Novamute 2003

If it only takes a second to score a goal, and a week is a long time in politics, then nearly eleven years is a hell of a long time for an electronic music label to continue spitting out quality release after quality release in a scene that was deemed by many to be as ephemeral as distant days of acid house. But one thing that has kept novamute ahead of the game is their enthusiasm and eagerness to look far beyond the horizon into uncharted territories.

And so, in the early nineties, dance music reigned supreme. The Chicago beat that was initially tagged house had long mutated into a myriad of closely related genres as the pioneers and subsequent followers began to experiment and look beyond the rhythms that the likes of Marshall Jefferson had created. House toughened up as the folks of Detroit began to distil a tougher sound from the house beat. The likes of Derrick May and the embryonic Underground Resistance collective began to move away into rougher territories blending their own industrial take on the Chicago sound with a European sensibility drawn from years listening to Kraftwerk, Nitzer Ebb and Depeche Mode. Inevitably Mute, the home to many of the Detroit pioneers heroes, was one of the first UK labels to provide refuge for the Detroit renegades when in 1991 the label issued the X101 project by Underground Resistance. The creation of novamute was an expected move from one of the great labels of electronic music as they sought to capture and release some of the most exciting and invigorating sounds heard for many years.

The early days of novamute perfectly reflect their infant status and the nature of the scene at that time. It's difficult to imagine now, in a world where Leftfield, Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers and Underworld have all released albums to critical acclaim, that many believed during this, music's infancy, that it was essentially a singles driven scene. Although novamute now has a strong artist development policy in place, at its inception the plan was to provide an outlet for white labels and obscure European acts via licensing deals.

Consequently the artist turnover was fast and furious with single releases coming from Steve Bicknell's Lost, Unity 3, Compufonic and a UK top 50 pop hit by Elevation. A licensing deal with Berlin based label Tresor resulted in a clutch of globally released tremendously hard-hitting compilation albums that captured the sound of the Berlin underground. The albums traced the link with Detroit and the singles from this deal including the 3 Phase classic Love Parade anthem 'Der Klang Der Famille' and Detroit legend Juan Atkins link up with 3MB 'Jazz is the Teacher' became acclaimed classics as the label began to find its feet and define itself as an uncompromising and musically tough label diametrically opposed to the then (and current) trend of dumbing-down house and techno music for mass consumption.

The breakthrough came a couple of years into the label's life via an unlikely source from an unlikely country. Although the label would continue to champion the one-off single, (highlights being tracks from David Holmes trading under the moniker Death Before Disco, Bandulu off-shoot Space DJ'z, Moby's Voodoo Child moniker and LFO'er Mark Bell's Fawn project), the discovery of bespectacled Brit turned 'landed Canadian' Richie Hawtin in the unlikely backwater of Windsor, Ontario was to prove a pivotal point in the label's development. By the mid-1990's, the likes of Warp's Artificial Intelligence series (Hawtin coincidentally released an album under the guise of Fuse in this series), had begun to prove the worth and viability of albums from electronic artists. The discovery of the boy-genius allowed novamute to look beyond the single and develop a talent that was to go on to become one electronic music's pivotal pioneers.

A true innovator and musical alchemist, Hawtin perfectly embodied the novamute ethos of experimental extremism. Capturing both Hawtin and a licensin Tags