Danny and Tiff (of Rainbow Arabia) and I had been kicking around the idea of a label for a few years after the folks at Kompakt, who released their first LP, suggested it to us. The original plan was it would be more focused on off- kilter dance releases, an idea we quickly abandoned. While we had a few releases ready to go that fit the bill, it took us so much time to get our shit together and save the money to actually do this that we kind of just sat on the idea for another year before launching. By the time we were ready to go at the end of 2011, we had all outgrown the idea of trying to steer it towards any niche thus informing the eclecticism and that element of surprise the label strives to embody.
All three of us are incredibly luckily to know so many talented musicians/artists, that we decided that would be the most natural approach would be to work with our friends first and expand from there as there was no shortage of great music coming from them. With just a couple exceptions, everything we've released so far is from someone we've known IRL before.
For me hearing new songs from the Detroit-based Zoos of Berlin was what lit that fire underneath me to put that first release in action, I couldn't believe another larger label hadn't taken a chance on these guys yet. Their music is so smooth and smart, familiar and timeless but not really sounding like anyone else. It just didn't seem right to me that this band (who I had been a fan of for quite some time and knew from back home) could continue to fly under the radar.
After that, the releases just began coming quickly from folks Rainbow Arabia had met on tour or through shows like CHLLNGR, Nguzu, Fay and Butchy (San Gabriel) from Pit Er Pat and other folks like Coyote Clean Up who I also knew back from Michigan. Add a Castratii LP into the mix, we had a pretty intense release schedule in our first year.
While it's rad anyone is paying attention at all, it was always funny to see TNP get pegged as an “electronic” or “experimental” label in that first year, I think in 2013 we tried to show more range with all the releases having some pop angle… though admittedly a few releases are still left-of-center to some extent. We feel great about how the 2013 releases went with new LPs from Rainbow Arabia and Zoos of Berlin being well-received, and bold introductions from newcomers Yola Fatoush, Pazes, and Skin Town.
Our first release of 2014 from FAY strays from some of the more accessible trajectory of the last year, her next masterwork Deathwatch treads many of the signature avant-pop, digital tribalism, and rough-and-tumble R&B tropes of her groundbreaking (seriously groundbreaking) 2012 debut LP DIN but also widens the palette pushing elements of drone, no-wave/post-punk, dub higher into the mix. I could listen to her music forever, hearing how the unquantized rhythms tangle and untangle. It's an endlessly exhilarating adventure, and you hear something new everytime.
Also new for 2014, we started a DJ monthly at this new-ish venue in downtown LA called The Lash, where we just play techno, house, out sounds, whatever and invite a friend to DJ in the special guest slot. It's free and every third Thursday of the month.
