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sublime frequencies - headed by alan bishop of the sun city girls; old foreign cassette tracks, radio clips, field recordings

tzadik - zorn's choice catalogue; amazing range of experimentation

empreintes digitales - fantastic electroacoustic among others

improvised music from japan - many of my favorite musicians (e.g. haco)

maybe psf records or raster-noton, sub rosa

digital hardcore - alec empire, atari teenage riot and more fuck yea
planet mu - lately they've been doing dubstep but all the venetian snares releases and u-ziq etc easily my fav electronic label
ruff-teck - dutch dnb done diy style thats usually ahead of its time by a couple years
warp - so many quality lps and releases i could go on forever
XL - never noticed how many recs i had from them besides my prodigy shit def a qual label

favs and why

Touch and Go- Steve Albini
Southern- They distirbute everything
Anticon- Doseone
Dischord- Ian MacKaye & co.
Planet Mu- Venetian Snares
Southern Lord- Boris
Drag City- King Kong

.

planet mu
sublight
addict
sprengstoff
metalheadz

dnb:
subtitles (teebee's label - consistent quality tunes)
tekdubz (photek's label - again for the same reason)
moving shadow (one of my favourites from day 1)
quarantine (fierce's label full of techy rollers)
penetration (tech itch's label - )

non-dnb:
planet mu - mad next level vibes
warp - again, mad next level vibes
ninja tune - dunno about now but it used to be sick
XL - responsible for pretty much shaping best of the mainstream uk dance music scene (and my youth!)
stones throw/rawkus - old rawkus used to be home to the best US hiphop around... and was set up by rupert murdoch's son after dropping out of harvard! haha bet u didn't know that!

Hello, where is Plug Research!!? One of my favourite labels of all time, they have like a 90% success rate. I can still remember the incredible Plug Research and Development compilation.

I like the Dutch Kindred Spirits / Rushhour stable.

The others have already been mentioned: Warp, Soul Jazz, and Kranky are awesome.

Lots of other labels which have fine music but not much variation, like all the European minimal techno labels mentioned, there are some US house labels like Theo Parrish's Sound Signature which are solid but predictable.

The best labels are the ones where you never know where they're going to come from next.

Oh yeah, another good one - Nonplace. Burnt Friedman is cool.

Good thread peeps. and MAD choices & selections.

PeaceOff Records (and all subsideries - BangARang, RUFF!, Damage) There's some breakcore heads that will actually knock PeaceOFF for whatever reasons, but you can't deny accessiblity & floor damage of the tunes pressed. A dj's label, pure and simple. Older or recent stuff, they've always been one of the best.

Skin Graft Records - for the noise, mmm.. the noise.

TRANSMAT Records - for the inspiration

SCHEMATIC - for the challenge

SOURCE DIRECT RECORDINGS - I wouldn't be the same without it.



And ditto for most other mentions in this thread!

Extreme (noise label), Vinyl Communications, DarkMatter, 430 WEST, Recordings of Subtance, Black Nation, SHOCK OUT, TRESOR, Praxis & Sub/Version, Full Watts, PEACEFROG Records, TroubleMan Unlimited, G-7 Welcoming Committee .. um..

Wow, this one is hard!
(in no order)

1) Warp - Really influential
2) Real World - Love the high quality recordings of diverse ethnic music
3) Blood and Fire - Every release crucial
4) Planet Mu - From the beginning, and still in it strong
5) TIE: Trax and Wax Trax!: cus i am a chicagoan and these are the sound of Chicago machine music

Oh, and Factory and Wackies!

Here it goes:

Type - Very consistent quality, putting out lots of things I love constantly.
Kranky - Putting out some of the most incredibly beautiful albums
Warp - You all know
Anticon - Gone off the boil a bit but I just love the whole anticon sound.
Fonal - Crazy weird interesting music and you know its gonna be good!

And fat cat and leaf are very good as well....