! ...they said "Yeah!" So we gave them some money to record that 1st EP. Which was amazing - I still think it's one of the best things we've released...so we said, "Yes, brilliant - let's release it" and it went from there - we almost missed them, mis-started with them...

How did Seefeel join the roster?
Seefeel was a string of demo tapes that Mark Clifford was sending me, that got better and better (as you would hope!)...starting off sounding a little bit shoe-gazey...a bit My Bloody Valentine. In fact, very My Bloody Valentine, and it just got better and better. It got to a point where we were playing it a lot and liked it but didn't really know what it was/ what they were trying to do....Mark Clifford was very persistent, and in the end we got them into the office to meet them and see what they were like. We said to them 'We like this - we're playing it, but we don't really know what it's all about.' It was beginning to not fit in, having been too generic - shoegazing to start with, it now didn't really fit anywhere...And they persuaded us to do it.

This was during which year? 92?
We didn't release anything in 92, we'd been getting demos then...they'd played a couple of horrendous gigs at the White Horse - which was obviously not the right place for them! They were an indie band that didn't want to be an indie band... This was around that time that The Aphex Twin, Black Dog etc - all that 'ambient' techno was getting so big...Warp started up and everything...They were kind of edging towards that.. Yeah - suddenly Seefeel kind of found a home - having lost a home with sort of more traditional song based guitar music....it was becoming more cohesive for them musically...

This leads us on to Mouse on Mars ... the first electronic band on Too Pure.
Jan sent a tape (they were admirers of Seefeel's) - just some noodlings that him and Andi had done together. It was a really enjoyable and intriguing listen, and kind of 'What are they?' Because it wasn't four to the floor club music - it was so strange. The tape was so strange - for instance the Brian Wilson track - with the Brian Wilson sample on it, has got a straightforward 4/4 rock drum loop on it and kind of sounds like a Can-y /Krautrock-y thing and it sounded like a different band - I thought he'd just got a tape of a band a recorded some electronica over the top! I had to ask him 'Is that you?' - the first phone calls were hilarious - us and these 2 German guys - very tentative....We didn't really know what we were doing - whether we should do it or not, but thought - we'll go to see them - they'd told us a German label was interested, so we realised we had to decide. So we went to meet them, and they're such characters! Meeting them swung it! On the plane on the way back we were like'What the fuck was that all about!'...they're totally....mad. Really creative - full of character. It was going to be fun working with them - exciting, we just wanted to do it. That 1st tape Jan sent had a letter with it which said 'I'm sending you this because I like Stereolab and Seefeel, you may not like what we're doing, but thanks for releasing those records.' We thought Mouse on Mars was a crap name and tried to disuade them from using it, but they wouldn't change it, thankfully...they were right.

Minxus - they were part of the London music scene again...
Yeah - they played often - at the Sausage Machine and many others...they were called The Embuggered once, probably other names too. It was another one of those persistent things. Joe (Whitney) brought in tapes all the time - they were really prolific and recorded on their 4track at home....I really liked what they were doing but felt that She's imagery was a bit overtly Gothic, and that the vocals were just a little bit over embellished...a bit...almost over accomplished in a way....But I liked them and I got Richard to listen to them....It was probably about 2 years of them giving us demos and inviting us to gigs and then there was one gig at the Powerhaus that just clicked:- Bunch of new songs - Richard said 'I think they're great now' and we decided to go for it.....The Minxus thing was not a successful Too Pure thing really, but I still believe in those songs. I believe the 1st Minxus album should have been as striking as the 1st Pixies album....

They didn't stay together all that long... What are they up to now?
She (the lead singer)is doing something like the She Roccola Review - sort of obscure Ike and Tina Turner songs recorded by Joe (drums) and Gavin (guitar) on the 4 track, and She and a couple of other girls do a vocal sort of karaoke style and dance... It's sort of a cabaret act.... Joe drums for The Flaming Stars now and Gavin's still writing songs and bringing them in - he seems to have a clothing empire starting up on the Holloway Road...

The Voodoo Queens - how did they join the label?
A lot of people were kind of surprised /didn't see them as a Too Pure type of band ... It was what was happening in London at the time...Me and Richard had tried to get together with Huggy Bear who'd been playing alot, with all these other bands, including Mambo Taxi. Anjali left them (Mambo Taxi, not Huggy Bear), I think she knew exactly what she wanted to do and she wanted her own band! We had a tape from her...she was calling up just for advice and stuff, and then John Peel offered them a session after just one gig, I think - it was all moving really quickly....Richard had gone to his local venue 'Harlow Square' to see Cornershop play...he saw The Voodoo Queens support them there and was completely blown away. Anjali's a born performer - an absolute star - put her on stage or in front of a camera and she's away! They sell themselves. There were at least 2 killer singles:- 'Supermodel Superficial' was the first and was really the highpoint of their career...Darryl and Jamie at Rough Trade said it was their highest selling single of the whole year! They were on TV - competing against Boyzone for busker of the week on Naked City - Anjali's style tips featured in glossy magazines etc... We knew that it might be a short lived thing and I think they did too....When Anjali tried to develop it musically they it became a bit forced...they lost a bit of their charm. Huggy Bear and that whole scene of 5 bands a night, anything can happen (and the riot girl thing which was part of it - but not for half of the bands that got lumped in with it!) was really exciting. But didn't last....When Huggy Bear supported Bikini Kill at ULU they were so good - they were poised to become a band of Sonic Youth-like proportions, but just seemed to shy away from developing - seemed bent on being destructive...John's in the new Comet Gain line up now...

How did you find Long Fin Killie?
Luke was in Fenn - they were a good band - much more straightforward - quite sonic guitar music. Luke wrote most of their songs...We really liked them - went up to Glasgow to see them play....I irritated Luke for at least 2 years saying 'I like it, but I'm not sure...' but he persevered. Then in the end he said, 'I've left Fenn; really, this other band I've had going aswell's the real McCoy.' Initially we were really annoyed - he'd been pushing and pushing us to sign this band that he wasn't really into...but he'd wanted to develop this other thing quietly I suppose...he sent us a tape and I put them on at the White Horse - this was Long Fin Killie...they were weird, they had this amazing song The Lamberton Lamplighter - quite an extraordinary weird pop song - weird story - weird instrumentation. All along the way we could see Luke was a real star - had real prescence....intelligent and eloquent - just made sense all the time....but this went on and on - in the end we said let's release the Lamberton Lamplighter and see how it goes - then he did some more recording and we got rolling with it - at last... And I'm glad we did - they're not a massive band yet but he has such massive talent and it's been so amazing working with him. The two Long Fin Killie LPs I'm so proud of having released - I still think they're undiscoverd gems....

Meanwhile Moonshake had split and Margaret formed Laika... That was a serious mess - especially as it seemed so untimely - they'd toured with PJ Harvey in America - after Eva Luna and Big Good Angel they seemed poised to do something cataclysmically good. Eva Luna was a ground breaking album....then Margaret didn't really like Dave keeping the name etc But she's now rolling on with Laika - she's really proud of what she did with Moonshake....Dave released a record that was received quite badly....I'm still pissed off by how badly it was reacted to - it's a really ambitious, interesting LP - maybe a little hurried...but it led to a situation that made it impossible to keep working with them for financial reasons...

Jack - how did you find out about them?
Chris and Loretta from Piao told me they'd seen a band that were the best band they'd seen in a year or two...they knew they weren't the kind of band they'd be able to do on their label - just too expensive and too complex to do (Chris and Loretta started putting on gigs and putting out records during the whole Huggies/Cornershop/Riot girl time - about 10 bands for 1 pence in a toilet in Camden...They really kicked off with an all dayer in Hammersmith for under 18s to get into aswell as the usual gig going audience...it was called Piao because they couldn't charge on the door 'Pay in advance only'. Chris was a serious anorak - worked at Record and Tape and went to every single gig in London.) I took their recommnedation really seriously and I rang Anthony straight away to see if there was a demo. There was and it was 'Dress you in mourning' and 'Wintercomesummer'...So striking / ludicrous - to have a demo that starts with a seven minute ballad, with 2 minutes of instrumental before the vocal comes in! You just don't do that - you have, say, a two minute song - grab people's attention. It was obvious they were quite daring - this was a demo and they'd shoved on saxaphone and violin and piano - they'd really gone for it! And their songs were really strong. I remember going to see a ludicrous gig at the Laurel Tree where they had the full line- up - must've been 10 people - taking up half the Laurel Tree, and I heard all sorts in them that night not least a Liverpool thing - a Bunnymen/Teardrops thing - sort of lush pop songs - definately pop songs but with a dark side, a complex side. And they were amibtious - they want to reach as wide a public as possible - to be huge, on their own terms...very big ideas and big personalities so we knew we wanted to work with them -we knew it would be really exciting and challenging....

How did you set up things in America and find Seely?
The American deal came about after dealing with various different companies for our releases - The year we had those 1st high profile releases out we went to CMJ in New York and had a Too Pure night with Stereolab, Th' Faith Healers and Moonshake - massively sold out; and out of that we got a deal for Stereolab with Elektra - which was annoying really because it meant they could leave us (they release their records in England on their own label), Th'Faith Healers with Elektra too and Moonshake with Matador, PJ Harvey had already gone to Island in the States....working with different companies there - finding out how majors work there - it helped financially too of course...Seefeel got a deal there with Astralwerks...but we felt it was an interesting prospect to get the whole label a deal over there....then Richard was in LA and Robin Hurley from the 4AD office over there recommended Mark Giger from American Recordings and after a last minute meeting with him he was totally persuaded to go to them - Mark knew virtually more about the history of Too Pure than he did....So it seemed ideal. We really wanted someone out there running things so with that deal we could have Nick West there in an office in LA - we'd known him since Pacific days.....

Seely had sent demos to me here and I enjoyed them but they were a little bit too indie at first then they sent stuff to Nick...eventually they decided to record an LP themselves for a local label in Atlanta and sent a copy to Nick - he really liked it and sent a copy to us in London...we really liked it and thought it worth while to go and see them - it was a way of taking America seriously - a way of Nick getting more involved. We met them and really liked them - they were really determined and were going to develop and develop - liked them and thought it worth while to help them get to where they're going

How did Scala (3 of the members of Seefeel) come back to the label?
Mark Clifford had taken what seemed to be a bit of a stranglehold on the proceedings within Seefeel - the other 3 had been doing some song writing and didn't have an outlet for it, Touch had helped them to record some early demos - and they came to us for a publishing deal actually, but when we heard the songs we realised we liked it so much, we wanted to do it and asked them to come and record for us...Seefeel leaving Too Pure was unpleasant, even though they tried to leave on good terms, it was sad what happened to Seefeel - they were poised to really happen and it kind of went astray so it's good to be working with them again.

Was there anything you wanted to achieve with Too Pure- a mission statement sort of thing?
There was never any statement of intent - Too Pure just sort of happened organically - no real aesthetic or definate aim - just releasing stuff we liked, worked with people we thought it would be fun to work with...

I'm intrigued by the balance between business and art - it 's a shame you have to sell records to release them...it can't be 100% artistic decision making...it can be heartbreaking - a delicate balancing act...You have to recoup the money you spend in order to make more records or its all over...but labels that expand and get too big seem to loose the direction or desire to push forward new or different things that they once had....

If you grow too much and become too commerically based you can get too far away from what motivates you, from what you want to do... 4AD is a good blueprint - it has million selling records like the Breeders or whatever but it's still what they want to do - they still release things like His Name is Alive and Dead Can Dance that are unique and rather less likely to have big pop hits...