Richard David James was born on 18 August 1971 in Limerick and raised in Cornwall. The birthday gets marked every year. The more useful anniversary is the second half of that sentence, because the label he ended up co-founding was not built out of a taste. It was built out of a postcode. A supply […]
Most independent labels are built around a taste. Man’s Ruin was built around a squeegee. Frank Kozik was already the most recognisable rock poster artist in America when he started the label in 1994. He had gone from black and white flyers stapled to telephone poles in Austin to large format silkscreens for Nirvana, Soundgarden [
Most bands form to play. The Desperate Bicycles formed in March 1977 for the specific purpose of recording and releasing a single on their own label, and they were not being coy about it. They owned an amplifier and a bass guitar. The Dalston studio supplied everything else. Three hours later they had two songs, […]
