As the legendary house label’s 25th year draws to a close, CEO Wez Saunders and General Manager Simon Dawson break down the inception and creation of its retrospective tome and ambitious collaborative box set.
—
—
Sustaining a record label for a quarter of a century is no mean feat and few labels have weathered the storm quite like Defected Records, the legendary UK house label founded by Simon Dunmore in 1999. Ask anyone who has managed a label about the realities of such a venture and they’ll likely focus on the highs, but a new book celebrating Defected’s 25th anniversary offers a refreshingly candid insight into the moments that have defined the label’s history.
Home to tracks from the likes of Soulsearcher, Roger Sanchez and Bob Sinclar in its early days, Defected quickly developed a reputation as one of the most respected brands in house music. Under the leadership of CEO Wez Saunders, who assumed the role in 2022, it’s a reputation that continues to endure to this day.
“It’s become more than just a label to me,” Saunders explains. “It’s a way of life now for me. It really represents a community and culture that I completely resonate with. Defected has always stood for quality and authenticity and a genuine love for house music. It’s really about uniting people through music. For me, it’s a place where I have grown both personally and professionally and I think it’s fair to say that the label has become part of my identity too and I’m sort of super proud of what we’ve achieved together.”
For General Manager Simon Dawson, Defected’s 25th anniversary represented an opportunity to reflect on the label’s storied history.
“There are people who have been with us since 1999 who are of a certain age – similar to myself – who like buying records and like buying books,” Dawson states. “And then it was like, ‘Okay, so what’s it gonna be about? How are we gonna do it?’ It’s 25 years. We need to talk about the music. We need to talk about the parties. We need to talk about the history – how it started, the artwork, and we just made a shopping list of everything that needed to be covered.”
—
—
It was clear from the outset that the voice of people at the heart of the Defected experience would be vital to telling the story. Working with writer Nick Gordon Brown, an approach was agreed upon that would see the creation of a book charting the label’s history across 25 chapters, each told through conversations with staff past and present, as well as artists, producers, label associates and fans.
”At first, we weren’t going to do 25 years in 25 chapters, although that now sounds absolutely logical,” Dawson laughs. “We thought we’d end up interviewing a load of DJs for one bit and then a load of clubbers for another bit. But actually, why don’t we just interview everybody and then weave their stories throughout 25 chapters? So the 25 chapters came about halfway into the process of putting the book together… Conceptually, it was right there in front of us, but we were so blinded by the fact that we were like, ‘Fucking hell, how are we gonna do this?’”
Soon enough, the idea for ‘25 Years In The House’ was born. But with two and a half decades of history to delve into, where do you even begin?
“Nick and I were just like, ‘Fuck it. Let’s just start interviewing people, and we’ll see what we get. When we’ve got those core interviews done, we’ll then know which ways we want to go and who to interview next.’ And the list grew and grew… We wanted to make sure that voices were heard. It’s lots of quotes, and we tied it together to make sure it’s a cohesive thread. We felt that the reader wanted to hear what Simon Dunmore, Louie Vega and Roger Sanchez had to say, or what the person on the dance floor had to say, rather than a journalist’s opinion on Defected.”
—
—
Founder Simon Dunmore’s involvement was integral to the project. From initial conversations that would inform the book’s direction to an extensive archive of material that he had started to compile during the label’s early days, his input would go on to shape the project.
“Simon was amazing at cataloguing, photographing and videoing everything,” Saunders explains. “Even though the quality control has changed significantly, there’s been a common thread in a lot of what we’ve done over the years.”
Surprisingly enough, despite giving multiple interviews and sharing countless candid accounts of the label’s history for the project, Dunmore was so trusting of the team’s vision for the book that he declined the offer to proof the final product.
“Because 23 chapters of the 25 are about his work and his life, we were like. ‘Do you want to read it? Do you want to proof it?’” Dawson recalls. “He was like, ‘No, I don’t want to read it.’ And we were like, ‘So you’re happy for us to put this out and not okay it?’ And he was like, ‘I don’t want to do it. I kind of trust you’ll get it right.’ So Nick and I were like, okay, this is now going to be in print. It’s about your life’s work. If this is incorrect and you’re not happy with it, then you’re going to be unhappy with it for a long time. It was very intimidating, but I feel that we’ve spoken to the right people and there would be very little for him to be unhappy about.”
The book’s 25 chapters, which chart everything from the label’s first heady ventures in Ibiza through to times of financial uncertainty, the inception of its Glitterbox nightlife brand and the challenges posed by the pandemic, acted as a guide for where the visual components would sit. With over 25 years of press photos, flyers, record sleeves and other design ephemera, the Defected company servers offered up a goldmine of materials to sort through.
The process wasn’t without its challenges, however. High res club photography, which had adorned the pages of long-since shuttered print publications, stood at odds with low res photos of the late 00s – an era where entire years were chronicled in little more than Facebook galleries. Elsewhere, the label’s very first logo had to be redrawn from scratch, while entries in the label’s early discography were photographed using physical copies from the archives – their early digital designs lost to the passing of time.
“There’s a kind of a design black hole, as I like to say, between ‘99 to 2013 where Defected went through a lot of visual changes,” Dawson muses. “We changed logos a number of times. We changed what our sleeves look like. We changed what our flyers looked like. We were going through a bit of an inconsistent period, which kind of followed on the same trajectory as the rise of EDM. There wasn’t a kind of house music mission statement, as it were, in the company.”
The early 2010s would see Defected undergoing a significant makeover, courtesy of designer Trevor Jackson, who has worked with the likes of labels such as Ninja Tune and Warp and artists such as LCD Soundsystem and Massive Attack over the past three decades. As the creative lead on the label’s iconic ‘We Are Defected’ campaign, he helped usher in a new visual identity, which remains an integral part of the Defected brand to this day.
“Trevor has been involved for a long time, and having that continuity has helped,” Saunders explains. “When you look at Defected from the beginning, Simon Dunmore’s vision was always centred around really bold colours and typography. We wanted to continue that, whilst giving it a fresh, new feel, to celebrate the past, present and future. That was the brief, really, for Trevor Jackson: how do we continue to do what we do, but look fresh, new and different?”
—
—
In addition to working on the book, Jackson was also responsible for designing the label’s ambitious ‘Together’ box set, a 13-disc vinyl collection that pairs many of the label’s stalwarts with rising talent.
“We were trying to create something that was a true celebration of the Defected sound,” Saunders explains. “With it being the 25th anniversary, we felt it was very important to try to pair up artists that we’d worked with for a long time, with artists that we’ve been working with quite a lot in the near term, but also that we want to work with in the future. So it was really important to carefully curate each release, and we tried to balance out originals and remixes, and in some instances, new collaborative versions of the catalogue. Partnering with the artists was about honouring the diversity and talent within our roster, and consider the strengths and unique sounds of each artist and try to create a series that reflects the depth and breadth of Defective musical influence, past, present and future.”
“It was really important to try and fuse history and future of the label together,” Saunders continues. “The idea was it was going to be 25 legends, 25 new school acts together to make 25 brand new records – 25 brand new productions. Inevitably with an anniversary, people came to us and said, ‘I’d love to remix X, Y and Z from the catalogue.’ So as the project developed, we included more remixes. I would have liked it to have been purely 25 new future classics, but I think it’s a great little thing anyway.”
While celebrating the past remains hugely important, the 25th anniversary celebrations also represent an opportunity to look to the future, maintaining Defected’s status as both a leader and pioneer within wider dance music culture.
“One of the big challenges that we face every year is to try to introduce new audiences whilst retaining our existing audiences,” Saunders adds. “And the challenge with that is that people nowadays stay committed to brands for a longer period of time than I think they perhaps did in previous generations. I mean, my mum and dad lost interest in the things that they grew up with as part of their youth culture as soon as they had children. That doesn’t really happen anymore. People are still able to continue to stay involved with or connect with the things that they grew up with. So being a voice of authority in that space and trying to talk to those people while educating new generations is really important. It’s something that we take really seriously.”
—
—
25 Years in the House and Together are both available to purchase direct from Defected.
Words: Paul Weedon // @paulweeedon
—
