12 MusicWeek 17.01.14 THE BIG INTERVIEW DEFECTED RECORDS THE HOUSE THAT SIMON BUILT


Defected Records is one of the UK’s most respected house music pioneers, with its founder Simon Dunmore a hugely passionate supporter of the scene. Now, just as the independent label turns 15, its preferred genre is crashing back into the mainstream - in a big way...


LABELS n BY TIM INGHAM


D


efected Records founder Simon Dunmore doesn’t have to cast his mind back too far to remember when house music was being


rather shortsightedly spurned by the mainstream. The label was created during the heady days


of 1999, when the likes of Armand Van Helden, Basement Jaxx and Cassius were ruling British music radio playlists, and packing out superclubs across the world. The pedigree of Dunmore, previously an A&R for the uber-cool AM:PM label, meant that Defected wasn’t going to be excluded from this commercial house explosion for long. Sure enough, the firm’s debut single release, Soulsearchers’ I Can’t Get Enough, hit No.5 on the UK Singles Chart. Then came the biggest smash in the company’s history, Roger Sanchez’s genre-defining Another Chance, which swept to the top of the chart in 2001. But the success or failure of Defected, which


now boasts management, live events and publishing arms in addition to its label - as well as a recently- launched merchandise division - was never predicated on having huge chart hits. Dunmore’s closeness to the house scene meant that when the genre became a more underground affair in the mid-Noughties - indie rock and urban/R&B largely taking its place at radio - so too did Defected. The business survived by doing something rather


smart: signing and promoting acts it loved for sensible money. Each in turn became an ambassador of the Defected brand, whose sterling reputation continued to grow amongst hardcore fans - especially through its regular club nights at Ministry of Sound. Then the industry’s fashion sphere turned fatefully once more - ‘EDM’ started to happen. Thanks to the likes of David Guetta and Avicii,


this omnipresent, in-your-face brand of dance music has now been welcomed into the glow-stick- enveloping bosom of the world; crucially, even in the US, where embracement of dance culture had previously remained at best ‘uncommitted’ - a hangover from the daft and dour ‘Disco Sucks’ movement of the late 1970s. Dunmore and Defected have continued to


quietly cultivate credible house music away from the pop charts throughout this ‘EDM’ wave - that is, until last year, when a new, energetic audience of mainstream dance music fans caught up with it. Look Right Through by Storm Queen (aka


American DJ Morgan Geist) became Defected’s first UK No.1 for over 12 years in November 2013. The track originated in 2010, but a remix by MK (DJ/producer Marc Kinchen) - released through Defected, in partnership with Ministry of Sound - was a smash, both in the tastemaking clubs and on the most commercial of radio outlets. EDM fans, it appears, have begun developing a hunger for dance music with a groove, as further


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