The Best NYC Record Labels Run by NYC Musicians
Not to be taken at its name, Terrible Records puts out consistently great records from the likes of Blood Orange, Regal Degal, Kindness, and — oh, yeah — Solange. Co-founded by Ethan Silverman and Grizzly Bear-member Chris Taylor, who “built Terrible Studios with his bare hands,” there’s no doubt this fledgling label wields a formidable roster of both up-and-coming and established artists. The true mystery behind their prolific output, though, is where Taylor even finds the time. Between playing with his own side project CANT, he also logs time behind the boards, producing albums for the likes of Dirty Projectors and his Grizzly Bear cohort Daniel Rossen’s Department of Eagles.
Geoff Rickly, former frontman for legendary emo band Thursday, made waves when he announced the first release for his new label Control Records. The band, called No Devotion, is comprised entirely of members of Lostprophets — a Welsh rock band that dissolved around the arrest of their lead singer Ian Watkins last year. Rickly himself is fronting the band. It’s a bold first move, perhaps, but his enthusiasm for the sound outweighs any potential naysaying. “…Once I heard them, I was like, ‘Holy shit. Why have you been hiding this side of what you’ve been doing forever?’” he told Interview magazine in July. Other releases to look forward to: a full-length album from hardcore band United Nations and a 12″ EP from Midnight Masses.
In 2008 and 2009, forward-thinking, flannel-wearing Brooklynites spent their time at the Market Hotel seeing Woods, Vivian Girls, Real Estate, Wavves and other bands in the new crop of lo-fi — in other words, those signed to Woods frontman Jeremy Earl’s homespun label. At the accidental center of the revival was Songs of Shame, Woods’ first brush with popularity and a slab of rattled, acid-drenched folk that set the precedent for the label. It was a sound progressive enough, classic enough, creepy enough, and strangely optimistic enough to represent the borough’s growing legion of DIY bands. Now operating Upstate from Earl’s home base, Woodsist has reached its tentacles across the country, continuing to champion friends’ bands (The Babies, White Fence, so many more) and eschew trends.
Before there was DIIV or Wild Nothing, there was Mike Sniper’s black-wave project Blank Dogs. (There was also the Mayfair Set, the sorely underrated band he fronted with Dum Dum Girls’ Dee Dee Penny.) He eventually shifted his musical focus to launch Captured Tracks in 2008, sharing an aesthetic with his pals at Woodsist (the labels’ rosters have always mingled, the latter releasing early Blank Dogs and Mayfair Set recordings). With Woodsist now Upstate, Captured Tracks has solidified as one of Brooklyn’s most reputable labels, signing such of-the-moment artists as Mac DeMarco and Perfect Pussy, reissuing records by influentials The Monochrome Set and more, opening a brick-and-mortar store, and functioning as the founding pillar to Sniper’s just-launched Omnian Music Group.
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