Music Is Love. It's a simple enough expression. Easy enough to understand on the surface. But peel back the endless layers and meanings attached to both music and love, and you start to understand why such a simplistic phrase has helped develop an ethos that's carried this young record label to the forefront of today's house music scene, making it one of the most well respected imprints around. But for Oli Furness and the rest of the Music Is Love team, it's not about the vibe, the gear, or even the star power, because at Music Is Love, all are created equal. So ahead of the second show for their residency at Sankeys Manchester this Friday, we asked Oli Furness what Music Is Love is all about.
Who is behind the label and what are your backgrounds? Well, there are two owners of the label – Fletch and myself. Other than that, we have Angus Jefford who helps with A&R and events, and Sam Divine, who runs the agency connected with the label. Fletch’s background is in running events all round the world for the last 10 years, and mine is label management with absolutely no experience in that before starting Music Is Love just over a year ago.
How much is the Manchester scene an inspiration and influence on the label would you say? I wouldn’t say Manchester is an influence on the label musically really, but it’s definitely inspirational just for the people that reside in Manchester – being witness to their separate endeavours and inspired by the hard work and dedication they put in. For example the boys that run the night ZUTEKH, I remember when these guys were just starting out, and now they have a very capable brand behind them, so yeah inspiring in that way definitely
Given that there are so many new labels starting all the time, why did you start one? Why do you think you will stand out? Well, we started our label just before the ‘gold rush,’ if you will. We were planning our concepts and signing tracks in the summer of 2012, so I think we had a slight advantage on this rapid spurt on the new wave of labels. I think we stand out as we do things differently in many different ways. We hold a closed roster of artists – eight per season – so we don’t just sign people because they made one cool track. We watch our artists closely for up to and beyond 6 months, so we know that every track they make will be great. We also run in seasons, so at the start of a season we have a double vinyl called the “Lovebox” VA, which showcases a track from each of our artists, then in turn they get to expand on that initial track with an EP of their own until we are ready to rinse and repeat with the next VA.
What was the initial planning process behind the label like? Did you have a plan of how you wanted to sound? We spent a lot of time ensuring the branding of the label matched our ethos, which took around 2 to 3 months, and feel we nailed that side of things. We never planned a “sound” for our label apart from it being house music in any shape or form that we absolutely adored.
Are there any other labels really inspired or motivate you? There’s so many great labels, but I wouldn’t say any really inspired us or motivated us. This project was born out of our own love and commitment to a scene. There are of course labels that we admire and respect – SlapFunk records being one of them – but yeah, none that we wanted to emulate.
Is the format and visual identity of the label important to you? Tell us about the thinking behind that. The visual identity wasn’t the be all and end all for us, but it was something we wanted to do right. We wanted people to connect our logo with something of quality. The same was true of other solid house labels. All you needed to do was see the label and it was in the pile to buy. So we ensured our records were 180g, inner sleeves, spined sleeves... Just really exactly how a record should be packaged and made.
The thinking behind the Music Is Love logos was inspired by Keith Haring. In a way, he showed compassion and vibrancy in his painting that really reached out to us. Of course we added our own spin on things and refined that ethos into what we wanted to achieve.
What can you tell us about some of the releases so far?
Well, we’ve had seven releases now, and they were really quite organic. The artists were friends, or friends of friends who we really wanted to get behind and push into the limelight as we fully backed what they were about and what they were creating. We’ve had some fantastic support with every release being re-pressed and topping out the Juno Records charts several times.
What are you looking for in the music you release – is it a certain sound, vibe, bit of kit, or more about the persons who made it?
There is no defined definition to what we release as long as it’s high grade and something we have no second thoughts about, something we completely adore after the first 30 second of hearing it. I think if you look too much into capturing a vibe, you lock down the potential for releasing something that is a break from the norm. So yeah, literally just music we love.
Are you someone who gets involved with the music – asks for edits, changes and the like – before releasing it, or do you put it out as the artists intended t to be originally? Yeah, I mean we do offer an opinion of some kind if we think there’s an oversight on someone’s part. This is never a demand, but a mutual respect for the music in front of us and to try and squeeze every ounce of goodness out of it. We do have a very loose hold on this though. If that’s the artist’s true intention, we discuss and look at it on both sides and see how it ends up.
Are relationships with artists important, or is it just about the music? The relationships with the artists are just as important as the music for us. Like I said, we only push people we truly believe in, and have found that the music goes hand in hand with that. We have all of our artists on our MIL artists roster as well to try and push these artists – not just on the release front – but also to try and showcase their DJ and live sets, as that for us is the deal: a full commitment to each and everyone on our roster. There are no stars or favourites, equality equals a stronger bond I think.
You recently started a sub label, right? Why, and how will it differ from the main label? Yeah, we are really excited about the sub label, which is called M.I.L. It gives us the chance to release music with a certain sonic awareness behind it, something that mirrors the bookings for our recently launched residency at Sankeys in Manchester. The first EP is a real mixture of tones and textures, but all tied together by high-grade production values. It’s a side project that fits hand in hand with Music Is Love, and we feel it’s a great extension of our brand.
What have you got coming up that you’re looking forward to? We have got the first release of the sub label – a four tracker by a wicked up and coming producer Colman Buckley, then we have a four track EP form me on Music Is Love. Then after that we have a very special collab EP with Red Bull Studios showcasing one of our favourite artists at the moment. This will have its own artwork and be a complete one-off for us, which is turning out great. Also, along side that we have our residency at Sankeys in March – we have Moodymann, Levon Vincent, Delano Smith, Wbezza and some MIL artists. So as you can imagine I’m counting the days ‘til that party, it will no doubt be absolute madness!!!
Where do you hope the label will be in 5 years time? Honestly, in 5 years, if we are still ploughing away at this, I would like to have spread the brand across the globe, showcasing our parties at our favourite clubs. I would like the agency to well established and trusted, and would like the label to still be doing its thing, but hopefully in a way that we can spread the love to more and more people
Nice one.