Global Underground Closes Was speaking to the guy that was the Manager of the offices in town yesterday & GU has now closed & sold it's rights to Ministry of Sound
Lets hope they keep the same direction of what the labels built up over the past 10/12 years, it would be tragic to see them commercialise it.
Ministry have far too many different compiliation series' out that they can't possibly put as much dedication into the GU brand that has been in the past. I hope, like the rest of you, the quality of artists who mix he series doesn't go down the pan. GU249 - Flip & Fill
to be fair they have kind of lost their way in the last few years - adam freeland, felix da housecat, nick warren doing too many etc so no great surprise. too much stronger competition these days and others have overtook them - fabric/renaissance/balance etc shame though as was a good concept and produced some great mixes with nice artwork/sleeves.
GU adverts have been popping up on tv on a regular basis over the last year or so. MOS will just build on this.
MOS will probably do a good job, I reckon they make a fortune off their more maintsream cds to be able to keep the global underground as a more specialist brand and stay true to what it's about, Ministry were releasing sneak, derrick carter and mark farina cds in the last couple of years when the market demand for them wasn't high at all, Ministry do a pretty good job of supporting the underground whilst still being a proper business that turns a profit I reckon, the underground producers whose tracks feature on these cds will be happy as it'll be a nice pay day for them
R.I.P. Not surprised to be honest ..... such a high profile brand was always going to attract the vultures. Felix da housecat was a crap idea as well. Too many nick warren mixes, although admittedly i've loved all the ones he's done. Fingers off of pulses perhaps?
I thought the original guys (Boxed) had gone under years ago. Edit: Thought so: [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxed"]Boxed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:MusicalnotesUK.svg" class="image"><img alt="Stub icon" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/MusicalnotesUK.svg/35px-MusicalnotesUK.svg.png"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/3/38/MusicalnotesUK.svg/35px-MusicalnotesUK.svg.png[/ame]
used to be amazing but as danny said i feel the last couple of years theve kept going down hill. there older stuff was amazing in terms of mix cds released but they keep spewing up mixes from the same artists to be fair i felt they got a bit stale.
I bought Freelands and it was dire, the best one recently was Dubfire's by a country mile. The new one looks dreadful as well, fingers have been well off the pulse recently IMO.
Seems a bit more of a shame as it's a local bread label/organisation, over the years theyv'e had so many good albums & had some of the highest profile DJ's tied in.
Just guessing but probably a combination of fewer people buying mix cds when you can download free sets, djs costing too much to do this kind of venture, licensing fees for tracks getting higher, and no injection of new talent to the roster probably all took their toll on the plus side the ministry brand has megabucks and may well revive the series, they don't just do clubbers guide/annual cds
Its more down to the fact that prog as a genre is no where near as popular as it was. They could have jumped on the minimal bandwagon but theres too many people done that already so its nice to see them call it a day before they end up with a bad ending to the amazing work they've put out through the years.
Wierd, i actually really enjoyed Freelands one! ..... I wouldnt have imagined it would cost that much money to hire the recent DJ's to do the cd's ? Still - its fighting a losing battle with music sales in terminal decline...... The way out might have been to move towards pushing newer dj's who would probably do it for next to nothing. Dunno about prog not being popular mind - I'd say it was the more solid genre these days than the polar ends of the scale (trance, house). Still - Looks like the market decided in the end.
I've been lead to believe alot of djs and agents are greedy bastards but yeah I reckon prog or whatever is still doing ok, globally anyway, sure the global underground lot like lawler, howells, tenaglia, digweed and sasha still pack out clubs non?
They have all gone on to do their own projects/CD's with other people and have not done GU's for years (bar Howells). Assuming Renaissance etc have offered better conditions.