Catskills Records
Celebrating 20 years of bringing the spirit of independent sounds to the world, we caught up with label bosses Khalid & Amr Mallassi to talk about their label and the new compilation 20 Years of Victory!. These are the good people who have brought you classics from Husky Rescue, Drop by Bushy, Featurecast, Black Grass, Sonorous Star, to the everything & the kitchen sink approach of anything goes fun heard on hits from Pepe Deluxé.
Catskills Records carries on the spirit of independence by supporting artists & their art that extend beyond the norms & conventions that radio, commercial adverts & more propagate. Catskills remains a place for free-spirited artists alike to find a refuge for their visions where folks like Husy Rescue bring about a psychic sense of warmth that extends into the extra sensory channels of relaying thoughts & understanding. Join us after the jump for our interview with the Catskills operators Khalid & Amr Mallassi.
Take us back to the beginning of how Catskills first began with the single “Indian Motorcycles” by your group Sonorous Star & how everything was set into motion from that point forward.
Like everything we did then, and everything we do now too, we went into making music with a that cocky “We have no idea what we’re doing” type attitude. We liked Hip Hop and we thought we had a little something different to offer. We also decide to start a record label at the same time with that same attitude. Somehow, it seems to have worked out for the last 20 years!
From Husky Rescue to Pepe Deluxé; tell us about various stand out releases & moments that you two will always remember.
Okay…four albums if that’s okay. Pepe Deluxé’s first album Super Sound since it introduced us to our lovely, silly Husky & Pepe friends from the land of Finland and allowed us a glimpse into the madness of the music business when their track “Before You Leave” was used in a world-wide Levis advert and licensed by Sony in 2001. Limos, pool parties and trips around the world followed…for a while. Husky Rescue’s first album Country Falls since it felt like such a beautiful grown up record and I couldn’t believe we were actually releasing it. When it was first released we sold 29 fucking copies! We didn’t panic since we believed the music was brilliant so we kept pushing the album over 18 months and eventually it went on to do pretty damn well. The pinnacle was watching Husky Rescue play live on the side a of a Swiss mountain in the middle of a blizzard. It made us feel like a real record label. Hardkandy’s second album Last To Leave. It truly encapsulated what it’s like to be in your 30s and starting to realize that things are starting to catch up with you and dark peak into a 4am world of excess. Black Grass’s debut album Black Grass since it was a perfect and authentic collection of everything that was good about dance music at the time. Quality from start to finish.
Challenges to running an independent imprint?
Money, money, money! We like to think big and never let our sound be pigeonholed into one style or one genre, and to do that you need to push each artist as a separate thing which requires…money. We try to act like a major record label without even a small percentage of their budget, we figured if majors can release anything from shitty pop records to Sigur Ros or Talking Heads then so can we, but it’s always a balancing act because we can’t really compete with the finances of a major label. We have an ethos that we try to make enough money for us and the artist to make another record, so we make sure we do the best we can by just having better and bigger idea than the competition.
Benefits of being an independent label?
The artists can pretty much do whatever they want. We’ve set it up that way so that we’ll let the artists go where ever they want musically. I don’t think a group like Pepe Deluxé—who had, and continued to have, many major labels etc after them over the years—would have stayed with Catskills if we didn’t let them just have fun and make great music. They went from a three man DJ crew that used an insane, and legally suspect, amounts of samples to a prog-rock band that make crazy concept albums with no samples and mad instruments from around the world—including the world’s biggest instrument, the Stalacpipe Organ built into the inside of the Luray Caves in Virginia—Google it! We like to think that isn’t possible anywhere but at an Indie label like Catskills.
What have you all learned from these past 20 years?
Industry rule number four thousand and eighty: Record company people are shady! But…we’re not really. We hope. Also, don’t wait for anyone else to make a decision for you. Always buy toothpaste at the airport. Hotels have shower gel, soap, hair dryers but no toothpaste ever.
What’s next in the works for Catskills Records?
More great music! We’re already cooking up a new album from Pepe Deluxé (their first since 2012!) which is always a pleasure—nothing beats hearing new Pepe music, they always just do their thing and the world catches up a few years later. Also, a new album from Husky Rescue next year too with a new line up just to mix it up again, a new project by Marko Nyberg and another hush hush project too.
For you two, why is it utterly important to champion the arts & artists that extend beyond the status quo & norm?
We’ve always had eclectic taste in music, from Prince to Bruce Springsteen, from Nas to The Rolling Stones, from Quincey Jones to Massive Attack, Lou Reed to KRS 1 etc etc We wanted to reflect that in the music we released and also we want to avoid getting seen as a label with only one style. Just because we’re an indie label doesn’t mean we can’t just release different kind if music and artists like a major label. We really like to release music that we love and that is usually music that isn’t obvious and comes from the margins of the mainstream. Releasing music just to make money or something cheesy that will appeal to everyone just never appealed to us, the music we loved was always challenging, difficult or just plain out there, and that’s the music that stands the test of time. We like to let our artists experiment and try new things and hopefully the music will stand the test of time too. We always dreamed that someone would pick our records up years later and then sample them and that’s amazing that that has happened a few times (The Prodigy sampled Pepe Deluxé twice, for instance), you can’t get a bigger compliment then that!
Hopes & projections for 2017 & beyond?
Sonorous Star will finally make that album we’ve been threatening to make for 20 years…nah, that’s still not gonna happen. Don’t be ridiculous!
Catskills Records‘ twentieth anniversary release comp 20 Years of Victory! is available now from the label.
