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Rave In The Blood: Jamie Russell reflects on 10 years of Hypercolour

Since its inception ten years ago, Hypercolour has been synonym with high-end dance material and wide scope open-mindedness. Co-founded and now exclusively run by Jamie ‘Cedric Maison’ Russell, the label’s been a privileged witness of a whole generation’s growth and the implicit changes of party protocols, connecting the dots between a wild, old-school rave spirit and an up-to-date, future-facing approach.

Having collated choice releases from the likes of Laurent Garnier, Luke Vibert, Roman Flügel, Seth Troxler… to name just a few, Hypercolour is certainly not the kind of label to shut doors, but one that opens portals, collides worlds and aims at breaking down borders as it keeps all sectarian endeavours away from its principles.

To celebrate ten years of cheerful dance activism, Jamie Russell and his crew gathered the cream of the crop of their collaborators including Herbert, Vibert, Matt Karmil, Falty DL, The Analogue Cops et al for a very special compilation. We seized the occasion to have a chat with Jamie and discuss the label’s past, present and future.


Interviewed by Baptiste Girou

cedric-maison

"These days I leave the promoting to the experts,
my enjoyment sits with just finding music and
putting together amazing looking records."

Hey Jamie, you’re celebrating ten years of Hypercolour. I guess it’s a special moment! What’s your feeling looking back at what’s been accomplished?

It’s flown by is my feeling! That said, I feel optimistic about the future and I think the label is in very a healthy position right now. We’ve achieved a lot, and we’ve worked with some of our heroes and we still all have a healthy appetite for discovering new music.

How did you proceed for the artist/track selection?

Quite simply, we put a call out to all artists we were working with recently. Drew (FaltyDL) is a friend so he happened to be on the list too, and we were talking to Yaleesa about doing some music together, that still might happen. Matthew Herbert is someone we have a record coming out with early next year, so again this was really just down to the timing of these conversations.

cw_tek5wqaacfxb

"We've achieved a lot, and we've worked with some of
our heroes and we still all have a healthy
appetite for discovering new music."

What was your main motivation when you set up the label back in 2006? What has been your guideline over the years?

Back then it was really just an outlet for us and our friends to put music out on.  There was no real outline or plan, we literally did just go with the flow. Hypercolour’s sound has always been shaped based on where we went and who we listened to – we were always pretty good at going out and finding inspiration in nightclubs and raves.

How did you come to listening and DJing music in the first place? What was the trigger?

For me personally, I can put it down to my ‘young at heart’ dad. My father was a bit of a raver, and I remember ‘borrowing’ recorded cassette tapes from his house when we visited him on a Sunday. One that sticks out was Micky Finn ‘Timeslip‘, and Ratpack ‘Fantazia Castle Donnington‘ – it was a revelation for me at the time, my mind was blown!

I was already buying 7″ records from Woolworths, early Hip Hop stuff like De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Eric B & Rakim, Public Enemy etc but this rave stuff really lit a fire. Not forgetting all the House music that was in the charts, Snap, Rozalla, CeCe Peniston, Alison Limerick…etc.

I guess from there, I made my first trip to Ibiza in 1999. My music taste had passed through Jungle, UK Garage and settled into House by then. I came back home and decided I wanted to throw parties in my local city, Oxford.

It was a small party but brought together a gathering of like minded people who got it. I wasn’t DJing at that stage, I decided to buy my first set of turntables in 2001 and have been collecting records ever since. My collection is sat at about seven thousand records at the moment, I need to clear out some crap though!

How do you combine your work as a promoter with your activity as a label owner? Are the two sides part of the same movement or do you delineate each part more strictly?

I was always a terrible promoter to be honest! It’s funny because it was my entry point into everything I do today, and yeah I had some great nights and put on some wicked parties, met some of my best friends through them, but most of my memories of putting on parties involve losing loads of money! These days I leave the promoting to the experts, my enjoyment sits with just finding music and putting together amazing looking records.

Didn’t you ever consider producing music yourself?

I do! I just don’t tend to shout about it…

matthew-herbert-web

"Hypercolour’s sound has always been shaped based
on where we went and who we listened to."

The number of top-class producers to have graced the grooves of Hypercolour is rather astonishing: Laurent Garnier, Luke Vibert, Roman Flügel, Axel Boman, The Analogue Cops, Seth Troxler, Kris Wadsworth… and many more. How do you get in touch with artists for a collaboration?

It really is a combination of situations and circumstances. The likes of Garnier, Flügel and Vibert for example, we’ve been chasing for years. Axel we hit up when we heard his Pampa release, and many other artists we work with would of been off the back of hearing their records. Some got in touch to send demos (Seth/Groove Armada) but mostly it’s chasing people down these days!

Do you have any special events lined up for the launch of the compilation?

We’ve been throwing 10 year dates all year! Just last week we were in Amsterdam at Marktkantine with FaltyDL and Luke Vibert, then a big Sunday day party in Bristol with Laurent Garnier.

Shout out to all the clubs this year who’ve shown us some love, Jaeger/ Oslo, Else/ Berlin, Wigflex/ Notts, Razzmatazz/ Barcelona, Gottwood, Somerley Tea Party, Percolate/ Manchester, Ape-x/ Newcastle, La Cheetah/ Glasgow, Trueno/ Madrid, PFTP/ Sheffield.

What do you hope people will say when speaking of Hypercolour in 20 years?

I’d like to think they will say we made a strong contribution, and hopefully that we were jolly nice blokes!

Order a copy of 10 Years Of Hypercolour from Juno.

TRACKLIST

1. FaltyDL – “Fantaxia”
2. Steve Edwards – “Beautiful People” (James Welsh Sheff 97 remix)
3. Matt Karmil – “Juicy Fruits”
4. Roman Flugel – “Family Vacation”
5. Yaleesa Hall x Malin – “Buchan Trap”
6. Luke Vibert – “Confusion”
7. DMX Krew – “Wood Beads”
8. Neil Landstrumm – “It’s Hot Outside”
9. A Sagittariun – “Djax”
10. Tom Demac – “Hanging Flowers Of Albion”
11. Mark Henning – “Ready For You”
12. Matthew Herbert – “Downgrade”
13. Gary Gritness – “Cherenkov Blue”
14. The Analogue Cops – “Discoblaze”
15. Sebastian Mullaert – “Shadowed By I”
16. Dense & Pika – “2 Steps Back”

Discover more about Hypercolour on Inverted Audio.

LabelReleased11 November 2016Genre