Sarm Studios brochure from Music Week

The October 22nd ’83 issue of Music Week carried an 8 page supplement inside featuring Sarm Studios complete with telltale design courtesy of XL and wordplay straight from the pen of Paul Morley.
Essentially a big advert for the newly renovated and decorated Sarm East & West and the services it provided, it also set out ZTT‘s label colours and hinted at what was to come. Note the list of studio engineers (no Steve Lipson yet) and the ‘Radiant Obstacle…’ ad on the back page – the missing 2 pages were standard trade ads from outside audio equipment manufacturers.

David Smart: (looking at Sarm West Brochure)
“That was what Sarm (studios) used to look like. That was how the dots of ZTT came about because the walls of Sarm had this kind of spray on paint, so there was a kind of corporate thing running through everything in a strange way.“
 Presumably that was Tom with his interior decorating?
“Well he really got that connection because I think he started working on ZTT studios (Sarm) and then he joined partners with Royston (Edwards) and then they had only been going about a year when I joined them. But the whole ZTT thing hadn’t started until I joined them, I think I’d been there a couple of months and then Paul (Morley) suddenly walked through the door and said he had a record cover to do. And I thought, ‘how exciting, I’ve never done one of those before’.“

artist: Sarm / ZTT  title: Spots Before The Ears  format: 8pg booklet, 26x36cm  design: XL  photography: unknown  cat. no: n/a  date: 22/10/83  art of notes: ‘new sugar’ refers to another ZTT launch advert around the same time with the title, ‘You cannot suck the same piece of sugar forever’