A new compilation by Ivo Watts-Russell, innovator of 4AD Records… very different from Robin’s compilation ‘Concentrated’… we had a lot of fun working together on 4AD and I appreciate their different view of what they saw in my music.
p.s. Ivo’s wish when he sent it to me was to ‘just listen’… no list of songs given…
mystery cd
Songs from Tierra Sabrosa is a self-released CDr compilation issued by Lisa Germano in May 2006, featuring a track selection assembled by Ivo Watts-Russell—the British record executive who co-founded 4AD and served as the label’s guiding force from 1980 until he sold his share in 1999. Spanning sixteen tracks drawn from Germano’s recordings between 1991 and 2002, the compilation represents Watts-Russell’s personal retrospective of her 4AD-era output, compiled years after both had moved on from the label. Germano made it available through her website and at live shows during 2006–2007; it has since become one of the rarest and most sought-after items in her discography.
Background
When Ivo Watts-Russell sent Germano his compiled selection, he asked her simply to listen—and to share it without a track list. As Germano wrote in the note printed on the cover: “Ivo’s wish when he sent it to me was to ‘just listen’… no list of songs given… mystery cd.” The instruction captures something essential about Watts-Russell’s curatorial philosophy: the sequence and the sonic whole mattered as much as the individual parts.
Watts-Russell co-founded 4AD in 1980 alongside Peter Kent, building it into one of the most distinctive independent labels of the 1980s and 1990s—home to Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Pixies, Throwing Muses, and his own rotating collective This Mortal Coil. He had signed Germano to the label in 1994, overseen the 4AD reissue of Happiness, and remained her label head through Slide in 1998. His relationship with her music was not purely administrative, as the Inconsiderate Bitch EP was mixed by Watts-Russell and John Fryer—placing him in an active production role on her recordings.
Watts-Russell sold his stake in 4AD to the Beggars Group’s Martin Mills in 1999, subsequently relocating to New Mexico, where he settled in Lamy, a small community outside Santa Fe. Tierra Sabrosa is the name of the road where he lived. By the time Germano released this compilation in 2006, Watts-Russell had largely withdrawn from the music industry, turning his attention to photography and a quieter life. His compilation of her work, named after his New Mexico address, was in that sense both a gesture of retrospection and a private kind of tribute: the label founder, now retired and living in the high desert, looking back at music he had helped bring into the world.
Four years earlier, Germano had self-released Concentrated through her website—a different retrospective, assembled by Robin Hurley, the former head of 4AD. The two compilations offer contrasting perspectives on the same body of work, and Germano was open about this: “very different from Robin’s compilation ‘Concentrated’… I appreciate their different view of what they saw in my music.” Where Hurley’s selection leaned toward Germano’s best-known and most commercially familiar recordings, Watts-Russell’s choice was characteristically oblique, beginning with the rarely heard “On the Way Down from the Moon Palace” and concluding with the Small Heads single B-side “Messages from Sophia (Instrumental).”
Songs from Tierra Sabrosa was released within the same period as In the Maybe World, Germano’s seventh album, and was available at her live shows during the 2006–2007 touring cycle, which she undertook with Austin-based guitarist Craig Ross.
Themes
The compilation’s most conspicuous editorial choice is what it omits: despite covering Germano’s full 4AD-era career, there are no selections from Happiness in its standard album form. The only track from that period is “Sycophant,” in the version recorded for the Inconsiderate Bitch EP, the remix produced by John Fryer and mixed by Watts-Russell himself in 1994. This is a quietly telling selection. Happiness as Capitol Records released it in 1993 existed in a different form from the 4AD reissue the following year; Watts-Russell’s implicit preference for the EP version over the album version reflects his own role in shaping that particular recording.
The tracklist is otherwise weighted heavily toward the 4AD studio albums that Watts-Russell oversaw most closely: Geek the Girl (1994), Excerpts from a Love Circus (1996), Slide (1998), and Lullaby for Liquid Pig. The inclusion of the Small Heads single B-side “Messages from Sophia (Instrumental)” as the closing track— an instrumental not on any studio album at the time—gestures toward the kind of marginal, overlooked detail that characterized Watts-Russell’s curatorial sensibility throughout his career: the choice nobody else would make.
The title itself—Tierra Sabrosa, Spanish for “tasty land” or “delicious earth”—gives the compilation a geographic grounding, situating it not in Germano’s career history but in Watts-Russell’s life in New Mexico. It is, in a subtle way, a compilation about listening from a distance, from somewhere else: the music of a particular artistic relationship, reassembled from retirement.
Released: May 2002
Label: Self-released
Catalogue No: n/a
Format: CDr
Country: US
Availability: Extremely Rare
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | On the Way Down From the Moon Palace | 4:00 |
| 2 | …To Dream | 1:55 |
| 3 | We Suck | 4:01 |
| 4 | Sycophant (Inconsiderate Bitch Version) | 5:28 |
| 5 | Geek the Girl | 3:40 |
| 6 | Guillotine | 3:52 |
| 7 | …A Psychopath | 3:57 |
| 8 | The Other One | 3:44 |
| 9 | Nobody’s Playing | 4:39 |
| 10 | Calling | 1:01 |
| 11 | Lullaby for Liquid Pig | 3:08 |
| 12 | Baby on the Plane | 3:35 |
| 13 | Cry Wolf | 4:59 |
| 14 | Pearls | 3:24 |
| 15 | Reptile | 3:35 |
| 16 | Messages From Sophia (Instrumental) | 3:56 |
The tracks on Songs from Tierra Sabrosa were not newly recorded for this release. They are drawn from Germano’s existing studio albums and single, spanning over a decade of recordings across multiple producers and studios:
Tracks 1 and 10 originate from On the Way Down from the Moon Palace (1991), Germano’s self-produced debut on her own Major Bill label.
Tracks 3 and 12 originate from Excerpts from a Love Circus (1996), co-produced by Lisa Germano and Paul Mahern, recorded at Echo Park, Bloomington, Indiana and Toad Hall, Pasadena, California.
Track 4 originates from Inconsiderate Bitch (1994), an EP of alternate mixes produced by John Fryer and mixed by Ivo Watts-Russell and John Fryer.
Tracks 5, 7, and 13 originate from Geek the Girl (1994), produced by Malcolm Burn.
Tracks 6 and 15 originate from Slide (1998), produced by Tchad Blake.
Tracks 2, 9, and 14 originate from Lullaby for Liquid Pig (2003).
Track 16 originates from the Small Heads UK single (1996), a B-side from the Excerpts from a Love Circus sessions, co-produced by Paul Mahern and recorded at Echo Park, Bloomington.
No new recording, remixing, or remastering appears to have been undertaken for this release.
Packaging & Design
The packaging of Songs from Tierra Sabrosa is notably more elaborate than that of either of the 2002 self-releases. According to Discogs documentation of the release, the CDr comes housed in a gatefold plastic case. On the left-hand side sits a piece of brown fabric alongside a white hype card, signed by Germano. On the right is an inner sleeve in the form of a gold envelope. The handwritten cover text — visible on the cover image — reproduces Germano’s description of the compilation in her own hand, in the same style as the 2002 releases.
Like Rare, Unusual or Just Bad Songs and Concentrated, the release carries no catalogue number, no label name, and no conventional commercial presentation. Each copy was assembled by hand and sold through Germano’s website or distributed at shows, making the physicality of each unit a direct artifact of her involvement.
Personnel
Compiled by Ivo Watts-Russell
Track origins by album:
Tracks 1, 10 from On the Way Down from the Moon Palace (1991)
Tracks 2, 9, 14 from Lullaby for Liquid Pig (2003)
Tracks 3, 12 from Excerpts from a Love Circus (1996)
Track 4 from Inconsiderate Bitch (1994 EP; Sycophant version)
Tracks 5, 7, 13 from Geek the Girl (1994)
Tracks 6, 15 from Slide (1998)
Track 16 from Small Heads single (1996)
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