Hyperdub, the label defining the sound of the underground
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Dubstep, which once reimagined dance music as aggressive pure syncopation, has waned to a blanched, wobbling soundtrack for action movie trailers. But Hyperdub, a label that initially helped give the style its blacklit hue, is thriving. It's celebrating 10 years in the game this year with four new compilation albums and continues to show that dance music can be both dizzyingly fun and head-scratchingly odd.
Founder Steve Goodman grew Hyperdub out of a webzine charting the Jamaican influence on dance music in London, releasing his own music as Kode9 in 2004. It might have just been a vanity label were it not for early signing Burial, whose tracks – flickering psychogeographic vignettes that reflect on garage, rave and public transport – struck a chord. "All his music is hyper-emotional and melancholy – it's pure trough," enthuses Goodman.
Burial's success provided a war chest for signing new acts. "I was oversaturated with bass – I'd be going to [dubstep nights] DMZ and FWD», and the bass is so overwhelming, in a good way, but sometimes it can drown out colour in music," says Goodman. Consequently, his second wave of signings, with Zomby, Ikonika and others, lit up dancefloors with bright, videogame tones.
"This is a story of getting addicted to one thing, overdoing it, and then it stops having an effect on you and you go on to something else," he laughs beneath eyes rimmed with years of sleeplessness from juggling a university teaching job. His next obsession was fast, snare-driven tracks: Chicago juke, UK funky and experimental techno. "At every stage we lose listeners – you alienate a few people, but some come with you." His approach has helped usher in a new dancefloor pluralism where hoodied bass bros mingle with techno nerds.
Next up is a new Kode9 album ("I'm going to have a go at Auto-Tuning myself," he grins) and a release from Fatima Al Qadiri with a Chinese influence. "It's not some attempt to be rootsy – it's in a sterile digital environment." Hyperdub is the new world music, then – the soundtrack to the demented global culture of the internet, rather than an Islington dinner party. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
See also: Hotflush, Hessle Audio, Swamp 81
Marshall Teller, the label breathing life into alt-rock
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Launched in 2010, Leon Diaper runs Marshall Teller on his own from his lounge and, occasionally, his mum's house. The label quickly became a crucial tastemaker on the alt-rock scene. American youth culture and 90s nostalgia are Diaper's key creative touchstones, but what really drives him are his friend's bands. "I get excited and think, 'We should release this!' And then realise I can't as it's going to cost loads," he says. Luckily, he managed to put out the first single by his chums the Vaccines, following that up with EPs by Cheatahs and the History Of Apple Pie. Harriet Gibsone
Watch out for: New acts Parlour, Parakeet, Winter Drones
PMR, the label rejuvenating chart pop
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Over the past three years, sibling-founders Ben and Daniel Parmar have eked out a space for dance music at the top of the charts, making them the most talked-about label in the UK. And all from their mum's Acton living room. Their first release, Battle For Middle You by Bristolian house producer Julio Bashmore, was the biggest club track of that year, swiftly followed by Jessie Ware's Devotion in 2012 and Disclosure's Settle, a no 1 album in 2013. New family members Javeon, Cyril Hahn and T. Williams are already racking up column inches but, testament to PMR's refusal to deal just in pop, they've also signed north London grime MC Meridian Dan. Clare Considine
See also: Black Butter, Rinse, Blasé Boys Club
Death Waltz, the label giving soundtracks the respect they deserve
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A thriving offshoot of vinyl's defiant resurgence is the newfound surfeit of reissue labels. These boutique imprints pander to every walk of nerd, whether esoteric death metal fans or those with an irrepressible penchant for analogue etchings of 1970s folk festivals. For Spencer Hickman, his label Death Waltz Recording Company allows him to indulge his three loves: vinyl, art and horror films, particularly those of John Carpenter and Lucio Fulci, whose terse soundtracks played as much of a part in conjuring each film's atmosphere as the visuals.
Disillusioned with the flimsy soundtrack packages previously on offer – a cheap record and cheaper poster at odds with the quality of the music contained therein – Hickman founded Death Waltz in 2011. The label carved out its niche by re-imagining the OST through the unique artistic prism of cult horror. The packages are works of art in themselves: sumptuously designed sleeves, sprawling sleevenotes and vibrant vinyl, matching the films' moods and themes.
The label began with Escape From New York and Fabio Frizzi's Zombie Flesh Eaters. Since then, it's overseen a panoply of cult releases and today, as part of Record Store Day (which Hickman co-ordinates) it's releasing The Bronx Warriors, The Perfume Of The Lady In Black, the never-before-released The Degradation Of Emanuelle and In The Wall by Death Waltz fan Clint Mansell. "We are soundtracks" is the label's motto. It's hard to argue. Luke Holland
See also: La-La Land, Waxwork, One Way Static
National Anthem, the label that grooms the stars
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When radio plugger James Passmore hurriedly launched independent alt-pop label National Anthem from his north London flat in 2012, he hadn't a clue about how to run one. Having seen a then-unsigned Haim at a couple of industry showcases, he knew that a) he loved them, and b) the deafening buzz meant they wouldn't be unsigned for long. "I confirmed the release of their Forever EP, then had to come up with a name for the label, find out how you get vinyl made, find out how you put tracks on iTunes," he laughs. Since then he's released blog-friendly pop singles by Chvrches, Brolin and LA synthpoppers Sir Sly, on digital and collectable vinyl. "One of the reasons I do vinyl is because if I just did digital, once that artist's signed to a major I'm going to be asked to take my digital product down – it's as if the release never existed." The other reason? They look nice, basically. National Anthem is the embodiment not only of Passmore's passion (up until recently he shlepped all the vinyl down to the Post Office himself), but also his ear for a radio-friendly, blog-swallowing future-pop hit that thumbs its nose at classification. Michael Cragg
See also: Neon Gold, Chess Club, On Repeat
Soundway, the label unearthing exciting global sounds
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A few years ago, Mick Jagger was in Argentina streaming an American college radio station over the internet when he heard what he thought was a version of Jumpin' Jack Flash being played by a band from Laos. Intrigued, he consulted the station's playlist and discovered the song, Sao Lam Plearn, was by a Thai artist called Chaweewan Dumnern, from a 19-track collection entitled The Sound Of Siam: Leftfield Luk Thung, Jazz & Molam In Thailand 1964-75 – put together by, Jagger said, "some nutter".
That "nutter" is Miles Cleret, boss of the London-based Soundway Records, and the very idea of an Englishman hearing a Thai tune on an US-based radio station in Argentina goes right to the heart of Cleret's mission for the label: to dig up dance music from across Africa, South and Central America, the Caribbean and Asia and make it available, often for the first time, outside of the country it was recorded in. In a digital age, where seemingly the entire history of music has ended up online, that sets Soundway apart. Since 2002, Cleret's label has combined quality, impeccably packaged compilations with anthologies of individual artists and reissues of lost classics. Buoyed by the interest, he's recently started releasing albums by contemporary groups such as Ondatrópica (a collaboration between Colombian musician Mario Galeano and British producer Will "Quantic" Holland), Bogotá's Meridian Brothers and Ibibio Sound Machine, a London-based highlife, funk and disco band fronted by British/Nigerian singer Eno Williams. Phil Hebbelthwaite
Essential releases: Ghana Special, The Original Sound of Cumbia, ROB: Make It Fast, Make It Slow
Lucky Me, the label that's making its mark on global hip-hop
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In 2007, a group of rap and electronica-loving friends at Glasgow School Of Art met two local DJs – Mike Slott and Hudson Mohawke – and decided to start an art/party/label collective that combined "high and low art, pop and underground". Seven years and 20-odd vinyl releases on, HudMo and affiliates such as Rustie, S-Type and Cashmere Cat have gone from club producers to injecting their deranged fusions into mainstream rap, from Kanye and Drake down. Add a Rinse FM show, a fully-fledged design agency and offices in Scotland and the US, and it's clear their simple vision has come true. Joe Muggs
Watch out for: Canadian ally (and half of TNGHT) Lunice
See also: Night Slugs
Pink Mist, the label that's four times as loud
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Attention label bosses: you don't have to be alone no more. You can start a collective with your other label boss mates instead. "Running an independent label on your own can be a little lonely and daunting," explains Kevin Douch, head of Big Scary Monsters, which is why Douch, along with like-minded souls Simon Morley of Blood And Biscuits and Alex Fitzpatrick (Holy Roar) formed Pink Mist in 2010. It's a rebel rock alliance that covers just about every shade under the spectrum of "loud music", from perky pop-punk and twisting math-rock to low-slung sludge. Individually, the four labels – Pink Mist recently welcomed Andrej Presern's Tangled Talk into their gang – have released records by many of the most prominent British rock acts of the past decade, including Gallows, Tall Ships and Pulled Apart By Horses. Yet Pink Mist allows the combined foursome a greater level of clout than they'd be able to offer individually, from the boring stuff (marketing, distribution) to the more fun side of things, such as joint Pink Mist releases, gigs and "just bouncing ideas off each other". Together they are stronger. Gwilym Mumford
Watch out for: Brighton punks Gnarwolves, In At The Deep End, Dog Knights, Ven
Young Turks, the label that's gone from boutique to big time
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The brainchild of well-connected clubber Caius Pawson, Young Turks morphed from a series of increasingly riotous club nights into a label back in 2006. After one of its parties in an abandoned Transport For London building in east London was closed down by the police, XL owner Richard Russell offered to house Young Turks within his HQ. From the moustachioed, fez-wearing skeleton logo designed by Kate Moross to an impeccably cool roster of artists – ranging from neo-soul (Sampha) to mutant dubstep (SBTRKT) – the imprint has combined style and substance for the best part of a decade. Its biggest moment came with the release of the xx's debut album in 2009, which elevated Young Turks from blogworthy upstart into bona fide chart-bothering big gun. Since then it's gone on to organise a series of worldwide festivals (Night + Day) and a New Year's Eve party in Tulum, Mexico. Not bad for a label that took its name from a Rod Stewart song. Lanre Bakare
Watch out for: FKA Twigs's debut album this autumn
Type, the label that's finding new experimental edges
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Type co-founder John Twells grew up on the techno, noise and experimental sounds of Birmingham's diverse musical underground. Now based in Boston, USA, he makes up for missing home by running one of the most far-reaching independent labels going, with a pleasing A&R philosophy he describes as "haphazard". But this approach gives Type its breadth. Standout releases include the noise-pop of Yellow Swans' Going Places and the Enya-goes-forest-horror Grouper LP, Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill, while recent years have seen Type disseminate bleakly voguish tech-noise, from baseball-hatted psychiatric nurse Pete Swanson to Vatican Shadow's rugged musical response to the "war on terror". Scenic contrast comes from the Arctic ambience of Thomas Köner (new material is imminent) and the windswept drones of Richard Skelton, inspired by the landscapes of northern England. Luke Turner
See also: Perc Trax, Exotic Pylon, Diagonal
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