2/14/2024 0 Comments Warp records storeChakk’s material was recorded by Robert Gordon, a local producer and FON regular who had credits on mixes for Top Forty singles by Erasure, Ten City and Joyce Sims to his name, and a reputation for serious technical dexterity behind the mixing desk. The project had been successful FON’s clients included David Bowie and Yazz. It was with Chakk’s major-label advance that FON had been built as a state-of-the-art studio. FON had been a bridge between the dystopian futurism of the Sheffield of Cabaret Voltaire and Human League and the city’s next generation of bands like Hula and Chakk. “It was more about, ‘Let’s do this 12-inch and see if it can have an effect’, like we were seeing in guys like 808 State and Unique 3, It was all ore orientated to the dance floor rather than the label side of things.”īeckett and his friend Rob Mitchell were in their early twenties but already veterans of the Sheffield underground, whose focal point was FON studios and record shop. ![]() “At the time we didn’t think we were setting up a label neccessarily,” says Steve Beckett, one of Warp’s three founders. Warp Records, or Warp, as it instantly became known, had started casually in the back room of a Sheffield record shop and financed its first release with an Enterprise Allowance Grant. The most creatively successful independent label of the era had nothing in common with the perky ordinariness of Britpop. Almost none of the bands associated with it were signed to independent labels. The music often associated with independence or indie – four-piece guitar bands referencing the Sixties – had become mainstream and rebranded Britpop. With the end of Rough Trade Distribution came the end of the most sympathetic route to market for independently released music – a market that was now beginning to harden into a professional era of double-format CD singles, high-end advertising campaigns and overpriced albums. Daniel Miller was finding himself in the difficult position of firing and rehiring staff as Mute’s finances became increasingly volatile. ![]() Creation and 4AD were in the hands of a support staff as McGee and Watts-Russell, exhausted and broken, had removed themselves from the day-to-day running of their compaines. Rough Trade and Factory had both ceased trading. All rights reserved © Richard King, 2012.īy the midpoint of the 1990s the momentum of the independent sector had stalled almost to a halt. Reprinted with the kind permission of Faber and Faber Limited. The following is an extract from How Soon Is Now? The Madmen and Mavericks Who Made Independent Music 1975-2005, a new book by Richard King.
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