it’s the dream isn’t it? all of us bloggers, music fans and unsigned bands long to start our own record label… spend our days approving cover art, our evenings scouting bands and the rest of the time listening to new and exciting music. for david west and his friend rich, this is exactly what they did. they started art is hard records. i caught up with david (well, if a few emails back & forth counts as catching up) to find out if the reality of starting a label lives up to the dream.

the beginning
“well i originally decided i wanted to start the label about a year ago. i think there comes a point where you realise you can only do so much moaning on your rarely read music blog about how much it sucks being in a good band in the south west. then rich got given a book by his gran for christmas. like ‘the dummy’s guide to starting a record label’ or something. i’m not sure he ever read it but it was that and him meeting up with his one time babysitter, mark stewart (name drop), that really spurred us on to do something.

“i think it probably sounds a bit like i’m talking exclusively in cliches, but the label really was just a natural progression from putting on gigs, writing blogs and being in our own rubbish bands that weren’t going anywhere.”

the inspiration
“we’re both really inspired by the output, ethics and community feel of labels such as factory, dischord and anticon. i’m not sure what labels are really supposed to do but we’re just trying to share all these great bands who don’t normally get a look in because there’s no o2 venue or something like that in the south west.”

the now
“me and rich are both actually students. i’m on my placement year at the moment so instead of being able to spend loads of hours a day sitting in my room sending emails with stupid subjects to try and get mojo magazine’s attention; i work 5 days a week at the local council, photocopying big reports and then come home and spend 2 hours a night trying to run a record label. it’s pretty stressful.

“i think to be fair, we’ve barely got our hands dirty yet. we seemed to be making no progress for like half a year then one day i just decided i would actually pay to get some t-shirts printed and then it was a bit like “shit we’ve spent this money on something that won’t really appeal to anyone, we better actually do something.” moral of the story, spend money that you can’t afford to if you want to get motivated. we haven’t had to pay for any barcodes or distribution or anything like that yet, but I think when we do things will start getting pretty confusing.”

the ones that got away
“twice we have chased people and been unsuccessful. its been a quick no, which obviously makes you feel pretty bitter. it’s almost like being in year 9 again and liking a girl for ages and then her turning you down when you finally build up the courage, hopefully we’ll come out the other side of puberty looking hunky and they’ll come running (fanzine and hocus tocus).”

the future
“we’re taking things pretty slowly at the moment but we just want to carry no releasing artists we love on interesting formats (cliche no. 3). we’ve got aih002 lined up and it’s going to be on 7″ but obviously not just a 7″. we’re going to tell people about it a month after our first release date, so keep your eyes open on october 13th.”

so there you have it. still want to run your own record label? i do. i’ll leave you with david’s other aim. “i’d love to be able to learn to play drums so i can play along with the outro to cycle schmeichel’s ‘bitchin’ like some sort of lucky roady.”