ZTT Records: Британдық тарихы мен жетістіктері

British record label

ZTT Records is a British record label founded in 1983 by the record producer Trevor Horn, the businesswoman Jill Sinclair and the NME journalist Paul Morley. They released music by acts including Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Grace Jones, the Art of Noise and Seal. In December 2017, Universal Music Group (UMG) acquired ZTT Records, along with Stiff Records. The ZTT and Stiff back catalogues were licensed to BMG Rights Management under Union Square Music until 2022, when Universal relaunched the label.

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. The majority of the creative team at ZTT had first assembled when Horn produced the album The Lexicon of Love for the British pop band ABC. A precursor to ZTT was the short lived Perfect Recordings label, spun off from the newly founded Perfect Songs publishing subsidiary of Trevor Horn and Jill Sinclair's company. Perfect Recordings only released the Buggles' Adventures in Modern Recording, along with the singles derived from it. In 1983, Horn, Sinclair and Morley founded ZTT Records. Sinclair was ZTT's managing director, while Paul Morley concentrated on marketing. In the same year, Sinclair and Horn acquired Basing Street Studios from Island Records in exchange for distributing the ZTT label. ZTT's first signing was Frankie Goes to Hollywood (FGTH), which themselves became 1980s icons. From the beginning, the majority of ZTT releases were published by Perfect Songs, and recorded at Sarm West Studios. The latter part of the decade was eclipsed by a bitter legal battle between ZTT and Holly Johnson, who fought his way out of the strict, long recording agreement. Similarly, other ZTT artists, such as Art of Noise and Propaganda, were disenchanted and left the label. Propaganda's case was settled out of court; Johnson won his outright.

ZTT Records pioneered music video and cover art as forms of high art in their own right. Paul Morley commissioned videos from then unknown directors, who would go on to become acclaimed in their field, such as Anton Corbijn, Godley & Creme, Zbigniew Rybczyński and Andy Morahan. Morley also commissioned early ZTT sleeve design and photography to pioneers of the medium such as Malcolm Garrett, Anton Corbijn, Mark Farrow and Jean Paul Goude. The label's work in the visual field was profiled by Tony Enoch in Design Week, who positioned ZTT as "from a time when a record label meant something – a happening, a sense of belonging. Labels defined people's youth. Think Apple, Virgin, Beggar's Banquet, ZTT, and Stiff: small, independent British labels appearing to be able to do anything they wanted, reinventing the rules." In 2008, journalist Ian Peel curated a first exhibition of ZTT sleeve art for galleries in London and Tokyo, and in 2013, he curated the visual archives of ZTT and Sarm West Studios before the studios were demolished. In 2009, Peel compiled a DVD of the labels' most acclaimed videos, entitled 'The Television is Watching You', which received a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) 15 Certificate.

As part of ZTT internal cataloguing of releases, they maintained two series; the Action Series, and the Incidental Series. The Action Series was issued mainly to singles and albums by a majority of the labels artists. However to confuse matters, the series also contains a booklet and a concert. The Action series paused in 1988, and was restarted by record label manager Ian Peel in 2012. Cat. No. ArtistSongAS1Frankie Goes to HollywoodRelaxAS2PropagandaDr. MabuseAS3Frankie Goes to HollywoodTwo Tribes/WarAS4Frankie Goes to HollywoodWelcome to the Pleasuredome (album)AS5Frankie Goes to HollywoodThe Power of LoveAS6Frankie Goes to HollywoodAnd Suddenly There Came A Bang! (booklet)AS7Frankie Goes to HollywoodWelcome to the Pleasuredome (single)AS8PropagandaDuelAS9Roy OrbisonWild HeartsAS10VariousThe Value Of Entertainment (concert)AS11Art of NoiseWho's Afraid of the Art of Noise?AS12Propagandap:MachineryAS13PropagandaA Secret WishAS14VariousThe Shape of the Universe, Original Soundtrack AS15Glenn Gregory & Claudia BruckenWhen Your Heart Runs Out of TimeAS16Grace JonesSlave to the Rhythm (A Biography)AS17Andrew PoppyThe Beating of WingsAS18VariousZang Tuum Tumb SampledAS19Anne PigalleEverything Could Be So Perfect AS20PropagandaWishful ThinkingAS21Propagandap:Machinery (Reactivated)AS22Frankie Goes to HollywoodRage HardAS23Frankie Goes to HollywoodLiverpoolAS24Das Psycho RangersStarve God There's ChoiceAS25Frankie Goes to HollywoodWarriors of the WastelandAS26Frankie Goes to HollywoodWatching the WildlifeAS27Andrew PoppyAlphabed (A Mystery Dance)AS28ACTSnobbery and Decay