XL before Adele: The beginnings of one of Britain’s biggest dance labels

You know what people fucking love? Aside from, like, pictures of cats. Fucking, Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’. And anyone who tells you different is a damned dirty liar. I mean “We were born and raised in a summer haze / bound by the surprise of our glory days”…come on, what a line! Every time I hear it I just want to have my photograph taken in monochrome silhouette, while smoking a cigarillo, while regaling passersby with stories of lost love. In French.

But you know who really REALLY fucking loves Adele’s “Someone Like You”. XL Recordings. You see, after some bright spark at the label saw something in the mad teen Adele and duly signed her ass, XL were rolling in it. Like, we went round there the other day and the car park is proper wall-to-wall Lambos.

Of course, it wasn’t always like this. Out on the 25th of August, two-disc anniversary retrospective Pay Close Attention is brimming with the dance output XL made their name with. The double album contains a selection of the label’s early rave tracks, with breakbeats that’d have your average Adele fan reaching for the Diazepam.

Where were you in ’92? Probably listening to The Prodigy’s still ludicrous-sounding “Out Of Space”, featured here on disc one, or perhaps you were more into the trio of Slipmatt, Jay J and Lime whose proto-jungle summer anthem ‘On A Ragga Tip’ charted in ’92 at No.2 in the UK. The compilation continues with Liquid’s ‘Sweet Harmony’ – ‘ardcore at its most soulful – followed by Awesome 3’s ‘Don’t Go (Kicks Like A Mule Mix)’: built for the charts and dead cheesy. It’s notable how important many of these tracks were in the rave canon. 

From the other end of the 90s you’ve got the darkside d’n’b of Jonny L’s “Piper”, Nu-Birth’s underground house staple “Anytime” and Dem 2’s “Destiny”, an early example of UK garage. 

In a Noisey back-and-forth between XL Boss Richard Russell and Damon Albarn from April, Russell pondered the label’s evolution from rave upstart to indie empire: “Just like no one saw Blur coming, it’s like my little rave label, what it became, no one saw that coming. It wasn’t even the best rave label. Shut Up And Dance were better, Suburban Bass were better.”

Celebrating “the key releases and moments from XL’s 25 year history”, the compilation, named after the “Out Of Space” Kool Keith sample, will be released as a 4 x LP vinyl box set that includes a bonus DVD and poster, as well as a 2 disc CD format and download. M.I.A, Tyler, The Creator, Radiohead and Vampire Weekend are just some of the other artists featured. Then it’s back to Adele for the closing “Rolling In The Deep”, which isn’t as good as “Someone Like You” but hey, what is?

Pre-order Pay Close Attention here

You can follow John Calvert on Twitter here: @JCalvert_music

More XL stuff on THUMP/Noisey:

Damon Albarn x Richard Russell – Back and Forth

We Looked Back on All 27 of Basement Jaxx’s Singles – and They’re Fucking Brilliant