Whenever there's some loopy, fuzzy, vaguely twonked out music coming out of THUMP's speakers, there's often the Donky Pitch stamp somewhere on the hind of the producer who made it. The little label from Brighton has been closely associated with the respective rises of Lockah, Slugabed, and The Range, while also stirring up appearances from Tokimonsta, Lapalux, and Shlohmo along the way. In the process, they've crystallized a slippery aesthetic that sounds like the bastard step-child of 90s video games, radio R&B, and modern beat music played out of a spaceman's broken boombox.As they reach their five year anniversary, we took a peek inside the organization and got founders Dave Grinell and Pete Taylor to pick a few key moments in their trajectory before giving a celebratory rinsing to their brand new 5 year compilation.Who runs this thing? How does this whole dog n' pony show work?
Dave Grinell and Pete Taylor. We both still hold down day jobs so we do it all in our free time; a labour of love. Every decision (from artwork, to releases to colour of stickers) is made between us, if one of us doesn't like it… it doesn't happen. It can frustrating sometimes but in the end it's always for the best, the whole project has always been about how we both see and hear things. The best always comes out of that. And to be honest we pretty much see things the same these days, after five years of discussions we've learnt a lot from each other.What was the idea behind starting the whole thing?
Dave wanted to run a club night in Brighton, he stalked Pete on Dubstep Forum. We became friends. We were luck enough to come across excellent producers like Slugabed and Ghost Mutt so we put out our first 12". There was no big plan after this, it wasn't until we'd put the first record out that we realised we should find music for the second one.How would you even begin to describe the Donky Pitch aesthetic?
We get asked this a lot and it never gets any easier to answer. Essentially it's just something we both like that we believe is individual, music that takes influence from many places but doesn't sound like it's from one scene or another. Tempo isn't important. Melody is key.The only thing that's certain is when a demo lands in the in box or we hear something new it's always obvious if it's right for the label or not. Almost instantly.In Pete and Dave's words, here are the three most seminal Donky Pitch releases:Find the label on FB // Soundcloud // TwitterJemayel Khawaja is THUMP's Associate Editor in Los Angeles - @JemayelK
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Dave Grinell and Pete Taylor. We both still hold down day jobs so we do it all in our free time; a labour of love. Every decision (from artwork, to releases to colour of stickers) is made between us, if one of us doesn't like it… it doesn't happen. It can frustrating sometimes but in the end it's always for the best, the whole project has always been about how we both see and hear things. The best always comes out of that. And to be honest we pretty much see things the same these days, after five years of discussions we've learnt a lot from each other.What was the idea behind starting the whole thing?
Dave wanted to run a club night in Brighton, he stalked Pete on Dubstep Forum. We became friends. We were luck enough to come across excellent producers like Slugabed and Ghost Mutt so we put out our first 12". There was no big plan after this, it wasn't until we'd put the first record out that we realised we should find music for the second one.How would you even begin to describe the Donky Pitch aesthetic?
We get asked this a lot and it never gets any easier to answer. Essentially it's just something we both like that we believe is individual, music that takes influence from many places but doesn't sound like it's from one scene or another. Tempo isn't important. Melody is key.The only thing that's certain is when a demo lands in the in box or we hear something new it's always obvious if it's right for the label or not. Almost instantly.
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