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Pickled Egg

Eclectic to a fault, and firmly out of step with current trends, it has for the past seven years dedicated itself to redressing the world's musical balance in favour of quirky genius, bent tunefulness, noisy playfulness, jazz turmoil, inventive retro-futurism and downright emotional heart-on-sleeve belief, hope and passion. In a world in which the musical balance is already, irretrievably, weighted down on the side of corporate flatulence, labels like Pickled Egg are so a priori unnecessary, and yet so a posteriori essential.

The label's roster is one of genuine quality. Artists such as Philadelphia-based Need New Body, Leicester's Volcano the Bear, Chicago-based Bablicon, Pop-Off Tuesday from Osaka, and Glasgow's Scatter, have tapped rich musical mines, mixing free jazz, avant rock surrealism, unusual instrumentation, and a punk rock approach. In the year 2000, Pickled Egg released the come-back album by legendary US singer-songwriter, Daniel Johnston, and in the same year, organised his first ever UK/European tour, in spite of all the doubters who said this could never happen, on account of Johnston's history of mental illness.

Pickled Egg could also genuinely be said to be ahead of its time. In 1999, the label released what was almost certainly the first ever bootleg/mash-up record, in the shape of the Evolution Control Committee's 'Whipped Cream Mixes' single, in which the attitude-drenched vocal tracks of Public Enemy collided head on with the whimsical, happy-go-lucky instrumental tunes of Herb Alpert, to outrageous and hilarious effect. 2½ years later, this record had spawned an entire genre, including a number one hit single, although none of what followed ever quite equalled the brilliance of that original record. Pickled Egg also released the debut 7" by Brighton-based genre-busters, The Go! Team, who are now, some 4½ years later, being hailed in some quarters of the music press as saviours of the British music scene. And the aforementioned Need New Body, who recently stole the show at the Slint-curated All Tomorrow's Parties festival, released their debut album on Pickled Egg way back in 2001. And of course, Pickled Egg were first on the scene in bringing such seminal acts as Pop-Off Tuesday, Bablicon and Volcano the Bear to the world's attention.

"Think of Pickled Egg as a primer to the more radical side of Plan B's musical coverage: oblique but still very accessible" {Everett True]

"In a nearly a decade of writing, there are few labels which have nourished me so consistently, from Ptolemaic Terrascope to BANG, Careless Talk to Plan B, and all bleary 3am service stations in between. My enthusiasm unfailingly gets a shot in the arm, my cynicism at what passes for culture kept at bay. In a world without John Peel, we need Pickled Egg more than ever, and Pickled Egg needs Us" [Steve Hanson - Ptolemaic Terrascope, Bang, Careless Talk, Plan B]

"Pickled Egg is God's record label" [Jimmy Possession - Robots & Electronic Brains, Careless Talk]

"What has always amazed me about Pickled Egg's releases, is their schizophrenic diversity, which is only matched by the consistent excellence and shared warmth and wit; the wide range of material and artists, unified only by their shared human sweetness" [George Parsons - Dream Magazine]



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