Last week we asked Guide subscribers to tell us about their favourite record labels, and the response was enthusiastic. Clearly, even in this age of streaming services that flatten albums, singles, EPs and mixtapes into one single “feed”, the lure of a label – and its role in identifying, nurturing and developing musical talents – remains. So this week, a celebration of the record label: along with some readers’ favourites, we’ve asked music writers to share their personal picks.
They’ve put together a great list of familiar and off-the-beaten-track labels that might just help you discover your next favourite album (I can already tell I’ll be spinning the Verlaines record recommended by reader James a fair bit!). One of today’s best is AD93, founded by Londoner Nic Tasker. It manages to be totally open-minded, while its signees nevertheless have a shared spirit: experimentalism used to dig out beauty and originality.
Moin’s avant-rock is unmissable, as is Joanne Robertson’s ambient balladry, and in James K they have a genuine possible pop star. They’re also cannily hoovering up artists out of contract, bringing back the likes of untameable singer-songwriter Ryley Walker. Their catalogue might evoke everything from sweaty dancefloor to empty moorland, but it’s all under the same sky.” – Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Guardian music editor “My favourite record label has to be CBS Records in all its manifestations.
They recorded so many of the greats, including Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen etc. They also released the first sampler album in 1969, The Rock Machine Turns You On. At less than half the price of most albums, it contained tracks by established artists like Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel and the Byrds and introduced lesser-known artists like Spirit, The Zombies and the best psychedelic band of the 60s, The United States of America.
They followed it a year later with Rock Machine I Love You, which had a similar great selection of artists.” – Millard Parkinson “I don’t think anyone has shaped my taste in music quite like AG Cook, founder of PC Music. Running from 2014 to 2024, the label and the artists that orbited it – including SOPHIE, Hannah Diamond and GFOTY – injected pop with haunting, glitchy garage and happy hardcore-adjacent sounds, at a time when dance-pop meant Clean Bandit and Jess Glynne. Charli xcx has repeatedly credited the collective with shaping her now generation-defining alt-pop. (Cook was a producer on both Brat and Rock Music.) My favourite release?
Danny L Harle’s Broken Flowers EP, from 2015. It sounds like the future, being underwater, and a northern town centre super-club all at the same time.” – Kate Lloyd, Guardian commissioning editor and music journalist “My favourite record label is easily Manchester’s Gondwana Records, led by the brilliant jazz trumpeter Matthew Halsall. Alongside a super-cool graphic design aesthetic, the label has also curated a fantastic range of artists, across 85 album releases since 2008.
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