www.musicweek.com
07.09.12 MusicWeek 11
LABELS BY TIM INGHAM
N
umber-crunching A&Rs, look away now: Simon Raymonde admits he can’t add up and that when he signs a new act to Bella
Union, he never believes he’s going to make any money anyway. Despite these typically self-deprecating
allegations, Raymonde – who re-took his maths O-Level 10 times at school – acknowledges that he’s helmed a “pretty good label” over the past 15 years. Which is a bit like saying Mo Farah is a decent little jogger, or that Prince Harry will show you a mildly enjoyable evening in the City of Sin. Since being formed in 1997 by Cocteau Twins
members Raymonde and Robin Guthrie – initially as a controllable conduit to release their own work – the consistent refinement of Bella’s output has been little short of ludicrous. He might not slavishly strive for monetary
profit, but Raymonde sure has a knack for striking audible gold. From Australian duo Dirty Three to baritone Mojo favourite John Grant, virtuoso Texan rockers Midlake to the ‘pied-piper of Brit Folk’ Fionn Regan, the exec has rarely put a foot wrong with fresh additions to his roster. Due to this remarkable constancy of quality,
the comic-shaded Bella Union logo has evolved into a badge of superior pleasure; evocative of both folk-tinged (and occasionally acid-tongued) treats and an implicative trust in the vision of unorthodox, extraordinarily talented artists. Indeed, the rare trustworthy strength of the
Bella Union brand is this month nobly recognised by a new 15th anniversary compilation album - released in tandem with Rough Trade Shops - and was last week celebrated with a dedicated stage at London’s End Of The Road Festival. Raymonde took solo control of Bella Union
shortly after the turn of the Millennium, and it would take a concrete-hearted industry competitor to not delight in his commercial triumphs since that point. They include the half- million-selling eponymous Fleet Foxes album and the increasingly popular third LP from dreamy pop duo Beach House. Yet Raymonde’s Shoreditch-based label
remains unswayed by the sweet sniff of lucrative market opportunism. To protect and enrich a reputation that elevates Bella Union’s brand above a mere alien addition to album cover art, it must continue to be driven by a heartfelt strand of distinction. Raymonde doesn’t find it difficult to look you
directly in the eye when promising that he’s never signed an act that he doesn’t love – probably the best indication as to why relative indie giants such as The Flaming Lips and The Walkmen have drifted onto Bella’s books in the past few years. It’s also not a bad insight into why Bella
Union was a comfortable victor of this year’s Music Week Award for Best Independent Label; voted for by a network of fastidious indie music retailers up and down the country. He might not have a natural brain for
mathematics, but music lovers everywhere sure as heck owe Simon Raymonde’s ears a lot.
“Winning the only Music Week Award voted for by retailers meant a lot to me. My only other job apart from this one was working in a record shop. I still love retail” SIMON RAYMONDE, BELLA UNION
How do you define the difference between Bella Union pre- and post-2001 – i.e. when you began running the company alone? Well I suppose the first four years was me struggling with the idea that I wasn’t in the Cocteau Twins anymore. I wasn’t making music, we didn’t have our beautiful studio anymore. It was: “Shit, I’m running a record label, how does one do that?” We had no idea. We were scrabbling round for some confidence. I suppose when we signed Lift To Experience [in 2000] then Robin moved away to France, the road suddenly became a bit clearer. I could see straight down it rather than just having wreckage in front of my eyes all the time.
Did you suffer some difficult years? Oh yeah. I considered packing it all in several
WHY I LOVE BELLA UNION
JOHN KENNEDY PRESENTER, XFM “I knew from the off that Bella Union was going to be an interesting label as they just signed Dirty Three, my
favourite band, and were happy to give me live recordings to play on the radio before they’d had a chance to release anything new by them! Out of step, out of time and yet completely in tune with the times, Bella Union, like any great artist, follows its muse and lets the music take it where it’s going to go. “Who else would have given us Lift To
Experience (still unreleased in their homeland), Zun Zun Egui, Peter
Broderick, Jonathan Wilson, John Grant and Midlake? And now they’re happy to get involved with new young artists like Pins or Marques Toliver. Simon is great at seeing potential in both people’s abilities and their vision. “Simon is as much a fan as he is a
businessman, as much a listener as he is a musician. He enjoys the bloggers, the writers, the promoters, the smaller festivals or the more marginal radio shows and sees that they play an important role in creating an environment and an audience for musicians to function. Artists are attracted to Bella Union because they know they’re dealing with fellow artists who are involved in the world,
fans are attracted because they know that if it’s on Bella Union it’s got to be worth a listen.”
NIGEL HOUSE CO-FOUNDER, ROUGH TRADE SHOPS “It’s a totally unique label and sets a benchmark for releasing independent music. We love them, obviously.
Everything Simon does is so good. Bella Union doesn’t exactly have a house sound, but it’s always of a certain quality. And they keep putting out better and better stuff.”
times – but each never lasted for more than five or six minutes. I had your usual crises of confidence; usually financial because running an indie label with no investment at all is a fucking struggle. That’s what we were doing for the first sort of ten or so years. That whole 2004-2007 period was really in one
OPPOSITE PAGE Union square: clockwise, from top left: where it all began with the Cocteau Twins; then other Bella Union signings Fleet Foxes; Howling Bells; The Kissaway Trail; Beach House; Explosions In The Sky; Midlake; My Latest Novel; The Low Anthem; M.Ward; The Dears; and Fionn Regan. Centre: Bella Union founder Simon Raymonde.
sense creatively excellent but in another really frustrating. I felt with Midlake, Fionn Regan and Laura Veirs, where we got to a level of 10,000 to 40,000 [sales], that an extra £10,000 or £20,000 could have made a huge difference. I thought Midlake’s The Trials Of Van Occupanther [2007, left] could have sold a million records if we got it right, but it didn’t and I know why – at that crucial moment when you get to
like 30,000 records you have to then throw some cash at it to get it up to 100,000. It won’t just happen naturally because the 30,000 people that bought it are the same people that read Mojo, Q and Uncut and go to gigs. But we didn’t have any money
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56