| It started, as most
of the best things in life tend to, with a gig.
In 2001 Club
Fandango crept onto the London music scene on
a Tuesday night in Camden’s Dublin
Castle and carefully unfurled its glossy new
backdrop. Four years down the line that Tuesday
is a heaving maelstrom of top sexy indierock behaviour
with Keane,
Bloc
Party, 22-20s, Death Cab For Cutie, Kaiser
Chiefs, Go!
Team and Arctic
Monkeys all filling the venue at various points.
The
backdrop is looking a bit worse for wear after
over 200 shows. But then again aren’t we
all? So what comes next? A record company, of
course.
Pointy
Records and Fierce
Panda (your hosts for Club Fandango) are launching
Label Fandango as a Singles Club in its purest
sense, purveying thrillingly limited edition releases
in black & white sleeves with the aim of breaking
even and having a bit of fun with smashing new
talent along the way. Pointy Records is the refuge
for cosmic star chasers such as The
Clientele and Flotation
Toy Warning. The fierce panda recording company
is the indie escape hatch for sonic terrorists
such as Art
Brut, Apartment,
Agent Blue and other bands beginning with ‘A’.
Together they are Label Fandango.
And together they have been gawping at the excesses
of the corporate machine. Indie Boomtime it may
be but what does that mean? £100k marketing
spends for ‘80s soundalikes, hysterical
TV advertising campaigns for half-baked debut
albums and total catastrophe if the latest over-hyped
Libertines wannabes’ second single fails
to crack the top 20, that’s what. What are
we doing, people? Is this really fun??
Label Fandango is the release process stripped
to its fundamentals, inspired by the driving DIY
dynamics of fresh-eared labels such as Transgressive,
Marquis Cha Cha and Dance To The Radio. The slogan
for our label is the eminently catchy “no
frills: all thrills”, because in the true
orange-arsed spirit of easyjet Label Fandango
is a bring-your-own-sandwiches operation with
generic sleeves, a gently unhinged disposition
and a genuine passion for helping bands reach
somewhere else. |
