Beneath The Label: All Caps

Whilst some of us were busy wasting our youth on humanities degrees, others were putting in work on the things that actually matter. In this case it’s Glasgow-based label and DJ collective All Caps, a fledgling trio who’ve been getting all sorts of attention from UK club royalty in spite of having had just two releases. Yet anyone familiar with AC002, Helix’s Stacks Riddim, won’t have a hard time believing the hype. With a genuine love for what they do, and with their third release, Kowton’s hotly anticipated TFB, dropping in April, All Caps’ star is definitely on the rise.

Then there’s Bake, who despite a relatively short time in the game has produced a much-hailed mix for LuckyMe, gone back to back with Ben UFO on Rinse FM, and been featured on everyone’s favourite online-sweatbox tweet-party, Boiler Room. He spoke to us ahead of this month’s Pleasure Principle festival, where he and All Caps partners Ryan and Matt will be playing alongside a troupe of seasoned Weegie taste-makers, including Hudson Mohawke, Rustie, Jackmaster and Spencer.

All Caps started out as a radio show on Subcity. Later you took it forward as a label. Was there something in particular that spurred you on?
Ryan and Matt were the driving force behind the radio show. I'm not sure whether there was a particular reason to move on to a label format, other than that we wanted to contribute to something we loved, and we were getting sent the right music at the right time.

Was there a particular sound you were excited about at the time, or was it more of a general conflation of influences?
I don’t think there was any one particular sound. We all came from a dubstep background, but then as UK tastes began to shift around 08-09, we found ourselves catching up with 30 years of electronic music. So it was definitely more this bombardment of different sounds, many of which were new to us.

Stacks Riddim and the new Kowton record both have a pretty militant feel to them. Is this intentional? Can you see yourself going in a specific direction style-wise?
It’s hard to say because I don't really know, but you’re right about that militant aesthetic. I’d say it runs through the Helix and Kowton tracks because they stem from this relationship between grime and techno – two genres which share qualities that make for easy and effective crossovers. Then there’s the record coming up after Kowton by a dude called Guy Evans, which are all tracks made in the early '90s. I think the recording style lends itself to that rough, rugged nature you find in Stacks and TFB.

Any names out there who you’d be really keen to work with?
I guess an early ‘A&R tip’ would be these guys out of Vancouver that operate under the name Mood Hut. It's a group of seven guys all producing under different names, sharing studio space. The stuff they come up with is amazing. There’s also one guy from the past I would have loved to have worked with, this cat from Chicago called Gemini. He was a genius. Nobody in Chicago was doing what he was doing in the '90s.

You’re often praised for you esoteric combinations while DJing. Any thoughts on the logic behind that?
Haha, you know what, as kind as that is, I think that logic is something I'm still trying to figure out!