So the record industry's in turmoil? Try telling Olan O'Brien, one half of the Temple Bar record shop turned hip-hop label All City. He tells JIM CARROLLhow it is possible to run a world-class label from Dublin, how Hudson Mohawke has been a legend and how the digital dawn has been (gasp) good for business
IT BEGAN, aptly enough, with a record shop. When Olan O’Brien and DJ Splyce opened All City in Dublin in 2001 to sell hip-hop tunes and graffiti supplies, O’Brien knew that he also wanted to start a label. A decade on, the shop is still in business (unlike so many of its peers), but the All City record label is really going gangbusters.
Releases from Hudson Mohawke, Dam Funk, Mike Slott, Onra, Ras-G and many others have brought fans of abstract beats to All City’s yard. Splyce now lives in Japan – “he’s a partner in name and spirit; he doesn’t receive any royalty cheques, but neither do I” – so O’Brien is the man who keeps the All City show on the road, with the help of a group of enthusiasts.
“We’re nearly at 50 releases now,” O’Brien notes. “There’s the Onra album and the CD compilation and the rest are singles.
“We run a tight ship. Everyone gets paid on time, everyone gets their statements on time, and I have a good rep for that. It might sound like a basic thing, but it’s not widespread, so it’s appreciated and makes it easier for me to go back to people.”
Though the label’s first releases came from Irish rapper Ri Ra back in 2003, it was meeting Irish producer Mike Slott that really set All City in motion.
“Mike was living in Glasgow, where he was hanging with these people who were very progressive in terms of their musical ideas. By then, I’d given up on hip-hop completely. I’d no interest in major-label hip-hop. The beats and the sonic qualities were interesting, but the dudes themselves were not. It was hard as a grown-up to empathise with them.
“Mike was working with Hudson as Heralds of Change, and that opened up a whole new world. They were on the cusp of this beat scene, and it was just around the time that MySpace had started, so you could instantly check out people online. It didn’t matter where you were. I was in Dublin, Mike and Hud were in Glasgow and the distributor was in Glasgow. It was a little network bubbling away.”
Those releases heightened All City’s profile. “The great thing about the Heralds record is the artwork that came with them and the progression in sound. The first two were hip-hop tracks and the next two more abstract.
“The first time I heard Hudson he was an 18-year-old kid, and the demo was unbelievable – genius. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone come close since. He sees the bigger picture.”
The releases also gave All City its direction. “I was ‘finally, I can build the label around this’. I wouldn’t have any great ambitions to take over the planet. I understand to run a label you need decent acts, and when the two lads came along I knew it was something I could use as a building block.”
O’Brien does a run of between 750 and 1,500 records per release, and they all sell. “It’s a really small market. There is a network of 20 here, 20 there who will buy the records. But digitally it’s huge. You get these cheques from iTunes every month and you see that some dude in Taiwan has downloaded your stuff and you wonder where on earth they found out about you.
“Digital keeps everything going and makes sure everyone gets paid. I’m still sending the Heralds of Change quite big cheques every few months for stuff we released years ago. People can illegally download stuff, and I’ve given up trying to police stuff after a couple of years, but people still choose to pay. I’m fascinated when I heard labels say they can’t make any money from digital. For me, digital is doing very, very well. The physical product is just promo, a flyer for the digital sales.”
Every All City release has been part of a bigger series of seven-inches or 10-inches. “Because I’m a record collector and dream in catalogue numbers, I always wanted to put things in context. I wanted to design the whole thing for a kid in 20 years’ time who picks up one of these records and wonders what the hell is it and what it was part of.
“I’m never too bothered about how records fit in now because I’m always imagining how they will be appreciated in a few years’ time. If you have a killer sound and killer artwork, I hope it will make sense to people in time, and make them realise that it’s part of this bigger thing.”
O’Brien has just started a series of collaborations with a release from Dutch producer Martyn and Slott, and he also has plans for a series of Sun Ra remixes and a New York series to go with the previously released Los Angeles series. There are certainly no signs of any downturn in quality.
“I wanted to see if it was possible to run a world-class label out of Dublin, and it is. Often we we use Irishness as an excuse for being late – ‘we’re Irish, relax’ – but I want to do things properly. The best compliment for me is that people don’t know where the label is based.
“I’m proud to be based in Dublin, but it’s not the defining charasteristic of the label. I respect what people like Alphabet Set, Kaboogie and Mantrap have done in releasing their mates, but that wasn’t my aim. I come from a hip-hop background, so I’m attracted to New York and Los Angeles.”
Yet All City will continue to release Irish acts such as T-Woc, Slott and new gun Krystal Klear (aka Dec Lennon, an Irish producer living in Manchester).
“He grew up in the shop, he was in the shop from the very first day it opened,” says O’Brien. “He was a graff writer who was in his music as well.
He’s always been into Eighties for as long as I knew him, so he was ahead of the curve. He got to meet Mike and Hudson early on, and Mike taught him how to make beats – that’s where his education came from. He’s proof that we grew something out of the shop and that there’s interesting, progressive stuff coming out of Dublin.”
The All City shop is located at 4 Crow Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. allcityrecordlabel.com
