ZTT Records was a label that was particularly active during the 1980s, having been founded in 1983.
Their first signing was Frankie goes to Hollywood.
It was founded by Trevor Horn, Jill Sinclair and Paul Morley.
ZTT is an initialism of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's sound poem Zang Tumb Tumb, which described "zang tumb tumb" as the sound of a machine gun.
One of their best releases was Propaganda's 'A Secret Wish'.
I used to have a Citroen with a sun roof and on a sunny day I played this loud as I drove around Yorkshire and Derbyshire.
Another classic which got played in the 1980s was Grace Jones' 'Slave to the Rhythm' which has wonderful instrumentation and groove... there are also endless remixes of their tracks, which was a particular feature of ZTT's work.
This is the 12" edition and the production on this track is incredible...
Kate Bush's 'Hounds of Love' was perhaps THE album of this year. This was on cassette tape at the time, which was potentially an issue as you needed to rewind and wind the tape to get to a particular track when playing it in the car, although it was such a good album that there was no need really. This got a lot of plays in my friend Caroline's car which I spent a lot of time in that summer. This was the year I graduated from Huddersfield Polytechnic with a 2:1 in geography - close to a first but noone got a first in that particular year. I went to Huddersfield City Hall to collect my degree certificate.
The album included some classic Kate Bush tracks. The song 'Cloudbusting' was particularly interesting as it had a video with Donald Sutherland in it.
It was based on the experiments of Wilhelm Reich.
The track which most people remember from that album though is one that was popularised by the TV series 'Stranger Things'.
Another female musician released an album this year which was produced by ZTT.
'Slave to the Rhythm' starts with Grace explaining her family heritage. The final track on the album draws the themes together.
It was produced by Trevor Horn - who has worked with many bands and musicians including Frankie goes to Hollywood and Mike Oldfield, and was involved with the ZTT record label I have blogged about separately.
Rush released 'Power Windows'. This was an album I came back to year after year and is probably in my top ten most played. I have written a separate blog post about the album. This used to accompany me up and down the A17 when I first started teaching in Norfolk, but came back home to Yorkshire for most weekends.
A final album from this year was Propaganda's 'A Secret Wish. This was another ZTT album and the production was excellent. I've blogged about this album separately as well, and also the label.
Here's the track 'P-Machinery'.
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Mike Oldfield also released a track called 'Pictures in the Dark'. This was not from a particular album.
