Location: Lancashire and South Wales
Est: 2018
Potted History: Wormhole World began life as a music blog that three amateur reviewers, who met via Twitter, talked about setting up.
“One thing and another prevented us from starting the site up properly,” says label boss Mark Scott-Bates, “so the Twitter account just sat in cyberspace for a while. A friend of ours had been releasing material via Recordiau Prin run by Ash Cooke, aka Chow Mwng, and we said we’d like to have a go ourselves, Ash seemed pretty pleased as he was having a break from the label. He then suggested we release one of his albums and the we had one of those lightbulb moments! A few tweets ensued, and suddenly we had a lot of interest.”
Mission Statement: “The idea is that it’s a big family affair,” says Paul. “We’re concentrating on experimental and weird stuff so we’re not out for mass appeal, although it would be nice. The Wormhole logo was designed by Ash and the strapline, ‘A Good Picture Of Health’, seems to have stuck. It’s what we called the sampler album that we put out in December 2018. It sounds quite positive while being slightly ironic with the image. In a way, the Factory theology of one big collective is interesting… although we’d like to avoid the bankruptcy bit!”
Key Artists And Releases: “We’ve been very lucky to get several artists already who are keen to support Wormhole World,” offers Paul. “We won’t ‘sign’ anybody, artists are free to release just one track if they like, but we’re honoured that Chow Mwng and Tremolo Ghosts are releasing material with us and we also have experimental noise artist Xqui on board as well as Radio Europa from South Wales, who are an incredible act, and there’s spoken word artist Equinox who has worked with the likes of Vince Clarke, Reed Hays and Feral Five.”
Future Plans: The initial plan is for the label to be a self-funding project so each release generates he finance for the next project.
“If things take off then we can expand slowly,” says Paul. “It’s all about enjoying ourselves and sharing music to an audience that didn’t think there was an outlet for this kind of stuff.
“Equinox managed to be a Recommends choice of 6 Music in 2017 after being highlighted by Gideon Coe and, Xqui had a track featured on a Radio 4 arts documentary, it would be nice to repeat that sort of thing with any of the artists.”
Any Other Business? “We’re hoping people will support us either by downloading name-your-price releases via Bandcamp or buying digital and CD releases that will help fund the next projects,” says Paul. “Following us on Twitter will help raise eyebrows too.”
For more, visit wormholeworld.bandcamp.com
