Clash Guest Blog: Chess Club Records (DAY 1)

Hello!

Before we go into a proper blog, I thought I would just explain what we do at Chess Club and give a brief history of the last three years to those of you who don’t know who we are.

It all started out with DJ sets around London. With a load of help from Young & Lost Club and everyone at FROG club, we eventually started running our own nights at The Fly in Central London and after a year, moved it to The Social, a 10 minute walk down the road. Our aim has always been to host intimate gigs that people would never forget. Our favourites having been MGMT, Damon Albarn, Bon Iver, Noah and the Whale, Florence and the Machine, Lykke Li and Friendly Fires, who all played to our 110 capacity crowds. People cried at Bon Iver, people hurt themselves dancing at MGMT... it's always fun.

Somewhere along the line we managed to start our record label, which has become the main priority over the last year. Releasing bands such as White Lies and Mumford & Sons among many others. We specialise in pressing limited-edition vinyl copies of our records and only sign bands for single or EP deals. We are now on our seventeenth release with many more planned for the future. We aim to make them all unique, allowing bands to use their own artwork and have free reign over everything creative. We also release bands from every type of genre, trying not to restrict ourselves too much. It is an eclectic mixture of noises that we hold in our stable but despite the musical variations, every band we work with seems to become part of our collective, sharing similar views on everything, not just music.

Anyway, that is a brief overview of who we are. There are only three of us, we live in London and we love music. I just returned from Great Escape Festival and am not feeling too fresh. The rest of the week will be far more interesting , I promise! We’ve got some great tips for you; some mp3s and exclusive photographs and videos... great times.

I leave you with two Chess Club exclusives. The only photographs of MGMT’s first UK show (on a camera phone).

And a beautiful video of Bon Iver.