LABEL INTERROGATION:
BIG SCARY MONSTERS RECORDS
The SiS Interview by Dany Sloan

The record label is the real distributor of albums. Not iTunes, not some link you found on a message board, but an actual organization that was founded by a person or group of people who have a passion for music and wish to spread it upon the masses. We here at Stranded in Stereo love music and labels so much that we've started a new column entitled Label Interrogation where we sit down for a chat with the people behind the logos on the back of those CDs and LPs.

For our first interrogation, our own Dany Slown chatted with Kevin Douch of Big Scary Monsters, an up and coming label out of England.

SIS: Hi Kevin, for our readers who do not know, what is your record label and when/where did it start?

KD: I run Big Scary Monsters Records, it's a little independent label based in the corner of my flat in Oxford, England. I started it some eight years ago whilst I was still at school and it has since grown to completely take over my life. We have a back catalogue of over 60 releases from a fairly broad range of artists including This Town Needs Guns, Anathallo, Meet Me In St Louis, Pulled Apart By Horses, Copy Haho and loads more. Boring fact: I found out this afternoon, thanks to look through some old website designs, that seven years ago to this day I was planning a compilation CD release entitled When All That's Left Are Fake Smiles And Broken Dreams. I'd like to think we're not quite so overwhelmingly emo these days.

SIS: Some of our pragmatic readers right now are surely wondering why you would start a label when it surely will make you lose lots of money. Tell us why you started Big Scary Monsters?

KD: When I first started the label the subject of money wasn't an issue, getting girls and the glamour of the music industry, of course, were. The first ambition of the label was simply to help my friend get his band’s music out to the world. I was too young and naive to realize that the industry wasn't actually very glamorous and that girls only likes guys in bands, but by the time I realized this it was too late and I was addicted. The aims these days are simply to keep working with amazing bands from all over the world, to have a great time and to never return to a 'real' job!

SIS: What releases do you have on your plate for 2009?

KD: Too many. In the first half of the year alone we have albums from Wintermute, Blakfish and Shoes And Socks Off (who will actually have at least three, possibly four new albums out this year! I know, greedy, right?), as well as EP releases from Copy Haho, Pulled Apart By Horses, Shapes and perhaps one more. We're also releasing a series of four compilation CDs through the course of 2009, each one limited to just 365 date-stamped copies and featuring new, rare, unreleased, live, demo and remixed recordings from our bands. I'm looking at my release schedule right now and my eyes start to water before I even get as far as July, so who knows how much more we'll have to come after that!

SIS: It's safe to say that BSM is artist friendly, but we all know that the music industry is a business. How do you balance the needs of your artists with your real life business needs?

KD: It's very much a trust game. If I don't trust the band, I don't work with them, and if they don't trust me, I wouldn't want them to work with me. Also, I think that This Town Needs Guns (being based just around the corner from me here in Oxford) are the only band I've worked with who I was friends with before starting up a label-artist relationship, and we've been together for three or four years now. I've always tried to encourage our acts to tour and hang out together as much as possible and despite it being a slightly tired analogy, the family theme still fits. Right down to the point where you squabble over pointless issues and spend Christmas getting drunk together.

SIS: Do you have any employees? What are your roles within the label?

KD: I don't have any employees, it's just little old me. Thankfully, however, the bands we work with are capable, creative and driven, so between us we manage to cover most bases. I also have a couple of good friends who get involved with PR and booking agent roles, so I'm mostly left with the label management, distribution, mail orders, online promotion, website maintenance and 'thinking' roles. One of the things I'm hoping to do over the next year or two is build a really strong collective of friends and like-minded individuals, not just in the UK but across Europe and the US, so we can all help one another out and join forces to raise the profile of our combined pool of artists. There are some amazing people out there working with some incredible musicians, some of whom deserve a lot more recognition than they currently receive.

SIS: You have seemed to embrace the web and social networking in a very positive way. What has this brought to the label that you think would be very difficult to achieve otherwise?

KD: I'm lucky in that I began the label after the internet explosion, so I never really learnt the true difficulties in trying to promote artists outside of your reach, let alone finding them in the first place. From day one I believed that letting people hear the music was the best advert, so have always been forthcoming with downloads and streams through the various sources, as and when they've become available. Of course, the benefits of the internet are often also the drawbacks. The fact that people can so easily discover your band is wonderful, yet the fact that they can probably also download the whole back catalogue within a few minutes isn't quite so cool. That said, as long as someone out there is enjoying the music and hopefully telling their friends, coming to the shows and maybe even buying a full copy of the record when they get a chance, I'm more than happy. I'm really excited to see what the next web developments will be. Right now I've very pro-Twitter. I've always made the label very transparent and I'm keen for everyone to know that it's just a guy at a computer running this, not some multi-national corporation trying to trick you into parting with your hard-earned money so we can buy another line of coke and add another story to our house. Twitter suits this perfectly as it gives people frequent (too much so, some days!) updates on what's going on here, what's on the stereo, the challenges of the day and exclusive little previews of what we might do next. I love communicating with the fans too, and since MySpace now seems to be populated purely by spammers and girls trying to get their tits out, we've gotta go somewhere to chat!

SIS: Sometimes it can be said that indie rock and sport do not mix, but you have rounded up a group of crack football fans to predict matches each week? How did this come about? Are you really planning to buy the entire music industry if you win it big?

KD: During my time running the label I've found more and more people who share my passion for sports. Many of our bands are avid football fans, as are a lot of the press, management and fellow label people I've come to know. Blog Scary Monsters is where I post my day-to-day ramblings and recently decided it could make for a good base to gather some of these friends and share our knowledge of upcoming fixtures, so that I can take all of the information and place a bet so ridiculous, if it comes off I'll be buying out Sony by the end of the week. The fact that I'm still in my little flat tells you that we don't know the game quite as well as we'd all like to think we do, but we'll keep trying! And in July we'll have our third annual BSM 5-a-side football tournament in London. The last two events have been brilliant, although trying to organize 150 out of shape musicians, record labels and journalists on what tends to be the hottest day of the year, is an even bigger challenge than it sounds. And that's before you even kick a ball! Team BSM FTW this year though, you've heard it here first...

SIS: Lastly, what advice would give anyone thinking of starting his or her own record label?

KD: Be smart. Don't follow others because you like what they do. Take inspiration by all means, but think about what can work for you and build from that. In many ways, running a label is like being in a band: influences are essential but don't just rip them off. Test the water, start off slowly and when you're confident you know enough about what you're doing, take the next step. Distribution is getting more and more difficult, as well as risky in the current climate, so find ways to connect directly with your fans wherever possible, and most of all: Remember to have fun.