Electric Selection – UNO

Charles Damga's under-the-radar, underground electronic hotchpotch

To try and classify the musical output of UNO in any sort of all-encompassing fashion is truly an exercise in futility. After working at various labels around NYC, Charles Damga took the considerable industry knowledge he had hustled and started his own label as a brilliant, under-the-radar, underground electronic hotchpotch. “I really wanted things to be pointless for pointless sake instead of for marketing sake,” says Damga. Roughly eighteen months later, it’s been a prolific and delightfully weird journey.

UNO has charted a lot of releases for such a young label, including material by glitchy R&B producer Jacques Greene, Kuwait-born New York composer Fatima Al Qadiri, rapper/performance artist Mykki Blanco, lo-fi synth twinkler/mutilator SFV Acid, future-garage/juke meddler Kuhrye-oo… The list goes on and never repeats itself, resulting in a label that represents New York in a unique way – not in its capturing of a particular scene (a concept simply too linear for UNO), but in the almost overwhelming rush of creativity that flows through the label, summing up the rabid desire to create something new that currently characterises the city’s electronic underground. “It really couldn’t live anywhere else,” says Damga. “People tend to look at my label as an amalgamation of a bunch of things that maybe have nothing to do with each other… Or maybe there’s not any mission statement. But I think in truth that is the mission statement of a great label sometimes.”

UNO ESSENTIALS
SFV ACID – ‘NEIGHBOURHOOD ARCHIVES EP’
CFCF – ‘COME TRUE’
MYKKI BLANCO – ‘WAVVY’

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