Domino are one of the most consistently good independent labels left. As 4AD struggle to produce a new crop of bands as exciting as their back catalogue and Creation continue to play safe with wannabe rock classicists like Embrace, Domino continue to mine a wealth of American songwriting talent that includes Sebadoh and Pavement as well as Smog, Palace and The Silver Jews. However, they are also home to some of the best British left-field acts such as the wonderful Pastels and Quickspace and are moving into electronic territory with their acquisition of Midnight Funk Association and Tim Goldsworthy of the UNKLE project from Mo-Wax. With the release of a kind of ‘best of’ album in the shape of ‘The Hits Hurt’ compilation, which you should be able to buy for the price of a single, we spoke to Laurence Bell from Domino about its aims, its attitude and, most importantly, its bands.
“We started out of a bedroom with a pretty minute budget inspired by the DIY culture and that old independent ethic. We were just trying to do that and be ambitious at the same time. You can be DIY but that doesn’t means it’s limited. You can put out left-field music or music that you think is bold but it doesn’t have to mean that people can’t get into it and it can’t do well. It’s a combination of those things really. We were quite lucky early on as a couple of our first groups did pretty well. I mean, Sebadoh was our first project and they did really well from the off. Thanks to them we were out of a bedroom and into a little office within six months. To do that without a break like that would have been really tough. Luckily, if you start selling lots of albums then you’re going to be alright but it’s difficult with these little dance labels who sell mostly twelve inches to keep afloat”.
The trouble is that these days there are very few truly independent companies left and indie rock has been mined off by the majors to such a degree that it’s become indistinguishable from mainstream rock.
“Nearly all independents are involved with pretty high finance to some degree and that’s the main difference that’s come about recently. Also, now indie has become part of a commercial alternative scene. I mean now indie is used to describe Oasis, The Verve or whatever. In the late seventies and eighties independents grew out of the DIY / Rough Trade culture and things were kind of genuinely alternative but now everything’s generally very mainstream. It’s not a good time really”.
However, there are still a lot of people out there that really want to listen to music that doesn’t conform to the old patterns and that maybe stretches the listener a bit, bands like The Third Eye Foundation and Flying Saucer Attack. It’s just a case of keeping a scene alive enough so that these sort of records remain available.
“I think we are still pushing the boundaries. However, we don’t feel particularly righteous about it. I mean everyone’s got to live and companies have got to make some money. I think the market place has changed because of the corporate antics that go on and it makes it a lot harder to function as an independent. You know, things that go on in the singles market in Britain with the big companies being able to give a shop ten free copies for every one bought so that they can sell them for 99p or something. We just can’t afford to do that, so our singles cost like #3.99 or whatever. That makes it tough to get in there. Some shops won’t stock it if you’re not giving them ten free so it just makes it tougher in the market place and you have to think of new ways to get stuff out there and fly the flag, so to speak”.
The good thing about Domino is that they have a couple of bands, namely Pavement and Sebadoh, who will always sell decent amounts of records and have got a pretty decent following in this country, so they can afford to push the more alternative acts on the roster and try and keep new bands emerging. But luckily this has had no detrimental effect on Pavement and Sebadoh, who still produce wilfully obtuse records and have never ‘sold out’.
“Pavement and Sebadoh do pretty well but they don’t quite go into the mainstream. However, some of that is just to do with the way those bands operate. I mean, there are certain sacrifices that you’ve got to make if you are going to become a really mainstream group and those bands actually don’t make those sacrifices so it’s hard for me to become frustrated because I know they’ve chosen to stay outside of that. There’s certain things that Pavement and Sebadoh could do to the sound of their records that they don’t want to do. There’s a radio-friendly gloss that could be put on in production that they just don’t want to have on their records. I think everybody knows that Pavement and Sebadoh could both turn out a huge hit whenever they wanted to really, but they just don’t put that gloss on it because they have certain other ideas about sound. I think everybody knows that Kurt Cobain knew exactly what he was doing when he made Teen Spirit, when he said ‘okay this is a great song, now let’s get it played on the radio’, so he let a producer put a radio friendly shine on it. I think our groups could do something like that but they choose not to. They both do very well in their way as they could both roll into town and play to a thousand people here. They both earn a lot of money and sell a lot of records but just in a bit more of a low key way.
“They’re not anti-commercial but they do draw a line where they are not going to compromise their artistic integrity. They just don’t say ‘what do I have to do to make me a star?’, that’s just not their attitude. You just know that Damon and Noel and Richard Ashcroft have learnt the rules and that’s what they want to do, they want to be big stars and that’s their choice. It’s very well planned, you know. But Pavement and Sebadoh just don’t come from that kind of cultuure. They’ve got a much more punk rock background and what excited then was having Husker Dü and the Minutemen rolling through town”.
When it comes down to it, the people at Domino are just doing what all of us - well, all of us who are obsessive about music - would do, which is trying to get people interested in what they think. They have no manifesto or end goal, they just want to produce good records that they like that they hope other people will like.
“At the end of the day you’re sitting in an office putting out records that you think are fantastic and you just want everyone to know about it and everyone to dig it. It’s a really basic primal thing, just wanting to turn people on to this music. So the thought about more people writing about and more people reading about and therefore checking the records out or hearing it on the radio is still genuinely exciting because you know there’s hundred of thousands of people listening who might be being turned on by the records. It’s still hugely satisfying. It’s much the same as having a few of your mates round the house and playing them a few records, you know, ‘have you got this’ and everyone does that from an early teenage age. If your mates then buy the records then it’s really cool.
“The label isn’t an ego thing - it’s just about the bands on the label and if we can draw them all together and get some people to listen to them then that’s our purpose served”.
Laurence Bell from Domino records was talking to Ben, in December 1997.