Ross Allen

OSUNLADE

Today we are here with Mr. Ross Allen, owner of Casual Records. [Applause]

ROSS ALLEN

Thank you.

OSUNLADE

He’s a big music man. He has a label, Casual Records, which we will talk a bit more about. He’s a DJ who plays on BBC radio and around the world, obviously. He actually does Gilles Peterson’s show when he’s not available. He's also A&R at a few different record labels, which I want to find out more about.

ROSS ALLEN

You will.

OSUNLADE

He signed Spacek...

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, I’m a bit confused, musically very confused. But I think at the end of the day, all the music I’ve ever liked has either had a good groove or has been soulful. So that can take in all manner of things. And I think the CD that you’ve got in your hand is a good example of that. It’s a compilation that we put out earlier this year [Country Got Soul].

If I’m going to preach anything today, it is to be open-minded about music. You can draw stuff from wherever. You know, when I first heard, in a little record listening session, one particular tune that’s on this Country Got Soul CD, the last thing I thought I’d ever like was country music.

OSUNLADE

So let’s play something.

ROSS ALLEN

Do you want to play something from it? I’ll play the tune that got me.

OSUNLADE

Yeah, the one that got you.

(music: Travis Wammack – “You Better Move On”)

Very Marvin Gaye.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, totally.

OSUNLADE

Very ‘70s soul. The bass was amazing, and the horns and the arrangement.

ROSS ALLEN

But that’s what I mean. You never know where these tunes are lurking. There’s funk tunes that come from Jamaica and reggae tunes that come from Germany, with Basic Channel.

OSUNLADE

Yeah, the dub stuff.

ROSS ALLEN

It’s all out there, you just got to go and find it.

OSUNLADE

So you’ve A&R-ed for a few labels and signed some pretty amazing and popular acts.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, we have done a few good things, yeah.

OSUNLADE

Had a few good picks.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, we’ve done alright.

OSUNLADE

So, how has that been? You’ve worked for Island?

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, I’ve worked for Island Records.

OSUNLADE

And that’s pretty corporate. You run your own label now.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah. Well, I used to be at Island full-time. I had my own subsidiary label there, which signed Mark Pritchard, Peshay, Tom Middleton, Spacek, The Underwolves. I also worked with Talvin Singh when he did his first album. And Stereo MCs, The Orb. The Sugababes, for my sins, with “Freak Like Me,” that’s me who sorted that out.

So we’ve done quite a few things there. But basically, Island Records and all major record labels are kind of cool at doing certain things but, I think as J Da Flex was saying yesterday, they can work with artists, they can work with people that write songs and perform, [but] they’re not very good at handling the producer-based stuff, which in dance music is what all of it is all about, a lot of what you guys are doing today. They see you as the people they will get in to produce their artists. And their artists are Sugababes, Kylie Minogue, you know? Whoever.

OSUNLADE

Of course, there is a big difference between running your own label and working for a corporation, of sorts. But it seems like you’ve been able to achieve what a lot of A&Rs don’t, which is actually original projects and music across the board.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah. Well, I think the thing is, the three criteria I’ve got are I want it to be funky, soulful and original. And the trouble is, if it’s original and you hear it, and being in the position I am doing the radio and DJing in clubs, you get to hear things early, and you get to hear them a lot earlier than the time that major labels actually want to pick up on stuff. It needs to kind of bubble in the underground and sell some records, and then they turn around and go, “Yeah, they’re good! We’ll have those!”

So that’s why I needed to set my own label up. Because I was bringing stuff in like Dizzee Rascal and Zero 7, stuff that I’ve got just through being out and about in London, and they were just, “Yeah, they’re really good, but are they are going to sell?” That kind of thing. So, I just went, like, “You know what? I’ll do my own label and put my money where my mouth is.”

OSUNLADE

And how long has Casual been around?

ROSS ALLEN

The first record came out in July this year, so we haven’t been around a long time.

OSUNLADE

That’s a lot of releases in a year.

ROSS ALLEN

Don’t count them out.

OSUNLADE

Man, that’s a lot! [Laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I’m just wondering how long – maybe you hear things two years before they’re going to be released, or maybe even two or three years?

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, sometimes. I mean, that’s one of the reasons I set the label up, because you would hear things and you knew you couldn’t take it into Island Records. And you would be playing it in the club, playing it on the radio and you’re getting a reaction. And the reason to start the label is, well, if I’m feeling it and other people are, let’s put it out. But, yeah, it can be a long time.

OSUNLADE

And so you have another project. You just showed me this.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, I thought I’d give you a little blast of this.

OSUNLADE

The Loose Cannons’ “Superstar.”

ROSS ALLEN

Make up your own mind what you think of them. This is the tune I heard from which we signed the band, and we immediately signed them to Island. And I think it was basically a finished tune, insomuch as being a finished tune that a major label would understand. It had a fresh production, a song with a chorus. It reminded me a little bit of a cross between Prince and Basement Jaxx, but make your own mind up.

(music: The Loose Cannons – “Superstar”)

OSUNLADE

Sounds a lot like Spacek, as we were saying about it.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, I do love that new bass-heavy kind of funk.

[Selecting next track] I suppose in a similar way to what happened in the States with hip-hop and all those kind of things, people got into a bit of James Brown and it became the rare groove thing, but tunes like this were just anthems on pirate radio.

(music: James Brown – “People Get Up And Drive Your Funky Soul”)

So, that was really how we got our education in old records. That ties in quite nicely with what Soul II Soul were doing and that whole kind of rare groove scene, the London style of it. I don’t tend to play loads of those out, but I just kind of keep it funky. I’ve always got a little selection of old funk tunes, I’ve always got a little bit of disco, you know? I’ve always got new hip-hop, some ragga, some house. When I started DJing, I used to do house parties and I used to play all night. We'd start at ten and finish at eight, nine in the morning.

OSUNLADE

Real parties!

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah. I mean, the whole reason I’m into this and doing this is because I used to love going out. Going to clubs was this other world you could get into. You’d be at school and you’d listen to the radio. Ironically, the DJ that got me into it all was Pete Tong.

OSUNLADE

Really?

ROSS ALLEN

Pete Tong used to have a radio show on Invictor Radio, which was a little regional radio station in Kent, which is just kind of south-east of London. And I used to have a bath every Sunday night before I went to school. Once a week. Still do. I would just listen to the radio in the bath, I would tune in, and all of a sudden I heard this funky music, some hip-hop or something, I was like, “What’s this?” And it was Pete Tong doing his thing back in 1986, and he was playing everything.

I think he saw where the money was at in the house thing and just went straight down that road. But to start with, he was the one who first played me Run–D.M.C., introduced me to what Gilles Peterson does by playing tracks out of the Jazz Juice albums, introduced me to the first house records that I’d heard. The stuff from DJ International and stuff coming out of Supertronics in New York and all those kinds of things. And, you know, Anita Baker and old soul records. So I got to give it up to Pete Tong.

OSUNLADE

Do you see a surge of more artists like Herbert, with the electronic [side]? You listen to a lot of music, you have a lot of things coming at you, and just from the electronic-based scene, are you seeing a lot of those type of artists? Say you have 100 CDs in two weeks, are there, like, five from an electronic standpoint?

ROSS ALLEN

I don’t know really. I’ve kind of stepped back from it a bit. A lot of the new hip-hop I really like incorporates a lot of electronics. I was always thinking about different types of music – “What, if you put that with that?” – you know? And when you hear the first Missy Elliott record and even some of the Just Blaze productions, they’re like techno records with people rapping over them. To me that was really fresh, and it still is really fresh. It’s just when you hear a lot of new electronic records – I mean, I quite like a lot of the glitchy kind of things, but some stuff like Aphex [Twin]-based stuff. But I’ve kind of heard a lot of it before. I just want a tune that I can hum along to, which leads you to R&B or the poppier side of things, or a really good melody. With the new kind of electronica people, I guess someone like Ulrich Schnauss is someone you put on and it just kind of washes over you and you do get that little feeling of, “This is a good tune!”

OSUNLADE

Because it can be emotional as well. I listened to some noise records at a friend’s house, and I swear, I couldn’t stop the record. It was like 54 minutes of just noise, but it is an emotional thing as well.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, it’s one of those undefinable quantities. When you put music on, it either hits you or it doesn’t. And that’s why I can’t limit myself to just being into one sort of genre or pushing one genre because I’d get bored. I just can’t listen to one thing. I mean, I got into R.E.M. when I was driving through the States 'cause it was on the radio and I was looking out as we were driving across and it seemed to be the right music for that time. If you put yourself in a box, you miss out on so much fun. At the end of the day, the reason you’re into music is ‘cause it gives you that little tingle. It’s that little sensory perception.

And I think with the house thing, around that time, which is when the first house records came out that we were hearing, it just was so fresh and interesting. And this was one of them.

(music: A Guy Called Gerald – “Voodoo Ray”)

OSUNLADE

Again the 808.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, I kind of like those [laughs].

OSUNLADE

F,rom that time it’s just like I said, it’s that machine that defines a specific time and style of music. And different genres as well.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, and I think that was one of the better acid house records. There were a lot of them knocking about, but that just had a bit of depth to it and…

OSUNLADE

…a little bit more of a song, I believe.

ROSS ALLEN

Yes, more hooky.

OSUNLADE

With arrangement.

ROSS ALLEN

I mean, it still sounds outstanding, it sounds brilliant now, even.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I guess a lot of the people here, I think, are probably quite independent-minded in their approach. So some of us would want to start our own labels. You’ve really got quite interesting music across the board. Can you tell us a little bit about how you went about setting up your own label and how much it cost and what kinds of things you had to do to get it started?

ROSS ALLEN

I mean, basically, we found someone who had some money [laughs] to put behind us. I’ve always kind of shied away from doing it myself because I’ve always thought I didn’t want just to put out white labels, and I’m quite into the way these sort of records are presented and that whole kind of thing. So out of the labels I’ve had, I haven’t actually put any of the money up myself, which was obviously a help. But aside from that, it’s just that you’ve got to find a tune you like and think you can do something with. I’d always test the water with something first. If you’re going into a business venture, you want to know that you would be able to... not retire off the back of it, but maybe to sell the ones you’ve got so you can then move on and do another one, be fairly pragmatic about it.

OSUNLADE

And what about distribution?

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, distribution is an interesting one. I mean, with the new label that we set up, we were able to go to quite a reputable distributor in the UK just because of my track record and my partner’s track record. We were talking the other day about the [distribution] van services in the UK. And that’s obviously a very easy way to get stuff out. And you can also do a P&D deal, which is pressing and distribution, where you just basically take your DAT or your CD, they master it for you, they cut the record for you, you give them the artwork and they do it all for you. The only downside to that is that sometimes you might not get paid [laughter]. But at least you’re getting stuff out there.

At the end of the day, it’s all about how good the music is. A record like “Voodoo Ray”, we’re playing that, what, 14 years after it first came out. That first came out on a tiny little label in Manchester. And I don’t think that A Guy Called Gerald had any more links than anyone else, but because it’s a good tune, it got picked up and his whole career is built off the back of that record. At the end of the day, it’s all about the music. If the music is good enough, you will suffer setbacks and pitfalls, but you kind of get through. It’s very easy, I think, to be bitter about things, and, “Oh, they fucked up my distribution, they fucked that up,” whatever. “Didn’t get paid” is the worst one. But if you’re talented, you do get through. It’s all about perseverance. When you get to those pitfalls, you need to kind of just go, “Right…”

OSUNLADE

Well, the music dictates what the future is going to hold for you as an independent, I believe.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, totally. It’s about doing something fresh and interesting. People want that.

(music: Stretch – “Why Did You Do It?”)

So that was a tune by Stretch called “Why Did You Do It?” I brought that along because it’s an example of another little phase of London clubbing which was born out of the back of this acid house explosion and that kind of dance scene. Probably because people were doing quite a lot of drugs [laughter]. And they were opened up to all manner of different types of records. It was the Balearic scene, with people like Danny Rampling and Paul Oakenfold, and all those sorts of DJs were key in putting it together.

I suppose that formed the basis of dance music in the UK not being such a black music-based event, if you like. There was black house music from Chicago and from Detroit, and hip-hop, and these London DJs were like, “You know what? We like a few pop records, we’ll chuck a bit of that in,” and they started getting these fusions. I mean, that's kind of a funky little tune, but there were people playing Depeche Mode records and all sorts of things. I really liked it because it was a real melting pot. There were a lot of really dodgy records that came out of it, but there always is. It was quite an interesting time and you would hear a whole spectrum of stuff. Whereas before you would just hear kind of funk and black-based music.

It’s just another area of music. There’s a tune I could play now actually, which is quite an interesting little thing. But, yeah, it was just another area that kind of opened up to us. I think through DJs like Jonathan More from Coldcut and Gilles Peterson, again, they were the people that all the time turned you on to these tracks. They were out there finding interesting, funkier genres of music.

OSUNLADE

So most of these things fell into your lap, or do you go to search for some of these records?

ROSS ALLEN

I’m always looking for records.

OSUNLADE

Do you say, OK, “I’m looking for country, or soul?”

ROSS ALLEN

No, you’re just around people that like music. You are listening to the radio, you’re reading magazines…

OSUNLADE

There’s quite a lot of music in this genre [holding Country Got Soul CD] that, like, I don’t know anything about. How do you find all of this music?

ROSS ALLEN

I’ve just got good friends [laughs] who are quite sad and always in record shops.

OSUNLADE

You guys have the advantage in London, you have the greatest, the best record shops there. You find everything there.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, it’s good in London. But most of those, I mean, when I first heard this music, I would go to the record fairs and ask people and it’d be like [shrugs]. All the dealers would be like, “I’ve never heard of them.”

OSUNLADE

Did you have specific names you were looking for after you heard the first song?

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, you’d go around, like with that Travis Wammack track, you’d say, “Have you got it?” And the good thing now is you can get on eBay or GEMM or one of those things and just tap in the name of the artist. And you get a list, whether they’ve got it or not, of the artist, the album.

One of the things that you have to realize is that major labels own so many of the catalogs. But the way actually police the catalogs, in terms of... being a bit of a trainspotter, you’d know that that catalog was bought by that label at that time and they own the rights to it. Now, we would ring up Universal and say, ”You own the rights to this track,” and they will be like, “No, we don’t.” “You do!” “No, we don’t.” And it would go on and you’d turn around.

The good thing about the net is that you can just get on. A lot of the people that have been making records have set up their own webpages. So you tap someone’s name into Google and you get a list of everything they have done and you are also are likely to get their homepage. And we just did quite a lot of detective work. We would ring up the majors and ask if they had the rights, or we would ring the smaller labels that have bought a lot of catalogs and ask if they owned the rights, and then we would license it from them. If not, we would get on the internet, track them down. And lots of people we found. And that’s why I’ve been in Nashville a few times this year. We’d made the connection, got their phone numbers, we went out to see them.

The evolution of this [Country Got Soul] is that next February, all the people that are alive on this record we've tracked down, and we are going to put them all back in the studio and cut a new record. It sounds a bit clichéd, but a Buena Vista Social Club meets Johnny Cash kind of album, where we are putting them all back together. And we got a lot of their new tracks to just do a kind of rootsy, back-to-basics album that would sound like this. We are not going to record it digitally, we are going to do it all onto 2“ tape so you get the sound that these guys had.

I mean, I’m not a producer, I’m an A&R person. But I think it’s a fine line a lot of the time. What a lot of you guys are doing with the technology, I don’t understand the technology. I’m not really that interested in it. I just want to hear good records. So in that way, I’m not a producer. But when it comes to a classic recording like this that we’re going to do, part of the production is to go, “You guys really don’t want to be singing over a lot of breakbeats.” You want to find the settings that are going to make them shine and make the songs that they’ve done shine in the best environment. So we’re going to take it back and do that.

OSUNLADE

Did you find it quite expensive to license the tracks?

ROSS ALLEN

It’s not cheap. I think, to put that album together cost us about ten grand, in English, £10,000. That’s why we needed the backers, because I haven’t that sort of money to put into it. But you can go around, and, I mean, the record industry is in kind of a bit of a…

OSUNLADE

…a funk now.

ROSS ALLEN

It’s shrinking.

OSUNLADE

It’s a bit easier to license at the moment.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, totally. That’s the thing. As much as it’s harder to sell records, everyone’s feeling the pinch. So the prices come down. If you’re talking about studios and hiring out studios for bands to work in, that has come down because of the ease of access to all the technology and the stuff that you can do.

OSUNLADE

So many home studios now. People don’t have the necessity to go into real studios.

ROSS ALLEN

Exactly. So if you do want to go to a bigger studio to get a better mixdown on a bigger desk or whatever, the prices compared to a few years ago are much, much cheaper.

One of the things that I like to think that I do with the records that we make is all the way down the line, the process, is maximize what you do. And I think, when it comes to selling records to DJs that are going to be played on sound systems, the cut of the record, the mixdown of the record and all those things, just to push the sound. Especially with tech-y kind of music. You can do so much with it. I think the cutting process is one of the most important parts at the moment. You can do so much with it if you take it to the right engineer.

OSUNLADE

I actually advise a lot of you guys who are doing your own records, go get an acetate cut and play it that night you’re playing out. There is nothing like the instant reaction.

ROSS ALLEN

It’s a lot cheaper than pressing 500 copies.

OSUNLADE

It’s a lot cheaper than pressing 500 copies and they sound like shit! And you’re like, “Fuck, I’m broke now!” [Laughs]

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah, and I think that's another thing that is important from an A&R point of view, it’s the fact of refining what you do.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I have a question about the current condition that the record companies are going through in regards to digital media. I want to know, how are they coping with that situation? Does it make your job a bit more difficult because they feel like they have to always pick the most saleable material because they’re losing money from MP3 downloads and whatnot? And also, where do you see the future of music going in the sense of distribution and the way for artists to be able to better market themselves, not necessarily through a major?

ROSS ALLEN

I think that major record labels are completely shitting themselves about what is going on at the moment. The thing with major record labels is they are a bit like dinosaurs. They’re very heavy and slow to react. And they tried to brush the whole MP3 thing under the carpet, and then the thing with Napster and all those kind of things. But now they realize there is no way forward. And I think they have to embrace it. I think [the format] is available commonly in the States, but in the UK, I don’t think you can buy downloads from majors. It’s coming next year. So they’re embracing it, but kind of slowly. And I think what that does is it does make them very conservative when it comes to music because they don’t know the… we were talking about it in an A&R meeting the other week. Your Britneys and your big acts, people are going to buy those records because they sell to, I think it's a kind of generational thing. The people that are coming through buying music are very used to the technology and to getting downloads. It’s free music. If I was growing up now and I heard these records on the radio or whatever, I’d just go to Limewire or whatever it is and just put in the title and go, right, I'll have that, and put it onto a CD and go out and play it. I think this is hurting a lot of the newer acts.

I mean, it was interesting what J Da Flex was saying yesterday about how a lot of this music isn’t available online because it is a real underground sort of scene. But I don’t think this is necessarily true for a lot of other dance forms. I think if you’re into drum & bass or you’re into rap or whatever, you can get nearly all those things. They pop up and you can download them and they’re yours them for nothing. So if you’re new and coming through, it affects the way major labels are, because they know who downloads what. And I think if you are a more established artist, say you are R.E.M. or someone, the people that grew up with your music may not be as aware of the technology.

And also, I think, there is a kind of culture that goes with it, which is, I’ve got my box of records, that’s what I grew up with, I bought records. When CDs came along, when I started to do the radio, I was like, “I got to get with CDs.” There’s so much music that I can’t play. And now, it’s one of these [holds a MP3 player]. I’m forced, because I want a lot of the music, to use these new technologies. Whereas a lot of people who buy music that are older don’t have to buy it. They will just go and buy a CD, or if they are still into their turntable and the whole kind of aesthetic of that, they will buy the vinyl version, because you can get it if you want it.

But I think for most people, having that kind of object, for kids growing up now, it’s a culture that is dying out. I know there’s people who are kind of, “Well, I’m always going to want my records.” But you have to think, if you were 12, 13 now and your friends in school are playing you these tracks from whatever format, and you could just go home and get on your computer at night, and just go [imitates tapping keys] and it’s in your house, why do you want a 12" bit of vinyl to put it on if it’s not part of your culture? I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot because obviously setting up my own label, we want to sell records, you know?

OSUNLADE

What is your take on it? If you go to Limewire and this album is on it, Country Got Soul, and I get seven of the songs?

ROSS ALLEN

The one thing that I want to do, which we’re working on at the moment with our website at the label, is so that people can buy downloads. I think people can nick it or they can, if people appreciate what you're going through as artists and labels... and that’s another reason that major labels suffer, because no one gives a shit about major labels. Because people just see them as raping the scenes of music and screwing the last drop of money out of them with the cheapest packaging and cutting all the overheads. And that’s why I want to do my own label, because I actually like the packaging. But it’s difficult to know where it’s going to go because it’s down to the public. If they want to take your music, they can.

OSUNLADE

And what about distribution?

ROSS ALLEN

Well, again, I think leading on from that and the way that the formats are gradually being pushed to the sides, it wouldn’t surprise me if you could see a time where people are just going to go to their computers. Type in a label, a band, and people are just going to buy the music straight from the source.

OSUNLADE

Currently, your situation is probably similar to mine. You have a major distribution company that has distribution deals throughout the world, separate situations in each country.

ROSS ALLEN

Yeah.

OSUNLADE

Which kind of works, because you get promotion and marketing in each situation. So it kind of works, I think, a bit.

ROSS ALLEN

That situation is kind of the final extreme of what I just said.

OSUNLADE

If you were starting a label, ultimately what you want to do is to go with a bigger distribution that has coverage.

ROSS ALLEN

Initially, you want local distribution. Then you want it national and then international, depending upon on the ripples that your record sends out around the world, you know?

OSUNLADE

Speaking about the downloading with the MP3s, I was just making a footnote of the iPod situation with Apple. They started the [iTunes] store and within the first week they sold over a billion downloads, which I think still today is the number one download site, which I thought was very inspiring for that format.

ROSS ALLEN

The future is selling this music as downloads, I think. And I think, if you can do that, then we’ve all got a future [laughter].

OSUNLADE

Yeah, exactly!

AUDIENCE MEMBER

It’s been great, and you’ve been extremely informative. And good luck on the label. Continue!

OSUNLADE

Buy his records!

AUDIENCE MEMBER

No doubt. Everything you played has been hot, and I have enjoyed this.

OSUNLADE

Buy that country joint!

ROSS ALLEN

Thank you.