Label Focus: Up In Her Room

Following yesterday's 'Mutante' review, it seems only right to shine the spotlight on the Up In Her Room label. Up In Her Room (UIHR) is not only a label run from my home town but also by two guys I am proud to call my friends. However, I write this not from any nepotistic angle but because it is a quality label that has risen quickly to become a major player in the 'psych' scene. Since their first release, The Confederate Dead's 'Infinite Expansion' LP, the label has released some 15 top notch albums. In the space of just over 2 years they have released not 1 but 2 albums by the mighty Snakes Don't Belong In Alaska and have struck up a fine partnership with Jonathan and Alec of Dreamlord Recordings, releasing/co-releasing albums by Arboria, Wolfen, Korb, The Hologram People and of course the Mutante album (on a quick side note, the 'Return to Chapel Perilous' album by The Hologram People is possibly my favourite release of the year).

As I mentioned, the label is run by two friends of mine, Messrs Dan Norrington and Denholm Ellis. Dan was good enough to answer a few questions ... cheers Dan, I owe you a pint (or several)!

S&V: Thanks for taking the time to do this Dan. So, How did the label start?

DN: Hey Andy ah the pleasure is all mine! The label was kind of born out of necessity in a way. Like most people when covid hit a lot of our plans went up in smoke. We were in the process of planning our 3rd festival of the same name, and when the pandemic hit everything was obviously cancelled. The line-up we had almost nailed down was so good too so we were pretty gutted.
I’m not very good at being idle so needed something else to focus my energy on. The initial idea was to do everything as lo-fi as possible, small run lathe cut 7s, handmade sleeves, screen printed art, home dubbed tapes etc. But when we approached Butchy from the Confederate Dead (who’d played our first all dayer) about putting out a 7” and when he sent through a whole album, we knew it was too good not to put it out so we pulled the money together between us and that was it.

S&V: Up In Her Room seems to have really taken off in a short time – did this surprise you?

DN: It’s not something I’ve really thought about to be honest, but when somethings not gone right I do think give yourselves a break you’ve only been at it a few years. Looking back, I guess we’ve done a fair bit in a relatively short space of time.

S&V: Do you have a ‘vision’ or is it very much ‘see how it goes’?

DN: I think it’s very much see how it goes, even though challenging at times we love what we do and as long as that continues, we’ll keep on going. For me I just want to push the label as far as we possibly can, it's never been about money for us but I guess the long-time vision would be to run the label full time and still be able to support the family. Got to have a dream right!

S&V: The label can now be seen as a major player in the psych community, and it is a community. Did you receive much support and advice when starting UIHR?

DN: Wow that’s kind of you to say but we would never think that. We’ve had tonnes of support from other label heads, people we greatly respect and admire, like Al from Weird Beard, JP from Dreamlord, and of course your fine self! We take a lot of inspiration from other labels such as Cardinal Fuzz and Rocket who we’ve admired for many years. The psych community is a wonderful world which we are stoked to be a part of, we’ve met some incredible people through running the label and it definitely feels like we’ve all got each other’s back. I’ve always been fascinated by using music culture and tribalism, so it's cool to be part of something.

S&V: You run the label with Denholm (Ellis). This is a working relationship that has seen many projects. How did you two meet?

DN: We think we may have actually first met in the early 2000s when I bought an amp off an old school mate who Den happened to be living with at the time. Then again proper around 2015 when I started selling records at the local record fair, Denholm was working for Intense Records at the time who ran the fair and I guess we bonded over our love of music, vinyl, and the lack of local gigs we wanted to attend. Soon after we started putting shows on together in Chelmsford under the previous moniker WDR. We ended up putting on some pretty cool shows with bands like Frankie & The Witch Fingers, Helicon, Black Doldrums, SeRvo etc etc. This culminated in a few mini festivals before covid hit. Quite fitting that we now both work full time in different areas of the music industry, Denholm does all the booking and sound at the best venue in the land, Hot Box Live Events in Chelmsford.

S&V: How do you decide what to release? Do you reach out to artists or do they come to you?

DN: Both to be honest, if there’s a particular band that we both love and want to pursue we’ll drop them a message. We get a lot of submissions too which is always really cool for me. I find it a great honour that people trust us to release their music. There’s nothing better than hearing something that blows your mind for the first time and if we both dig something we know we’re putting it out. Generally, I’ll know before I send something to Denholm that he’s going to be into it and vice versa, then it’s just waiting for the “holy shit this is incredible” response!

S&V: The label has forged some strong links with certain bands/artists (I’m thinking Snakes Don’t Belong In Alaska and Jonathan Parkes/Alec Woods in their various guises). How did these links come about?

DN: We first met the Snakes boys in their previous line-up when they played our festival in 2019, since then we’ve kept in touch with the band and jumped at the chance to release a record with them. There’s still lots more to come from those dudes, they’re definitely pushing the boundaries of what’s possible within the psychedelic genre which is really cool to see.
I actually met Jon through the Psych Lovers FB group, and we hit it off when he contacted me about releasing the Wolfen album. Jon & Al are 2 of the most talented people I have the pleasure of knowing, and what they have achieved in the last few years with Dreamlord Recordings is incredible. To be a small part of that along the way is super cool.



S&V: UIHR is predominantly a vinyl label (with a few tapes)… with the lead-in times becoming longer and longer, the issues here in the UK with Brexshit and customs etc and the cost of producing vinyl etc , do you think the future of vinyl records is looking more and more unsure?

DN: Sadly yes. For small labels like ours the way things are going is pretty unsustainable. Lead times are starting to come down, but pressings costs are unfortunately only going in one direction which means that where small labels may have taken a chance on a release, or gone all out with vinyl effects etc it’s no longer feasible. We used to do some pretty cool effects and colour splits but it’ll probably be just single colour or black from now on. Let’s be honest though it’s what’s on the record that really matters.
With the current global situation some plants are switching to oil to combat the gas price hikes but all round it’s a pretty bleak picture to be honest with added energy surcharges etc. I don’t think vinyl will ever crash like it did back in the day but it’s certainly getting a-lot harder for the little guy. What is really cool though is that a lot of labels are doing more and more joint releases to spread the cost and the risk, it’s sad that’s it got to that point really but it means that a lot of music is still getting put out which is wicked.

S&V: What are the challenges of running a label? I know you have a young family some time must be precious?

DN: If you asked my partner, she’d say the hardest thing about running a label is the fucking cardboard everywhere haha. But yes, the main challenge is just finding the time to keep on top of everything. Our 2 kiddos obviously keep us extremely busy and I’ve recently had a complete career change so time is now even more ltd. Both Denholm and I are super busy with our day jobs and general life stuff so we don’t get to hang out as much as we’d like or used to, running the label in the very little free time I have also means I don’t get to anywhere near as many shows as I would like to.
For only been going a few years I feel we’ve also had our fair share of pressing issues and delays, so hopefully it’s plain sailing from now on.

S&V: Any artists you would love to release ?

DN: When we first started the label, we kind of had a wish list of who we’d like to work with, and we’ve been lucky enough to tick a few names off that already. But there’s literally an endless list of bands we’d love to work with!

S&V: What’s next in the pipeline?

DN: Next up we are releasing the debut album from MUTANTE which is another of the many projects from Jon & Al and was originally released on CD by the Dreamlords in 2018, so we are extremely excited to be bringing that to vinyl for the first time.
We also have a record by the incredible Ivan the Tolerable coming out in January on vinyl with an extended tape version. I saw them play at this year's Astral fest and unbeknownst to me, even though playing for years it was their first live show. Needless to say, it was unreal so I got in touch with Oli about a release. There’s also a couple of joint label releases in the pipeline which we’re really excited about, and plenty more lined up for 2023 which we can’t divulge just yet. I think we have at least 5 or 6 releases waiting in the wings.

S&V: Tricky question - If you could only listen to one album for eternity, what would it be?

DN: Oh man what a question, how can I even answer that?! There’s no way I’d want to listen to some of my favourite records for eternity haha.
I guess maybe I should say Web of Sound by the Seeds which to me is thee perfect garage psych record, also where our namesake comes from so I’m pretty biased. I’m going to say the debut album E.A.T from Holy Springs, it's a banger, go check it out.



Links:

Up In Her Room Bandcamp

Up In Her Room Facebook