Last Updated on 25/09/2022
The odds are always stacked against Independent record labels in the UK. They have to withstand Major label competition – today consisting of Sony Music, the Warner Music Group and the Universal Music Group – all the whilst operating on smaller budgets and with smaller distribution networks. Although it may be true that Majors often trump Independents in terms of longevity, eventually pressuring the smaller enterprises to leave the market, as the old adage goes, it’s how you use your time in the spotlight that counts …
Up next then is a Top 5 list of UK Independent record labels, each of which has been or is still being run by mavericks in the music business that have stuck it to the Majors by successfully managing to fit their square pegged roster into society’s round holes, profoundly shaping British culture and perspective itself in the process.
5. Ninja Tune.
In fifth place comes Ninja Tune! It’s hard to pin down Ninja’s sound as Matt Black and Jonathan More, who founded the label in 1990, are self-professed disciples of John Peel – the BBC DJ who made being into different styles of music cool. Ninja in turn are involved in many projects from hiphop to big beat and are also heavily associated with Floating Points’ label Brainfeeder, helping to distribute their acts such as Thundercat and Kamasi Washington. Perhaps it’s therefore best to distinguish Ninja’s roster as a collection of talented odd balls seeking to distance themselves from the Major label sausage factory. The acts who have been under their own employ, such as The Cinematic Orchestra, Amon Tobin, Roots Manuva and Zomby, are all experimental and produce a fantastic amount of distinctive and original music – traits that you will quickly realise are fundamental for indie acts to have if their parent label is to move with the times.
The reason for Ninja’s formation is particularly telling about the philosophy of the label. For one, Black and More, who in the late eighties were performing under the name Coldcut, had fallen out with Arista, a major record label which at the time owned the rights to their music. In 1988, the duo released both ‘Doctorin’ the House’ and ‘The Only Way Is Up’ with the former reaching 6th spot in the UK Singles Chart and the latter going all the way up to top spot, making the group unlikely pop stars. According to a DJ Mag interview, stumbling upon this success, Arista demanded “more of that” and utterly disrespected their music creating process. Hence the need for Ninja, a label that would allow themselves and other independent artists to embrace the ‘free-wheeling attitude’ they inspired. DJ Food’s Jazz Brakes became the first release on Ninja, instantly propelling the label to cult stardom. Offering the listener an open source of breaks and samples, it quickly became sonic food for DJs that weren’t too busy remixing Jerusalem (yes, it happens). Aren’t the people at Ninja lovely!
Ninja are still going strong today and, teaching himself how to programme in the nineties, Black for example has always seemed ready to pick from the fruits of music’s marriage with the internet. After all, the label’s front pair were streaming online sets before the CEO of Boiler Room had even entered secondary school and were well aware of MP3’s potential years before the Major labels caught on that vinyl and CD were encroaching upon the end of their shelf life.
4. WARP.
Founded in Sheffield in 1989 by Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell, WARP first came into fruition with its massive contribution to the Northern UK acid house scene. In fact, in their heyday, some of WARP’s early acts such as LFO, Sweet Exorcist and Nightmares on Wax were so filthy that I’m sure they’d tempt even Vera Lynn to slam a line of speed and cop a pair of £5 Tesco sunglasses, before luring her to some sweaty warehouse rave on the fringes of Barnsley. These artists will lull you into a tranced state before serving basslines heavy enough to make your balls shake. “What if I’m not big on that?”, I hear you ask. If you’re the type of person who uses words like ‘groovy’ and ‘blessed’ and on occasion is known after a night out to say s*** like “time is the only resource we have”, well you’re in luck, as WARP has you covered too. Intelligent dance music may sound pretty pretentious but, if you move past the arty farty stigma, you will stumble across WARP’s most recognised work. And it’s definitely worth listening to. Do yourselves a favour and tap into the catalogue of artists like Aphex Twin, B12 and Boards of Canada. Their contribution to the label adds an ambient dimension that inspires the imagination and takes the listener on a journey longer than that to the nearest toilet cubicle to cut another line. More recently, WARP realised that, despite the successive hits of their second wave of artists, if they were to stay relevant in the music scene they would need to diversify once more. Consequently, this has involved signing acts like Flying Lotus, Danny Brown, Kelela and Yves Tumor. However, don’t fret. Although WARP has branched into a kaleidoscope of genres, their A&R is so consistently good that they will all still give your head a good wobble.
Ironically enough, despite being a label that was initially created to vitalise the madness of the Northern rave scene, WARP’s dogmatic professionalism and loyalty to its artists forms a core segment of its identity. Indeed, although tracking payments and respecting artists’ contracts may seem straightforward, these behaviours are rarely upheld in the music industry. We ought to therefore show massive respect to the WARP management for ensuring that their artists need not worry about finances and have the ease of mind to focus completely on their art. This is something that Steve especially prides himself on. It is no wonder that in 2013 WARP won the AIM Independent Label of the Year. The amount of emphasis in general that the label puts on nurture is to be applauded and is testament to why, after joining WARP, most artists then tend not to leave. Nor, in a similar sense to Ninja, are WARP worried about the future. Being one of the first UK labels to have their own website and online store, they have always been ahead of the game.
3. Factory.
Manchester before Factory Records’ arrival in 1978 was in a decrepit state. It was an industrial town without any industry and a football town without any football. Crowds during the 1974-75 season were having to make do with watching United lose 3-0 away to Bolton in England’s Second Division, before later returning home at night to a rats’ rally patrolling their streets. The music scene wasn’t much better and up till then most of the Northern starlets in the industry hailed from Liverpool. For this reason, The Sex Pistols playing at the Manchester Free Trade hall in 1976 can be termed a coming of age moment for the city; Manchester’s big bang. The gig inspired a colossal number of kids who’d go on to form bands like the Buzzcocks, The Fall and The Smiths (unfortunately). In direct association with Factory, also in attendance were Tony Wilson and Peter Hook. The former would go onto launch Factory with Alan Erasmus, and the latter to form Joy Division with three other members, namely Ian Curtis. Manchester was angry, depressed, bored and unemployed and, with a stylish yet dysfunctional DIY attitude, Factory were perhaps the best at accentuating this widespread feeling with a roster of talent including Joy Division, The Durutti Column and Section 25. Come at me Moz lovers.
1980 marked a new chapter in the label’s history as, following the tragic death of Ian Curtis in 1980, salacious summers of sex, drugs and acid house were rolling in. The label’s signing of Happy Mondays, the rebranding of Joy Division into New Order, and the Haçienda opening in 1982 with cheap booze and no door policy would give Manchester a sizeable makeover.
To be honest, it’s a miracle that the good times went on for as long as they did, as Wilson’s ‘f*** it’ attitude made him one of the least profit-driven business men that the music industry had ever produced. For example, Joy Division’s contract was signed in Wilson’s own blood, with the president of the label affirming that the band would completely own their own catalogue. This became the policy for every band at the label. Moreover, it’s common knowledge that each copy of Blue Monday cost more than it made, which was crazy as it coincidentally would turn out to be the label’s biggest selling single. With Factory’s money, the bloke built a Nightclub before the label even had a record studio. This just was not how business was done in the industry. Mental, but fair play to the guy! He imagined a new vision for Manchester but threw a s*** tonne of money down the drain doing so. I can respect that.
2. XL.
Now it’s time to smack this bitch up, as in second place is XL Recordings! Founded in 1989 by Nick Halkes, Tim Palmer and Richard Russell, who individually now runs the label in association with the Beggars Group, XL is a label that is responsible for discovering and nurturing some of the most original and strong willed artists over the past few decades. Beginning by establishing themselves in the British rave scene, XL signed acts like The Prodigy and SL2 before deciding to pop their noses into different genres. Loosely building his empire on a desire to work with Liam Howlett-types, co-founder of Prodigy and an all round honest, forward-thinking and self-asserted bloke, no other record label has been able to create such a popular roster of artists without the need for radio plays and never-ending promotion that Majors rely on. Honestly, just look at some of the other artists that XL have helped develop over the years, along with Young Turks, a partnered label: Adele, Dizzee Rascal, FKA Twigs, Frank Ocean, Giggs, Gil Scott-Heron, King Krule, M.I.A., Radiohead, Tyler the Creator, The xx … . The list is honestly longer than Ozzy Osbourne’s cocaine bill. Russell doesn’t really get corny about music and the thought that it might have been better back in his day. He’s of the view that a thread of truly great music has always run through history and that it’s just his job to try and find it. What a job he’s done.
It just seems that Russell has found the perfect formula for XL. With the Beggars Group in charge of the administration side of things, such as contract negotiations and accounting, he’s been able to do things the old fashioned way. Before promotion and marketing took more of a leading role in the music industry, labels were mainly run by the producers, allowing the artists to be visible to the owners and the owner visible to them. Going back to this format, Russell has seemingly managed to mould himself into a father figure for all his acts. Avoiding the natural momentum pushing XL to release stuff as fast as possible, each of the label’s albums are carefully curated. In fact, only half a dozen or so are released annually. It’s why he’s not worried about the future of the industry. As long as XL keeps making good records, they’ll be fine.
1. Trojan.
Now, you might think that, as it started as a subsidiary label of Chris Blackwell’s Island Records, Trojan Records should not take pole position over its parent company. After all, Trojan, founded by Blackwell and Lee Gopthal in 1967, was comparatively late to arriving on the Jamaican music scene, considering that Island was established years earlier in 1962. Before Trojan, Island had already started to spread the Jamaican sound to the West, producing hits with Millie Small, the Skatalites and Jimmy Cliff, as well as licensing a plethora of other artists’ recordings for Western distribution, including Bob Marley and the Wailers’ ‘Judge Not’ in 1963. The label was also quickly establishing itself in the traditional English scene with acts such as the Spencer Davis Group and Jethro Tull.
Nonetheless, despite Trojan going bankrupt in 1975, only it fully encapsulated the true spirit of what it meant to be indie, as Blackwell would often replicate the actions of a Major record label to discern what would become a commercial hit. Betty Davis’ short stint at Island is exemplary of this. As Nasty Gal (1975), her first studio album with the label, did not sell, Island decided that capping her sex appeal would appeal to more conservative crowds. In the space of a year, the label attempted to convert Davis’ appearance from erotic night dress and stockings on Nasty Gal to sterile life on the prairie on Is It Love or Desire (1976). According to Cheryl Keyes, Davis “eschewed becoming too commercial”, seeing it instead as her goal to annihilate sexual taboos which “few African American women artists of her time could do”. Such creative differences ultimately led to Island not releasing Davis’ second album. Likewise, Blackwell has been under fire in a similar fashion for his Western cooptation of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ catalogue, arguably undermining and culturally homogenising Caribbean culture. In order to tap into rock music’s growing audience in the seventies, Blackwell openly admits to adjusting Marley’s sound to appeal more to the genre’s crowd. With post-production including distinctive synthesiser and guitar riff overdubs by London session men and a significant toning down of the bass, Linton Kwesi Johnson suggests that, like “no other Jamaican reggae recording”, Catch a Fire (1972) represents “a clear cut attempt made to incorporate the modern electronic sounds of metropolitan music”.
Blackwell would divest Trojan records from the Island brand in 1968, leaving Gopthal having to survive on his own. However, in the words of Maya Angelou, Trojan wouldn’t just survive – they’d thrive. Gopthal would go on to become the biggest distributor of Jamaican records in the UK and would also produce his own UK based acts, capturing the imagination of the British youth, both black and white. In 1968, Trojan were the foil to the Enoch Powell Rivers of Blood speech that unforgivingly would politically legitimise the racial prejudice still visible today in the UK. Conversely, the record label acted as a pertinent reminder to the British public that multiculturalism helps build national identity, rather than erode it. Once their acts – ranging from Jamaica-based artists such as Derrick Morgan, Lee Perry and Desmond Dekker, to British-based artists such as Dandy Livingston and Roy Ellis – began to play on pirate radio, they were instrumental in persuading many white British working-class kids that they had a lot more in common with the working-class Jamaican rudeboy than originally thought. The popular ‘Trojan’ skinhead buzz cut was inspired by the Jamaican skiffle haircut and, although the multicultural image of the skinhead would be later corrupted by National Front boneheads, they and the label left a lasting impression. Neville Staple and Pauline Black, for example, who would later become trailblazers of the 2 Tone label (read up on them too!), recount how watching the likes of Dekker on TV and engaging with original skinheads at school was what initially inspired them to also become musicians.
Unfortunately, in the early seventies, Trojan began digging its own grave after it experienced its first taste of mainstream success. Much to the dismay of its most ardent listeners, they would eventually begin to commercialise reggae by overdubbing string arrangements on original masters to sweeten the Jamaican beat for Top of The Pops and public radio. Nonetheless, the ska and reggae explosion had already happened, binding previously broken communities together. In this way, as the music industry evolves, let’s appreciate the artistic and cultural impact that Trojan records has had on British society. After all, with greater appreciation, what then is preventing the industry from further contributing to Trojan’s long-lasting legacy and becoming a platform for even greater harmony?
