Would you like to tell us how the fabric and FABRICLIVE series started?
It started 14 years ago, in November 2001 – long before I started working for fabric! The club had been open for 2 years but the founders wanted to offer people a taste of the club, even if they couldn’t make it to the venue. So we started the mix series to let people hear the DJs who play at the club, and gave those artists the license to share the underground music that they would actually play. We put out a mix every month, alternating between the fabric series (which represents our Saturday night line-ups – predominantly house and techno) and the FABRICLIVE series (representing our Friday nights – a broader and generally more boisterous selection that has over the years incorporated everything from drum & bass, dubstep, breakbeat, electro, hip hop and house). The first fabric release was by Craig Richards (a CD I bought at the time) and the first FABRICLIVE release was by James Lavelle – both mixes remain timeless classics in my opinion.
How would you describe the changes the CD mixes market went through from your first releases to more recent ones?
The biggest change, of course, was that when we started, people would generally buy their music on CD. Then mp3s became widespread, and at that point piracy had a significant impact on sales and people’s attitude to paying for music. The recent rise of easily accessible free streaming, both through services like YouTube and Spotify, as well as big name DJs uploading mixes to podcasts or services like SoundCloud has changed the market again. We have sold our mixes digitally for a number of years, although we still don’t allow them onto streaming services. This is because we feel they have a greater value and more longevity than the vast number of free podcasts, which (apart from a small minority of notable exceptions) are typically forgotten within a couple of weeks. Also we actually pay the labels whose music is featured on our mixes, so giving them away for free isn’t really an option! But despite lower sales than our early years, we still maintain a sizeable and loyal fanbase (many of whom subscribe to receive all our releases through our fabricfirst membership service). I think this is because of the integrity we have kept in the series from day one. We have always maintained a high level of quality in our music, artwork and presentation – people still love to get our CDs in the embossed tins. And it is still a significant landmark for DJs to do a fabric or FABRICLIVE mix – many of them tell us it’s a dream come true when they join the series! And so they generally put a lot more effort into making a mix for our series than they would for an online mix.
Can you reveal which are the most successful fabric releases so far, sales-wise? And the ones you are most fond of, for one reason or another?
Our four biggest-selling titles are (in order of release date, NOT in order of sales) are: FABRICLIVE 01: James Lavelle, FABRICLIVE 08: Plump DJs, fabric 19: John Digweed, FABRICLIVE 22: Scratch Perverts.
These have each sold within a few hundred copies of each other. As you can see, these are amongst our earlier releases, when sales were higher for the reasons I outlined before. I am sure that many DJs who joined our series in later years would have sold equally high quantities had their releases been during the same period.
As for my personal favourites, it’s difficult pick out favourites as they all mean a lot to me. But I over the years these ones have stuck with me particularly:
Before I started to work at fabric:
fabric 10: Doc Martin – I still feel this has the best intro to any house mix I have ever heard
FABRICLIVE 36: James Murphy & Pat Mahoney – the LCD Soundsystem duo with an impeccable disco mix
Mixes I discovered after starting at fabric:
fabric 11: Swayzak – a real range of underground music with occasional pop surprises – so much character
FABRICLIVE 35: Marcus Intalex – I wasn’t a close follower of drum & bass before, but this helped me appreciate its qualities
Mixes I worked on at the label:
fabric 84: Mathew Jonson – the first in our series to be recorded live at one of our nights – truly special
FABRICLIVE 59: Four Tet – he just put so much thought into this mix, it is literally imbued with the spirit of the club
Which are the criteria you use when you choose the DJs to contribute to your series?
First and foremost, they have to play at the club regularly, or over a number of years. We don’t ask people to join the series who aren’t connected to the club. Secondly, we try and vary the styles throughout each year – so that we wouldn’t put out two techno releases, or two drum & bass releases, for example, in succession. We also try and cover a range of artists, from the biggest DJs in the world, through to supporting upcoming talent.
The graphic side and the artwork of your releases is very distinctive. Would you tell us something about the artists/designers that work at your projects and how you chose them?
For our covers, we use artwork that was previously used for our club flyers. This brings together the visual identity of the club and the label. For our mixes, we use each series of artwork every three releases. In the early years it was carried out by Village Green. Since around the 53rd/54th releases in our series we have employed an in-house designer, Roberto Rosolin (you may be interested to know that he is from Gorizia in Italy). You can see more of his work at http://www.plusyes.com.
Can you tell us something about your plans for the label in 2016 and the forthcoming releases?
In November we reached 15 years since our first release! But we will be simply continue to release mixes every month. I can tell you that the first releases next year will come from Jesse Rose, Eats Everything, My Nu Leng and Alan Fitzpatrick. We have some other very exciting artists pencilled in for later in the year, but I can’t tell you about them yet!
