FatCat: The Purr-Fect Label

If variety is the spice of life then FatCat Records are piquant enough to have even the most resistant tastebuds burning. Established almost 20 years ago by Dave Cawley and Alex Knight, the label has developed into one of the UKs finest purveyors of musical eclecticism, etching out a pathway to success for the likes of Sigur Ros, No Age and Animal Collective.

The FatCat story began in the West Sussex town of Crawley where Knight and Cawley established an electronica-based record shop inspired by the House-bound sounds of Chicago and Detroit. Quickly realising the shop’s niche-filling potential, the duo upped sticks to London’s gold-plated streets where, over seven years, they built-up an awesome reputation amidst the movers and shakers of the capital’s music community. When The Skinny catches up with co-founder Cawley it discovers FatCat’s transformation from distributor to label owes much to the efforts of a certain Icelandic songstress:

“We’d gained some really good contacts during our time in London and one of our most valued customers was Bjork,” recalls Cawley. “She’d come down and we’d hook her up with a lot of electronic people; she’s really good like that, a kind of artistic Hoover. One day she mentioned there was a spare desk at the offices of [renowned Indie label] One Little Indian and, well, that’s really where the idea for the label started."

The concept of setting up on a whim seems preposterous in the regimented confines of today’s music industry but it’s clear that the now Brighton-based FatCat has been marching to an entirely different beat from the beginning:

“We wanted to set out with the label because we wanted to reflect our constant search for new, great music,” says Cawley. “I didn’t want a record label that people just bought, we wanted people to put our records on and either love or hate them. We wanted to provoke the sort of extreme reaction where the person who’d bought the record went ‘wow’ when they heard it.”

The ‘wow’ factor’s certainly prevalent when you cast a glance over the artists who’ve sheltered in FatCat’s sanctuary down the years but, as Cawley explains, the difficulty lies in retaining a healthy roster when cash-splashing Majors come a-knocking:

“Money is the bottom line. A lot of people may be creative and talk it up but everyone has a price and that’s taken me a long time to understand because my main goals were never about money, it was to expose talent and to let it reach the most people possible. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t have a price but what I have found is that, no matter who goes, there’s always another band, another side to the coin.”

Having recently lost both Animal Collective and No Age to larger stables, Cawley’s optimism could be mistaken for post-traumatic delusion, but with The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit stepping up to the plate it seems the label’s main strength lies in this steadfast belief in the new, no matter what the current scene-du-jour may be:

“What’s really important to us is to not lose sight of who we are and who we’re championing,” Cawley declares. “Trends or ideas that end up in the mainstream always start on the periphery and they have an incredible effect that ends up making its way out there to the public... we’ve been on the brink a number of times; we’re a small label and we’ve been in debt but we’re very, very lucky. We’ve had incredible new bands who have pulled us out and given us a new lease of life and hopefully that’ll continue for years to come.”