Departing from
Cherry Red and after a short involving with
Blanco Y Negro (Warner bros) legendary indie guru, artist and label man
Mike Alway founded
EL RECORDS, perhaps at first as a home for artists who were too "strange" to sign straight in major label.
The first numbers were really amazing: the SHOCK HEADED PETERS, MOMUS, VIC GODDARD, MONOCHROME SET albums & singles demostrated the start of a really different approach: diverse & unsual, while new artists joining the label (
Louis Phillipe, Simon Turner, Would-Be-Goods, Marden Hill, Anthony Adverse, Always...) defined
El`s characteristic profile of stylism, eclectisism, intellectualism, weirdness, englishness, loungness, pseudosnobbism, "imaginary fashion" following, retro, amateurlike sound.... and other eccentrities.
El Records was a backlash to the middle-eighties death of indie electric form, a backlash to dark, warmless, freshless, miserable, stupid post punk situation...
Due to its peculiar image,
El Records had neither underground nor overground recognition (apart from Japan), soon was taken over by
Cherry Red (1989) and declined... receiving (as expected) some afterdeath cult status honours.
Nowadays, as a subsidiary label of
Cherry Red,
El has been releasing good retro material, still diverse and often surprisingly great.
See Mike Alway interviewed about El Records story at :
http://www.cherryred.co.uk/el/
This work captured perhaps better than any other el release the nature of this label. Immature and experienced, weird and light, innovative and simple, funny and very girlish... Just two young girls and his madjesty the King of Luxembourg (Simon Turner)...
