This comprehensive new collection, coming out fourteen years after the original releases, is one more reason for us to be proud of this music. From time to time I meet Young Marble Giants fans, invariably gentle folk, who are often at pains to convey the impression this music has had on them. They are my greatest source of pride.

I was certainly conscious at the time we made it (Nov '78 to Nov '79) that the music was transcending its makings -- and its makers. It felt as though, while trying to be original, we were somehow responsible for re-assembling something that already existed in a collective unconscious -- plucking components from the ether by instinct and using our artistry to put them in the "right" order. It's as though artists are people who have a template for transmitting information between a dimension we all sense, and the understood world. When people receive that information, if it fits their template, their sense of what is good, beautiful or whatever, then they resonate pleasurably. After that, for the artist, it's all down to the nature of his/her template as to how many people resonate, and how profoundly. Let's just say, to borrow my favourite advertising slogan -- one instinctively knows when something is right. What that rightness relates to is the interesting bit.

Whatever.

We were privileged to ride a big wave ashore. Our boat was lost in the undertow, but hey - the natives are friendly!

Aloha!

Stuart Moxham, for Y.M.G. London 11/12/93.