Greco-Roman have consistently pushed beautiful electronica that sways gracefully left of centre. The journey began back in 2006 when Joe Goddard from Hot Chip, Alex ‘Full Nelson’ Waldron and Dom Mentsh started a bunch of parties that would eventually flourish into a record-releasing outfit. Since then, names like Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Valentina and Disclosure have dropped releases on the label. There’s now a compilation of their best releases to to treasure, featuring a heap of remixed jewels on the B-side. Today, we premiered a brand new video by Tirzah & Micachu coming out on the label. We caught up with the founders to talk about the house music zeitgeist, letting mums decide their releases and their enviable discography.
Annons
Noisey: So, have you always been admirers of the soundsystem culture? Dom: It’s interesting. Coming from a club promotion background and DJing with my friends, it was a really important concept. The whole name was about an ethos. Getting a group of people coming together, so resident DJs who aren’t involved in the label are just as much part of it as the people we sign. The whole ethos is the evolution of it in a really weird round about way because it’s about our team celebrating the musical form.Throughout the whole Greco discography, there are lovely splashes of tropical flavour. When it comes to choosing a release, what are the main elements that you look for?Dom: We do it purely by democracy and we have a love for records. There are a million experiences – we had one today – where people send us some music and we’re not into it. You can fight and challenge for it and It might sway, but ultimately you know you’ve got a good record when the three of us all go yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s very rare. We don’t put out as many records as most people would think but we’ve had the ability to put out more than we have purely for that reason. Alex’s mum, she’s our secret weapon. We’ll pick it and then he plays it to his mum, genuinely. She’s basically the top A&R.Alex: Honestly you’ve got to get out of London and it’s not just geographically but it’s also age. You’ve got to get completely out to get an objective decision that could be good or not. And my mum calls it every single time.
I was hoping there would be a dancing test but mum wins.
Alex: We’re not looking for a particular genre, if you listen to the compilation we put out, it’s all loosely electronic, most of the records have vocals, left of centre pop music but nothing cheesy. Other than that, it’s quite hard to pin down really. We all met at Island Records years ago which is a varied major label with a great legacy of quite inspiring pop and electronic music. When you live in London and listen to so many different things it’s quite hard to channel anything from one particular genre.
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That’s very evident on Valentina’s Wolves EP, which seemed like a deviation from what you’ve gone for in the past.
Joe: It’s more leftfield, more jazzy.
Dom: I suppose it still has electronica influences but that was more to put it in a place. The whole concept was that she’s not an electronic artist, she’s a singer/songwriter and putting her and Joe together with “Gabriel” was taking the concept of that and putting it into something different. Combining it to make something amazing. That was a very different thing. She knows nothing about house music so it was new to her. How do you make a record that will fit into Greco-Roman? Well, she has a friend called Kwes who we’ve worked with previously and he’s like a mad professor genius of music. So, it still feels that there is a theme there but we have deviated from straight club records. That’s all right, because we’re just into good music.
How do you feel about the current commercialisation of house music in particular?
Alex: I'm sick of listening to deep house. I worked in Berlin for 7 years and I was bored of it 7 years ago.
Dom: Ministry Of Sound Deep House Classics Volume 15.
Alex: The thing is, this happens with every genre. It’s not just a house thing. I think it’s good that electronic records are getting lots of radio play; it’s good for us because we put out records that are similar to that.
Joe: It’s good for Larry Clark and Kerri Chandler but whenever anything is the sound then you get a bit tired of it. It feels like it’s time for something else, but if I was in the right mood at the right time then I’d still be into it. I get a bit tired of it on the radio. But 4AM somewhere, I could still enjoy it.
Absolutely. What’s the story behind the motto: “We make colourful music because we dance in the dark”?
Alex: I don’t know where the name comes from, maybe I wrote on a flyer and we’ve always had a real problem describing what we do because not many people know what we do. At the start we never had any flyers, we just had the Olympic rings. The first six records, Greco-Roman aren’t written on there. We had a guy come and work with us as an assistant in Berlin and he was like “none of my friends know what Greco-Roman is” so we had that to describe what we do because I don’t think we really knew. Until two years ago things were pretty shambolic and random. Everyone likes it except Joe.
Joe: I’d really like it to be noted that I don’t like the title.
And will Greco-Roman continue to do vinyl?
Alex: We had a little blip when we couldn’t do it. It’s really hard to even break even with vinyl especially when you do nice, big colourful sleeves, which is what we wanted to do. There was no Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs vinyl, which was a shame, but we’ve now got a really good distributor and I think it’s really important even if it’s only a few sales it’s the right people buying it. We’re releasing a whistle with the compilation. There’s a limited edition raver’s whistle.
I like that. So in terms of the future, what’s coming up with Greco-Roman?
Joe: There’s a lot scheduled. The one that I keep raving on about is this kid called TCTS. There’s this really excellent track that Dom introduced me to which is really cool just because it has all the elements I really like in terms of a Greco release. It’s a club track but it’s a bit unusual. I think if it came on in a club at the right time people would really like it.
Alex: We’ve got the Tirzah record, which is on the compilation. She’s cool, sassy and the EP is produced by Micachu. She’s got this crystal clear vocal and they sit really well together.
Dom: We’ve got another Valentina project coming in October.
Annons
Cool, thanks for your time guys.Greco-Roman release their compilation We Make Colourful Music Because We Dance In The Dark on August 12. It can be purchased from iTunes here. Their latest release, I’m Not Dancing EP, comes from Tirzah and is released on August 5 2013. You can also order it from iTunes here. Meanwhile, watch Tirzah and Micachu's new track, below.
