A New Hope for Hope Recordings

Hope Recordings will be 8 years old shortly, and after a brief hiatus recently relaunched with Nick Warren at the helm as head of A+R. With that in mind, we caught up with label manager Leon Alexander to talk about the past, present future of the label.

Progressive-Sounds:class=interview> Hope Recordings was born out of a Bristol scene at a time where
clubs like Lakota were recognised as one of the best in the UK. How did yourself
and Steve Satterthwaite come to meet and decide to work together to launch the
label?
Leon Alexander: I was
promoter at Lakota between 1995 and 1998 and Steve was press officer there. They
initially asked me to set up a record label for Lakota which I did. We had seven
releases from artists including Starecase, Timo Maas, and Ian Wilkie amongst
others, and then I felt I´d like to do it myself so I bagged Steve and the
artists and off we set.

Progressive-Sounds:class=interview> The label has been running over seven years now, with over 60
releases in the catalogue. Back in the early days, did you think the label would
still be going today, and what would you say have been some of the turning
points or key moments that helped build the label´s status up to where it is
today?
Leon Alexander: No I
didn´t really. I wasn´t really thinking past the first year.

src="images/Nick-Warren-A&R-Hope-Recordings.jpg"
width=150 align=left>class=interviewer>Progressive-Sounds: Recently,
fellow Bristolian native and globe trotting DJ Nick Warren joined the label upon
it´s resurgence after a brief hiatus, becoming a&r man for the label. Do you
feel having Nick on board brings a whole new dynamic to the label that will
reshape its direction from here on in?
class=interviewee1>Leon Alexander: In a word, Yes. If I´m honest the
label faltered a little once I stopped djing. Although I still believe in the
music that we signed in that period and we had some of our biggest sellers,
notable Moguai´s ‘U Know Y´, we weren´t being consistent. In the rest of the
music world the artist is more important than the label, in the dance world the
perception of a particular label and consistency is all. Shops treat the label
like an artist, seeing how much their last release sold before deciding on how
much to stock. Despite the rise and rise of mp3 sales, vinyl is still important
to us and we´ve started pressing on highest quality 180 gram vinyl so that it
becomes something really worth having. Having Nick on board has put us back in
the position of releasing quality clubbing material.

Progressive-Sounds:class=interview> Artist development has always been something that very apparent
on the label, with it being the home of Starecase, Grayarea and also helping
build the early career of Max Graham. Do you feel working hands on developing
these and more artists has made a difference to the label, and are there any
other artists you are currently working with we should look out for in the
future?
Leon Alexander: It was
always traditional that artists would sign to dance labels as one offs or single
by single, but we always felt that if the label was doing a great job why would
the artist want to go anywhere else, at least for a while. Also at the time we
started Roni Size was doing really well with his drum and bass label Full Cycle
whereby he had a roster of artists who all produced for the label and played out
live as part of the label and this was the formula we borrowed as we saw it as
the quickest way of establishing an identity. We tend to do the same even now
only signing with options.

Progressive-Sounds:class=interview> Finally, what can we look forward to hearing on the label over
the next few months, and are there any tracks in particular we should be looking
out for?
Leon Alexander: Well
Nick has signed loads of new stuff and spent quite a lot of time in the studio
writing new tracks for the label as well so expect quite a quick fire succession
of releases throughout the year. Forthcoming are tracks from 16 Bit Lolitas,
Loafer, Shiloh, Jimmy van M and Nick himself.