what record label best approximates your own personal taste?

could be a current label, an older label, a label devoted to reissues, whatever

i'm asking this b/c it's hard, i think

that's super hard. and a good, fun question.

I love these for consistency and aesthetics:
Blue Note
Kompakt
Rune Grammofon
Studio 1

Overall Taste:
XL
Rough Trade
Soul Jazz Records (I'm cheating on this one since it's a reissue label but it would probably be my top pick).

College Years:
Kranky
Temporary Residence

http://www.discogs.com/label/Vital+Body+Marketing

Vital Body Marketing

light in the attic with a pinch of drag city and A&M

probly Kranky or Atlantic or Hi Records

kranky, matador, touch and go, drag city,merge, in the red..

psf
esp

Charisma
FMP
Ivo-era 4AD

Atlantic

This is a good question!

Mine would probably be Factory (probably an obvious choice but what can you do?)

probably probably

Folkways

(or very possibly Mississippi, if you factor in the music they put out and factor out how they package it)

Small Wonder

actually even better than MIssissippi: Water (Judee Sill! Holy Modal Rounders! Albert Ayler! Pearls Before Swine! Gene McDaniels! Roland Kirk! John Fahey! Betty Wright! Cluster! Allen Toussaint! Gilberto Gil! Lee Hazlewood! Ornette Coleman! Gene Clark! Thomas Mapfumo! Scott Walker!)

so yeah I'd say Folkways and Water combined

http://www.discogs.com/label/Folkways+Records

http://www.discogs.com/label/Water

Spalax

ESP
Skin Graft

+ Sublime Frequencies

when i was younger — c.2003? — my ready answer would have been Domino(USA); not sure now

Quarterstick, Drag City, Skin Graft and Hat Hut in my early 20s. Now, honestly? Bandcamp

Current label would probably be either Opal Tapes or Livity Sound

My immediate response was Stax, but upon deliberation: Imperial

Reissue label: Buffalo Bop

now: Utech, Hells Headbangers, Crucial Blast, Editions Mego, Rune Grammophon, Fedora Corpse, Youth Attack.

which isn't one label at all. so, if its one current label, probably Utech.

old label? man, there are too many. maybe Vertigo. for the allovertheplaceness of it all. yeah, i'll say Vertigo. except then i'm leaving out all the jazz and funky stuff...eh, whatever. verve, a&m, prestige, blue note, impulse, columbia, warner brothers. those are all me.

Reissue label: Triple Point Records. Only two releases, but hey.

Everything else: FMP, Stax, ESP-Disk, Motown, PSF, Immediate.

Rounder
ESP
Arhoolie & sub-labels

oh snap Vanguard too. definitely Vanguard. mike seeger, buffy sainte-marie, richard & mimi farina, patrick sky, perrey-kingsley, siegel-schwall band, bert jansch, peter walker, sandy bull, junior wells, mississippi john hurt, xenakis, country joe & the fish, the serpent power, jonathan & leigh, circus maximus, john fahey, listening, elizabeth, erik, tina & david meltzer, jeff monn, the frost, larry coryell, gary & randy scruggs. and more probably. that label is a lot of what i am. except for the joan baez part.

but also, like, mercury records. oh i better stop.

vanguard is a goooooood choice too.

never got into the frost though. or that jeff monn record.

plus, elektra including nonesuch/explorer releases. early 70's elektra is my jam.

jeff monn album is chamber-garage and there aren't many records like it in my opinion. and i like what it spawned as far as spacy ambitious singersongwriter stuff goes. even if it didn't directly influence stuff it was a harbinger.

Oh man, I own a metric ton of Rounder records too. I don't know if they *best* approximate my taste, but good call.

Saturn

I love that Jeff Monn record!!
new labels: Riverman, Companion
old ones: Stax, Century, Command, Elektra

Optimo Music.

probably merge. i have a merge records sticker on my macbook. *runs away*

Flying Nun, at least for a long while. These days it might be Cherry Red, but that means I've been remastered from jumpy vinyl. Hmm.

this is a really hard question. part of me just wants to say "columbia" because they put out so much stuff!

and they've been around for so long

but they also put out lots of garbage that i don't care about

http://www.undergroundalbums.com/lessac.jpg

Heavenly

http://www.velvetglass.com/Etcetera/artofthealbum/art%20of%20the%20album%20Albums/oddball/DSC_2281.jpg

Most of my musical taste has been shaped by SST. Even in genres that Ginn didn't touch.

for me it would have to be on-u sound, $tateside and Trojan

could quite easily forsake the whole archive apart from that stuff and be happy for a very long time.

sadly, mitch miller was employed by Columbia for far too long. but once he got out of the way, things really started cooking rock-wise. still one of the greatest labels of all time though.

Relapse

Rhino. Stax. Casablanca.

Drag City

DFA and Drag City

Crucial Blast, Editions Mego, Rune Grammophon,

aww man, 3 more worthy contenders!

Recommended Records 50 Poll

Arista

K-tel

Alphabet Business Concern motherfuckers

(Believer's Roast for currently active bands)

noodle vague hits the spot.

Columbia. Except I wish they had engineered orchestral recordings more like Decca did. Almost want to say Decca just for their analogue orchestral sessions. But... Columbia.

Honorable mention to SST.

blackest rainbow

Once upon a time this would have been Homestead for me. Then Blast First, then I guess Xpressway or Siltbreeze. My taste in music kind of exploded after that though and went all over the place, some I'm fucked if I know what it would be now. Type or something? RVNG? Blackest Rainbow is an awesome answer though, props to Lamp.

some

in trying to come up with an answer, realized i just have bad taste

i could have just cheated and said Universal Music Group since they own (or own the catalogs of): A&M, Island, Def Jam, Motown, Capitol, Virgin, Blue Note, Casablanca, Tuff Gong, 4th & Broadway, Imperial, Priority, Charisma, Angel, Verve, Impulse!, Decca, ECM, Deutsche Grammophon, Emarcy, Polydor, EMI, Mercury, Vertigo, London, ABC, Blue Thumb, Fontana, MCA, and Uni.

which makes up a very large percentage of my world. but corporate behemoth isn't the same as record label.

i think u maybe missed the point lol

one label is too hard.

for me.

i contain multitudes.

like, i can totally see Recommended = Milton Parker.

Tzadik (RJC imprint)

@ scott : good call.

was thinking re that side of things, but decided to use labels in the pure sense as opposed to the corp model.
i.e. when a label had an identity, a sonic direction, and a recognisable logo (surely one of the key components of a good label !)
i mean yes, i chose $tateside for one of mine, and that could mean either the original 60s, or the reissue version.
with both variants being a major funded sub-label.
whereas in actual fact, i meant both.
the reissue version has been responsible for making so many lost tracks available again to non-diggers like me, meaning that anything with that logo on i have snapped up, whether that meant reissues of the 60s material that bore the logo, or, the re-licensed material eg. tk disco.

Since Factory was already taken, Hooj Choons

yeah, i mean 80's scott was all about 4AD and cherry red and factory and homestead and sst and all the rap and dance labels and...see i can't pick just one. and then i thought of United Artists circa 1970 to 1972 because they put out so many of my fave records like hawkwind, damnation of adam blessing, can, groundhogs, amon duul II...but really that's just one wonderful slice of stuff. Elektra is pretty close to who i am. same with vanguard. i should have just stuck with Vertigo. i'm just bored really and don't feel like cleaning records...

Yeah i could conceivably put Elektra 3rd after Columbia and SST.

idk, saydisc? but not really.

idk, saydisc? but not really.

ha.
i know the daughter of the bloke who runs/owns that label.
despite the social connection, i have never felt any desire to actually purchase one of his releases.
yet apparently he makes £££ out of it ..
go figure.

then there is Sire. actually maybe Mercury. cuz i love 50's Mercury with all the great classical and jazz and pop vocal stuff and then you get like thin lizzy and the bizarros. definitely one of my fave labels. so many great 70's rock records. i mean, the blues magoos and the platters and tom t. hall what more do you need? and i'm not really cheating by including philips and vertigo with that since philips bought mercury in the early 60's. (and i get Smash in the deal. and Philips owned fontana so let's include that too.) so, there you have it: mercury/smash/wing/philips/vertigo/polydor. that's me in a nutshell.

i mean i could live on nothing but those labels for my whole life.

Man, Philips...

Early 90s Slumberland

Also Flying Nun

But both of those only covers the fuzzy pop chunk (a really large chunk) of my favorites.

philips owned dg too...

xxxxxp
haha, i was looking to vote for something on grounds of ideology/weltanschauung and it was the first thing that came to mind. there were various saydisc records floating around the house when i grew up, the bob roberts sea shanties one is in my possession, but i don't really think my taste consists of bach's oboe music or whatever. the field recordings &c. are cool though. i guess i wld include saydisc in my personal real england

fair enough.

i am just amazed that someone out there is aware of saydisc ..

( nowhere near as amazed as to the knowledge as to the good living that the label owner has established out of the label ! i mean has the label ever had a 'big seller' of a release !!? )

argo might be my real england. and topic.

philips owned dg too...

― scott seward, Thursday, October 17, 2013 4:54 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well not til later though. Philips were the classical newcomer. But yeah if only one monolithic mergified IP owner is allowed it has to be UMG even though I hate their guts. Decca, DG, Philips, Motown, ECM, Scott Walker, Steely Dan, The Fall, argh fuck youuuuu UMG

Impulse, A&M...

philips owned dg in the 60's? or it was a part of phonogram anyway. maybe that was early 70's.

also saydisc put out kathryn tickell's on kielder side which in my mind at least was a minor hit & 100% classic

Oh hm look at that, joint venture Philips/DG formed in '62, and then became Polygram in '72

And yet such different house styles! Especially in solo piano recordings where Philips engineering>>>>>>DG

Seagrams
Golden wine cooler
Seagrams
Golden wine cooler

sry

also saydisc put out kathryn tickell's on kielder side which in my mind at least was a minor hit & 100% classic

have asked is the release that has made the ££ for the cotswold pad ...

4AD

fuck it, can i add 'jet records' to my list.

i can ?

why thanks.

Blackbean and Placenta

shimmy disc. vogue disques.

as the man says when ivo was around

Blackbean and Placenta

― alpine static, Thursday, October 17, 2013 10:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^ winner

Rough Trade

Rough Trade, Factory, DFA

Bad Boy

yen
mego (especially if recollection grm counts)

when i was 13 it was Load, since then Kompakt

Aged 16-22 I would have had a definite answer to this and it would have changed every month (shout out to Too Pure, Kranky, Skin Graft, Touch & Go, Gringo, Sonig, Worm Interface, Load, bla bla...).

Now? Err... as an aspirational answer - I don't own that much stuff on either and am definitely not as cool as either, but if I could reinvent myself totally including my age, looks and having a time machine to buy all the out-of-print stuff, it'd be something to aim for - NNA and Spectrum Spools are pretty rad.

me = some unholy combination of:

Light In The Attic
+ Trunk Records
+ Factory (up to about 1984)
+ Tricatel (late 90s/early 2000s)
+ Ghost Box
+ the RCA Victor Stereo Action! series from the early 60s
+ A&M (1960s)
+ Duophonic Super 45s
+ the KPM Library label
+ the late lamented 8-bit Collective website

does Dr Demento still have a label?

great dr. demento label:

http://bp1.blogger.com/_wnl6t0CBeKs/R4zCp-U4-eI/AAAAAAAAALg/uuVsdUKfkzE/s320/Vol+05+1b.JPG

rca vintage series speaks to me

http://www.wirz.de/music/rca/grafik/lpv5324.jpg

One can't possibly come close, but ...
http://images.junostatic.com/full/CS1738123-02A-BIG.jpg

LTM Recordings has reissued a bunch of stuff originally released by Factory Records, Factory Benelux, Les Disques du Crépuscule, Compact Organisation and Sarah Records so saying LTM is cheating maybe?
Possibly Él?

I'd never read this before, from the él wikipedia page:

él combined the technicolor exoticism of Powell and Pressburger with the escapist fantasy of The Avengers. The stylised visual aesthetic of The Prisoner with the dry-witted late seventies British television comedies The Good Life and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Richard Briers and Leonard Rossiter were, to Mike Alway, what Malcolm McLaren was to Alan McGee.

Also there is 'West Midlands', Lawrence's imprint on cherry red that has only has four releases, the three Go-Kart Mozart albums and the reissue of Back In Denim. I think I'll go with that.

Jive/Zomba/RCA
Island
Domino
Slip-N-Slide

as of right now, its probably gotta be Profound Lore, Drag City and Thrill Jockey, considering how many of their current releases for the past few years I've bought

LTM's a great call, Bends! I'll rep for that one, too.

Okkadisk + Impulse! + Incus + Hathut + Tzadik

peas kor

What does Thrill Jockey release these days?

For the deep house part of my brain, Strictly Rhythm from 1990 to 94 (especially early in that period).

Pulling back from my earlier Atlantic suggestion, now I'm thinking I.R.S. or Enigma.

Strut

those RCA vintage LPs don't sound so hot, though, scott

Virgin Records in the late '70s and early '80s, and Mute.

EG leaves out a lot, but it also encompasses a lot... Surprised no one's mentioned it yet.

touch / mego / raster-noton

Marina

"Virgin Records in the late '70s and early '80s"
meaning Phil Collins and Scritti Politti?

Lame answers I know, but probably Atlantic or Columbia through the 1970s.

What does Thrill Jockey release these days?

Lots of stuff, but it's mainly the psych-ier stuff I'm into. White Hills, Wooden Shjips, Kandodo (Simon Price from The Heads), Mountains, Dustin Wong's solo stuff, and Eternal Tapestry and its offshoots.