Label Focus: Birmingham Record Company

The Midlands is an eclectic and exciting place to live and work, and we at Birmingham Record Company choose to reflect its unique atmosphere in the music we release. We are interested in artists who challenge, innovate and transform ideas of music today. All of our releases in some way exhibit the joy of musical creativity and represent just a small amount of the immense talent in the region.

Andy Ingamells and Maya Verlaak perform Tape Piece

Based at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and with an international outlook, BRC’s releases have featured performing artists like the dynamic Dutch ensemble Orkest de Ereprijs; Swedish guitar collective Ensemble Krock; Irish duo Mary Dullea and Darragh Morgan as well as collaborations with German choreographer Sebastian Matthias and homegrown talent including clarinettist Jack McNeill, Cobalt Duo and Decibel.

We celebrate off-beat work that sits between genres. As well as 12-minute micro-operas (The Voyage on BRO001) and Country-and-Western piano quintets (Slippery Music on BRC003), listeners are just as likely to find music structured around famous football matches (Forty-Five Minutes of Music on the Subject of Football, BRC004), recordings of people struggling to free themselves from sellotape (Tape Piece, BRC009), and story-telling in yoga position (Catalogue d'Emojis, BRC006).

A selection of BRC album covers

Recent releases include CABIN FEVER (BRC014), a global composition with many collaborators, both human and technological, in which interdisciplinary composer Esmeralda Conde Ruiz distilled 10 tracks from an epic 24-hour audiovisual installation. The music is inspired by domestic sounds, pitches from kettles and washing machines, amplifying familiar noises and sounds from the homes and combined with the glitchiness associated with online performances.

Our next release is 'Aria Cuntata and the Low Miracles (BRC016) which was created around the theme of 'fake news', blending music and stories to explore our past and present through a queer lens while investigating gender, racial and socio-economic imbalance in our cultural history.

Aria Cuntata and their Keytar

You never really know what you're going to get with Birmingham Record Company, but in the words of Geoff Brown in The Times "all who live with their ears wide open may relish it".

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