Dissident shuts up shop

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    Fri, Nov 27, 2009, 11:50
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  • Andy Blake has decided to fold the imprint after a prolific two-and-a-half year run.
  • Dissident shuts up shop image
  • The London-based imprint Dissident, known for its limited, vinyl-only releases, is set to close. As you may recall, Andy Blake and his Dissident imprint featured on these pages back in March as our label of the month. Although things seemed rosy around that time, Blake came across as man who would not swerve making a difficult decision. As it turns out, the imprint will go down simply as victim of time constraints. As Blake explained in an e-mail statement today, other projects played a large contributing factor in Dissident's closure. "I guess the main reason behind me moving on is that I'm busy running the World Unknown night in Brixton every month with Joe and Duncan and being asked to DJ all over the place and if I continued trying to run Dissident as well I'd quite possibly end up making a bit of a balls of everything." "When I started the label back in 2007 the whole point was that it wasn't in any sense a 'proper' record label," he continued, "it was just a way to get music out quickly on the highest sound quality format for clubs and DJs and play a tiny part in trying to help the independent record shops and distributors by staying faithful to the vinyl format when it seemed that virtually everyone was throwing the towel in and going digital." Releasing records from the likes of Ali Renault, Gatto Fritto and Photonz among many others, Dissident managed to crank out an impressive 60-plus releases over a two-and-a-half year period, while traversing disco, house, Balearic and beyond.
RA