Cosmic Disco

Dissident Calls It A Day…

Posted on 29. Nov, 2009 by baggy in Articles, Mixes we didn't make

We got message of some surprising news earlier this week when Andy Blake, head honcho over at Dissident announced his decision to call it a day with his fantastic label:

Hi everyone, I hope you are all well.

As some of you may have heard on the bush telegraph, i’ve decided to
shut Dissident down.

When I started the label back in 2007 the whole point was that it wasn’t in any sense a ‘Proper’ record label, it was just a way to get music out quickly on the highest sound quality format for clubs and dj’s and play a tiny part in trying to help the independent record shops and distributors by staying faithful to the vinyl format when it seemed that virtually everyone was throwing the towel in and going digital. That’s why it was ‘Dissident.Distribution’ on the labels, not ‘Dissident.Records’.

Just under two and a half years and something north of 60 releases later, the time has come to move on.

I’m not entirely sure why but it just seems obvious that it’s time for me to stop the label and do something new. I could cite factors like having the label take over the rest of my life for the last two years and the original simple set of rules of play that felt so liberating to begin with having become something of a dogmatic straitjacket – a little bit like when the originally free-spirited revolutionaries find they have turned into an oppressive communist regime. A little bit, but not much

There are also things like the fact that lots of people constantly assumed that the records sold out in a matter of days without taking the time to check with the label, shops or distributors to confirm this before they downloaded crappy low-res mp3s of the ‘Sold-Uut’ tunes, thus somewhat defeating the object of having a vinyl only label in the first place.

I guess the main reason behind me moving on is that i’m busy running the world unknown night in Brixton every month with Joe and Duncan and being asked to dj all over the place and if i continued trying to run Dissident as well i’d quite possibly end up making a bit of a balls of everything.

So, that’s that really. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the artists who have released on the label, tom at vacant design for the graphics, all the guys at curved pressings and Rubadub and Juno and everyone else who has supported or been involved in any way with the label. It’s been an extremely fun, fulfilling and illuminating experience all round and given the chance to do it again I wouldn’t change a thing.

My original intention was to have at least a few months completely away from any record label business but there are already all sorts of ideas and rumours flying around about what it might be fun to do next so i guess i’ll just have to see what happens.

So, back to the present. There’s a 2.5 hour recording of me playing
records at the say yes halloween ball here;

http://sayyesparty.com/2009/11/14/halloween-mixes/

It was a properly good night out as you can see from the short video that thomas and nadia put together and it was great to finally make a new live recording again after nearly a year since the last live one from Road To Rimini in Newcastle.

See you soon

Cheers.

Andy

Dissident brought to our attention some amazing new (With the emphasis on new!) artists and had what can only be described as a fantastic run in just 2 years.  It’s a brave call and we’d all like to wish Andy the very best with whatever he decides to tackle next. In the meantime, get yourselves down to his new night as mentioned in his transcript, a sample of which you can taste via his recent Cosmic Disco ‘Music For A World Unknown‘ mix.

R.I.P Dissident and thank you for the music!

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Tags: andy blake, dissident records