Category: Label Profile

Source: Bandcamp Daily. Pi Recordings’s Seth Rosner and Yulun Wang will never forget the day they called Henry Threadgill to tell him he had won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Music; he was only the third jazz artist to do so. “We were so excited, we were tripping over each other trying to tell him…

Source: Bandcamp Daily. “We never wanted to create a record company,” says Guy-Marc Hinant. “I came to Brussels in the 1980s to study cinema. I met Fred Walheer and we started doing things together: publications, collages, performances. Then we had the idea to make records to link to a wider public…” 40 years later, Hinant…

Source: Bandcamp Daily. The label Unexplained Sounds Group is dedicated to mapping the breadth and depth of experimental music from around the world. The label specializes in compilations of electroacoustic, ambient, noise, and contemporary composition from Europe, the Middle East, and beyond. Its rapidly expanding catalog offers an education in, and an introduction to, a…

Source: uDiscover. Founded in 1961 by Creed Taylor, Impulse! Records is regarded as one of the most important and iconic record labels in jazz. Its history is rich with pioneering musicians who refused to sit still, pushing musical boundaries and creating a discography that’s the equal of any other major jazz record label. One man…

Source: Ipecac Recordings. IPC-1, that’s the catalog number of the release that started it all: Fantômas’ self-titled release. Greg Werckman, former Alternative Tentacles’ Head Honcho and Mike Patton’s manager, along with Mike Patton (Faith No More, Tomahawk) were looking for a label home for two new Patton projects: a “supergroup” featuring Patton, the Melvins’ Buzz…

Source: Red Bull Music Academy Daily. In its first phase of existence, Virgin put out some of the most uncompromisingly experimental music ever to loiter on the outskirts of the rock mainstream, including records by Can, Henry Cow, Gong, Tangerine Dream, Hatfield and the North, Ashra’s Manuel Göttsching, Steve Hillage, Lol Coxhill and Slapp Happy,…

Source: Bandcamp Daily. Ten years into its existence, NoBusiness Records is widely regarded as one of the finest avant-jazz labels in the world. It’s especially renowned for its archival digs into the 1970s New York loft scene and its thoughtful curation of contemporary improvised music from around the world. Based in the Lithuanian capital of…

Source: Bandcamp Daily. There have only been four releases on Indonesia’s Hasana Editions so far, but that doesn’t mean the label is lacking ambition. “I think of it as a potential archive,” says owner Duto Hardono. “I think it could become a library of sorts, for the history of sound in the arts in Indonesia…

Source: Textura. From 2005 to 2015, textura published an annual article that celebrated ten labels whose output dazzled us during the year in question. A simple question was used as a criterion for making the selections: “Which labels’ material excited us most this year?” Though last year’s list appeared as part of the 2017 roundup,…

Source: All About Jazz. Australian drummer Michael Caratti and Spanish-born New York-based guitarist Álvaro Domene founded the record label Iluso in 2013 to release their quartet recording Gran Masa. The pair found they shared similar interests while in school at Middlesex University in London. And why not put out their own music? That way they…

Source: Bandcamp Daily. Even while in Bodø, a small town above the Arctic Circle in Norway where he lived from 2016 until this month, Lasse Marhaug maintained an important, and present, place in the global musical underground. Now living in Oslo and active since his teenage years in the late ’80s, the 43-year-old multidisciplinary artist…

Source: Bandcamp Daily. Here is another label with a large number of releases that I’ve never heard of before. Its experimentation is a little different than the directions we usually go on AMN, but quite interesting nonetheless. For the last nine years, and over the course of more than 200 releases, Copenhagen’s Posh Isolation—headed up…

Source: Bandcamp Daily. The story of the Black Editions label begins with P.S.F. Records—and thus, with Tokyo native Hideo Ikeezumi. He owned the city’s revered Modern Music shop, which opened in the late 1970s. By 1984, he released the first album on his P.S.F. Records—a vinyl edition of High Rise’s legendary live album Psychedelic Speed…

Source: Bandcamp Daily. “I do not like genres,” says Luis Alvarado, a journalist, researcher, musician, and the founder of Buh Records, a label devoted to the diverse world of Peruvian experimental music. “I like to think that I publish music that goes against the current, which is against the hegemonic, and that is very personal.…

Source: Pitchfork. They brought the world Godspeed You Black Emperor!, whose guiding principles—saying no to photos, interviews, lead singers, and singles, and yes to ominous 20-minute instrumental orchestral-noise suites contextualized by group-written manifestos—ran completely contrary to conventional buzz-building strategies. And, ever since, the label has had an allergic reaction to chasing trends. While everyone was…

Source: Bandcamp Daily. Few record labels are as difficult to categorize as Belgium’s Crammed Discs, which is exactly the way founder Marc Hollander likes it. Over the small imprint’s nearly 40 years in business, the label has amassed a catalogue consisting of cult post-punk releases by Tuxedomoon and The Honeymoon Killers, a soundtrack for TV…

We recently added a new page that aggregates our reviews of Cuneiform Records releases over the last several years.  While far from comprehensive (we’ve only reviewed 18 releases out of about 50 since 2013), it does provide a reasonable overview of some of the label’s recent high points. Take a look here when you can: https://avantmusicnews.com/career-retrospectives/cuneiform-records-an-abbreviated-overview/