FABLE OF THE LABEL - XL RECORDINGS
Published: Music Australia Guide #79, August 2010.
Fable of the Label profiles iconic labels past and present. This month, XL Recordings’ Richard Russell tells MAG about unwavering self-belief. By Dan Rule.
There’s always been a fluid, transient sensibility to XL Recordings. “I don’t think about music in terms of underground or mainstream or genre or anything, and I never have done,” says label founder and acclaimed producer Richard Russell.
Joining the dots amid the independent London label’s divergent catalogue offers few clues at first. The Prodigy and Basement Jaxx precede The White Stripes, Badly Drawn Boy, Peaches, M.I.A. and Dizzee Rascal; Gil Scott-Heron, Thom Yorke and Radiohead share space with chart-topping soul popstress Adele, Ratatatat and Vampire Weekend; stylistic threads and lineages veer off at right angles.
According to Russell, there’s rhyme and reason to the apparent melange. “All I think about the individual,” he says. “Success comes in all different forms and I’ve never wanted to be confined to these notions of success being about critical praise or success being about selling all these records. It doesn’t matter. Success is achieving whatever it is you set out to do, and if you work with diverse people, they’ve got diverse aims.”
It’s an idea that can be traced throughout XL’s history. Rising out of the late 80s rave and acid house scene, the label opened its doors in 1989 with Russell and co-founders Nick Halkes – with whom Russell shared UK chart success as DJ duo Kicks Like a Mule – and Tim Palmer steering the imprint through groundbreaking European techno such as T99 and hardcore rave and drum’n’bass like SL2, Jonny L, plus early releases from label mainstays The Prodigy.
But with Halkes and Palmer parting with XL in the mid-90s, Russell broadened his horizons. “A lot of those early XL releases were really just about 12” single,” he says. “They weren’t about an album or about a career or about a tour.”
“But having said that, the best of those records were the ones that Liam (Howlett, of The Prodigy) made, because he was interested in turning it into something more than that and taking it somewhere else. We spread his wings musically and pushed beyond that electronic scene and that’s what I tried to do with XL.”
“The basic premise was to make it a really, really great platform for people to do exciting things.”
It’s difficult, even for Russell, to pinpoint XL’s signpost releases. While each of the early Prodigy releases chalk votes, he also sees The White Stripes’ self-titled debut, Dizzee Rascal’s Boy in Da Corner, Thom Yorke’s Eraser Head and Radiohead’s In Rainbows – which XL famously authorised to be released online for free ahead of the record’s physical release date – as clear standouts.
M.I.A.’s singular 2005 debut Arular, however, holds something of a special place in XL’s catalogue. “She was someone who really turned up at XL and was like ‘I’ve got something that I want to do’ and I believed her,” he says.
“Someone like Maya can do anything she wants to do. It’s a certain type of personality that can do that and doesn’t really care about what we are told we should be doing.”
And when it comes down to it, that’s where XL finds its grounding. “ “It’s sort of about fantasy, in a way,” he says. “It’s about not listening to others and just following your dreams.”
“The label, where it is now, was a fantasy for me; going into the studio to make a record with Gil Scott-Heron was a fantasy,” he pauses. “Having dreams is the most important thing in any creative pursuit.”
Visit: xlrecordings.com
