The UK’s finest DIY labels, picked by Gnod’s Paddy Shine
Tricky thing to do, write about music – whether it’s bands, labels, influences, there’s just so much good stuff it hurts my brain to dwell on it.
The DIY scene seems to be in very good health. My band, Gnod, and our labels, Tesla Tapes and OnoTesla, would not exist if it wasn’t. I think the scene has been flourishing since the 80s because, as we all know, “for every action there must be an equal but opposite reaction” – and one thing’s for sure, there is an awful lot of bullshit out there for us to react against. From being a 90s teenager, I guess DIY first came to me in the form of mixtape culture, which is fully ingrained into my psyche – I still have some muddy as hell Crass/Conflict/Subhumans mixtapes from when I was 14, hastily recorded from my mate’s uncle’s record collection. That’s 20 years I’ve had those tapes for now, and they sound like shit but I can still make out and remember all the lyrics to the tunes: “Big A, little A, bouncing B / The system might have got you but it won’t get me”, etc.
When I was asked to write about my favourite labels from the UK I was slightly worried about laying out my myopic take on something as vast a “DIY scene”. I initially had a list as long as my arm, but decided to whittle it down to labels that I like, that are on the fringes…
Read the rest of this piece here: FACT magazine
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