The Domino Effect

Laurence Bell is that rare thing: a record company boss it's OK to like. As head honcho of Domino Records, the Ipswich-born impresario has acted as midwife to some of the most inspired, most enduring, and downright heartbreaking records of the decade.

Think Palace, think Pavement, think Sebadoh, think Smog, think Elliott Smith, think Silver Jews, think Mark Eitzel. What's more, he has done so at a time when the labour pains involved in delivering such quintessentially American acts into a Blighty ruled by the bullish bravado of Britpop must have made him wince.

"Did you have an ethos that you wanted to stamp on the label when you started?"

"I just followed my own taste and instincts," says Bell, "which has got to be the most honest way for anyone to run a label, whether it be a speed metal label or whatever."

There's now an incredibly diverse set of musical styles on the label, with everything from minimalist lo-fi folk (Will Oldham) to improvisational jazz styles (Aerial M) to electronica (Third Eye Foundation). Are we to take it that Bell's own taste has broadened with age?

"Yeah, definitely," he answers. "I've firmly followed American music over the last decade. When it comes to guitars and rock, I still think the most interesting and innovative things in that field come out of America. I stopped thinking a long time ago that British guitar music had anything to offer."

"How do you generally discover new bands?"

"Through other bands, usually, just telling us about them," he says. "For instance, it was Sebadoh who played us tapes of Royal Trux. That's how I first heard them and I thought 'this is great'. So I rang up Drag City (hip Chicago-based label who licence many bands to Domino for the European market and to whom we are truly grateful — NK) and then we just built up a relationship with them, through doing Royal Trux. Then Will Oldham and Palace Brothers were looking for a new British label. He's a huge Royal Trux fan and he said 'maybe I should call the guy who put out Royal Trux in Britain, I'd like to be on the same label as them again'. So that's how that happened, which ultimately led to Pavement coming over to us (from Big Cat), which was great."

In practice, does the incredible roster that you've built up act as a siren for unsigned acts or does it always come down to which company waves the most dosh around?

"Well, I'm equally in awe of the groups that we work with," enthuses Bell. "They're most of my favourite bands. But there are two ways you can tempt a band to sign up: with a big cheque or with this great roster of music. And if they're coming from a similar area they might well have a lot of these bands's records in their collections. It was the same in the 60s and 70s: bands wanted to be on the same label that Nick Drake or Bob Dylan were on. It's great because Domino does have kudos. We're still not rich but we can sign bands on the strength of having great bands on the label."

"The last five years have been quite difficult when it comes to putting out music like our stuff because people say: 'well, is it getting in the charts?'. And I say, 'well, probably not'. It will get Single Of The Week in the NME but they won't put them on the cover... which you know they'd like to. Maybe in the 80s they would have because they knew it was radical and important and that it was going to change the face of music. But it still seems ridiculous that a band like Pavement have never been on the cover of the NME."

Do you believe that your bands could break through if they were given a push by the industry or does the nature of the music mean that they are destined to only ever have limited appeal?

"Of course they could break through," he declares. "If the new Sebadoh single gets played on Radio 1 during the daytime, it's gonna be a huge monster hit. But it's a business governed by people who look at it and say, 'how much money are they spending on it? what's the marketing budget? what's the clout?'. That can be frustrating but I just try not to think about that too much cos otherwise you get distracted. I say, 'OK, we're not going to get the NME cover or the Radio 1 playlist but what can we get?'. A feature here and a feature there. You just want to spread the music round, because you do get very, very passionate about it."

Let's Hear It For The Boss:
One artist for whom Bell toils is Stephen Pastel of perennial Glaswegian janglemeisters The Pastels, who have known Laurence for the best part of ten years. Having recently had their acclaimed opus, Illumination, and its "sister remixed by the stars" album, Illuminati, released on Domino, The Pastels are enjoying a new lease of life. Hot Press caught up with The Pastels' frontman backstage at their recent gig in the Mean Fiddler.

"How did you first meet Laurence?"

"We were on a label called Paperhouse around 1990/91," he explains. "The people that funded Paperhouse were Fire Records and Laurence also had a label that was part of Fire, called Roughneck Records. He used to go to a lot of Teenage Fanclub's shows. I met Laurence and I really liked him. I thought he was a really warm person. Really smart. So when he left Fire to set up Domino, we rang him up and decided to hook up."

"What made you choose Domino over anyone else?"

"Laurence is one of the few people running a label who only puts out records by bands that he really likes or believes in. A lot of the music that Laurence really liked was American. There wasn't much British stuff that he was into and I think that he thought that The Pastels would be a good flagship band for the label. Coming from Scotland, we gave it a different dimension because he was involved in licensing a lot of the (Chicago-based) Drag City stuff."

"What's the best thing about being on Domino?"

"I can't tell you how important it is for a band to feel in tune with the record label, to feel inspired by a record label," says Stephen. "One of the good things about Domino is that it's quite a flexible label. Take a band like Royal Trux (reclusive, drug-addled American garage band). They don't do things in the simplest way possible and I think that Laurence is quite prepared to go that extra mile for people."

"Laurence is prepared to put out a record by, say, Bill Wells and the Future Pilot — a really great record — and he knows that it's not going to sell as much as a Pavement record, but I feel excited to be involved with a label that's issuing records that I would be prepared to actually go into a shop and buy... like say Movietone, the Silver Jews, Smog."

"I think Domino's importance is going to grow. I really do feel that a lot of the most important music of the 90s has been on Domino. There's a lot of great electronic music out there, but in terms of songs, I think most of the great songs are coming out on Domino. It's the best label that we've ever been on. I don't think there is another label like it at the moment. To me, it's out on its own."

Top 5 Albums
Palace Brothers: There Is No-One What Will Take Care Of You (1993)
The album that heralded the arrival of Will Oldham as one of the great maverick songwriters of the 90s. An impossibly fragile, rickety voice enunciated lyrics full of a strange, claustrophobic intensity, but which could also be as dazzlingly poetic as anything Leonard Cohen put his name to.

Sebadoh: Harmacy (1996)
The band that started the Domino ball rolling. Although annoyingly erratic, it wins over other classic Sebadoh albums (such as Bakesale) because it contains Lou Barlow's finest moment — "Willing To Wait", a yearnfest so powerful the woman concerned ended up marrying him.

Smog: Red Apple Falls (1997)
Wherein Bill Callahan underscores his fantasies about having sex atop galloping horses with some exquisitely understated arrangements, ranging from brass to keening pedal steels. No relation to "Dirty" Harry Callahan, apparently, though Bill's astonishingly deadpan sense of humour would make you wonder.

The Pastels: Illuminati (1998)
In which The Pastels' Illumination album — a fine record in its own right — gets given the once over by the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Stereolab, Tortoise's John McEntire and labelmates The Third Eye Foundation. Unlikely bedfellows maybe, but the results are more often than not extremely, em, illuminating. What a pleasant surprise.

Elliott Smith: Either/Or (1998)
The album that broke the grouchy but great Mr. Smith this side of the Atlantic contained some of the most melodic hook-lines and buttercupped harmonies since the heyday of The Beatles or Simon & Garfunkel... and some of the most bitter lyrics since Big Star's Third. There ain't half been some clever bastards.