For the last 13 years FatCat has been a consistent source of musical eclecticism; introducing the world to SigurRos, Múm and Animal Collective as well as working with more established artists like Vashti Bunyan and Bjork. We spoke to label boss Dave Cawley.
How’s business on the Old Steine?
It’s good, Fat Cat as an entity is 21 this year, and as a label 12 years. Every year we broaden our perspective and the output goes up a notch, the standard gets better and we get better at what we do.
Do you consider yourselves a Brighton label or a label based in Brighton?
I’d like to say we’re a Brighton label, I’ve never felt anywhere as much as home as here. I feel very proud of the things we do here, like the Brighton Festival – we had a Vashti show, Black Dice Animal Collective, Max Richter, to little things we’ve put on at smaller venues.
How was your Great Escape night?
It was great, it wasn’t FatCat artists but it was bands we liked, we curated a line-up of Wild Palms, Here We Go Magic, Young Rival and Three Blind Wolves.
Your website features a lot of demos people send in – do you actually sign bands from these?
Yes, it’s a really big thing for us, picking artists up from demos, be it CDs or mp3s or whatever. It’s something we push, we listen to and reply to every one we receive, anyone who takes the time to send us a CD. We’re using a SoundCloud drop box now – there’s so much amazing music out there that doesn’t get any exposure. It does when they become the next big thing, when all the magazines and the other labels jump on them, but we’re not really interested in that. We want the artists in their early days; we’ve signed a lot bands like that we’re really proud of. A lot of other record labels don’t even accept demos, they just go in the bin, it’s pretty disgraceful. We might not put their records out but we’ll do anything to help them to spread their music for the good of music and the benefit of creativity. It’s really important for us to champion music whether FatCat benefits from it or not.
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