IMPRINTS: Donky Pitch

Imprints brings you weekly profiles of the most exciting independent record labels the world over, written by movers and shakers from within their own electronic music communities.

Name: Donky Pitch
Vibe: Fringe-y dance music with swag. Weird tempos. Fancy footwork.
Founded: 2009
Location: Brighton, UK
Claim to fame: Name one other thing that comes from Brighton.
Upcoming releases: Tokyo Hands's EP, out September 16, The Range'salbum, out October 14, and a Ghost Mutt EP.
By the numbers: The label has released 10 EPs and 1 label compilation.
Artists-to-watch: The Range, 813, Keyboard Kid

What's the deal:
The Donky Pitch story makes starting a record label sound totally easy and natural, like the most logical thing you could do (we can tell you from experience, it typically is not). David Grinnell and Pete Taylor always dug weird, genreless future beats, but sleepy Brighton couldn't accomodate, so they started their own party series to make the sounds of their URL dreams a reality. Within six months they had hosted artists like Blue Daisy, Tokimonsta, and Rekordah, figureheads of Donky Pitch's post-Flying Lotus experimental hip-hop sound. The party became a radio show that turned into a record label with artists as far flung as Rhode Island, Berlin, North Carolina and London.

Although for the most part they still fly under the radar, expect Donky Pitch to start making big moves as we round out this year. Rhode Island-based producer The Range will release his first album Nonfiction on October 14—his last EP Seneca was blessed with remixes from Obey City, Howse, and Supreme Cuts. Lil B collaborator, North Carolina resident Tokyo Hands also has a record on the way, and the unreleased cuts have already been circulating among the scene's tastemaking DJs.

THUMP: Explain the name.
Pete Taylor: Dave already had the name and an early version of the logo when I first met up with him to talk about throwing some parties. It was silly enough to get people's attention and I liked the image of the donky straight away, it's great to have an image that is immediately recognizable.

David Grinnell: I was throwing names around with my mate Oly, who designed the original logo—he sent over the donkey image, which had smaller ears in the beginning, but we intentionally made them bigger to make it more goofy, like the music we were trying to promote. The word "donkey" just looks crappy when it's written so we dropped the e. I wanted a two-word name so we added Pitch because it sounded nice. I wish it was a more exciting story.[ed's note: it remains to be seen whether the name is related to "putting a donk on it."]

What's the scene like in Brighton? 
Pete: It's a bit disappointing still to be honest. Most nights are either typical cheese or cheese presented ironically in some kind of attempt to be cool. There are a few parties that sit outside of electronic music that interest me, but most electronic music club nights here are all house music or lowest common denominator dance stuff. Not many people take risks with their line-ups still sadly, which is understandable when you know how tough it is to make a success out of promoting here.

Dave: Our friends at Be Nothing do some really cool shows. It's mostly gigs but cool shows nonetheless—leftfield music of all genres, some bands, some electronic music. We hooked up with them for our Lapalux and Ryan Hemsworth parties. Outside of that, Pete's right, there's a lot of house nights, which slowly but surely replaced the run of the mill dubstep parties of '09-10. Manni Dee, Alphabets Heaven and a few other guys started up a night a while back, I was really pleased that someone else in town was doing something else I was really into. Hopefully they'll keep at it because at the moment if I go to a club it's more likely to be in Bristol or London.

What's your favorite label that isn't your own: 
Pete: I would have to say for consistency, not having an easily definable sound and for breaking more interesting acts and genres than most I can think of, Planet Mu. I have pretty broad tastes in electronic music and Mu caters for almost all of them. Every release deserves at least a listen and a majority make their way into my collection permanently. To be a label that releases music from acts as varied as newcomers John Wizards to people like Remarc, Ital Tek, Terror Danjah, Kuedo, Traxman and too many others to mention here, deserves total respect. And to maintain their relevance throughout such a long time in operation is a real inspiration and influence.

Dave: Tough question. I think I'd have to go back to deFocus that stopped pressing in 2002, putting out oddball electronica from producers like Lackluster, CiM or Tim Koch. A friend of mine put me onto them and I immediately bought up a bunch of 12"s that I'd missed, and then the excitement of seeing that logo up on the shelves in the record shop was something else. Knowing it could be the most special bit of electronic music I'd ever heard. I've got doubles of some of those records and I still go back to them ten years on. I barely used the web back then so when the records stopped appearing on the shelves, that was it, a mysterious exit. It wasn't until I clocked onto Discogs a few years later that I realized they'd stopped for sure.