To a lot of people out there this has been a long time coming. For us, it feels even longer...

Astral People has always been a forever evolving project run by a group of music lovers in Sydney. What started as an Artist Management company has over time spread it’s wings into International Touring, Events, Festivals and Publishing. Ever since launching Astral People some 8 years ago now, the idea of launching a Record Label has always been one we’ve viewed with caution. As our primary divisions of Artist Management and International Touring took a hold of the company and began to thrive, years soon passed quite quickly and our team too had to grow and adapt with the rise of those particular divisions. The main ethos of Astral People has always revolved around quality. If you manage an artist, make sure that the artist’s music and the campaign around it is of the highest quality. If you run an event, make sure that the event’s line up and production is of the highest quality. So why did it take us 8 years to launch our own record label? It’s simply because we needed to make sure that when we did choose to launch a label that it would follow in the footsteps of other facets of our business and yes, in our eyes, be of the highest quality.

A guideline that we always stick to is only launch something (whether it be a local artist project or a new bespoke event) when everything around that particular project feels completely right to us, in particular the team and infrastructure around it. A year ago, Colin Daniels from PIAS approached us with the idea of starting a cooperative label under the PIAS umbrella. Immediately this idea stood out to us out of the countless other offers that were presented over the years not only because we have a long standing relationship with Colin (including a very successful touring partnership with Handsome Tours) but because first and foremost, PIAS is a supporter of independent music and can give us the international network that we need to make this label an international success. The word independent strikes a strong chord with us at Astral, after all this company started off the back of one party at Tone Nightclub in 2011 and we’ve never procured any external investment to this very day. The company that would give us the structure for this label and the network we needed had to share that independent nature and we’re very proud to align ourselves with PIAS. Add to that their cooperative group includes some of our favourite labels including Phantasy, DFA, Mute and Transgressive Records. It’s an honour to have Astral People Recordings sit amongst this group.

Now it’s fine to have an idea but we as an internal group at Astral People need to have an aligned vision of what this label was going to be and during our first conversation the goals fell into place instantly (just another sign that we were ready to take this on). Our vision for the label is just a pure reflection of our joint musical tastes as a company. Representing both local and international artists who we truly believe are the best in their fields at what they do. We’ve never been a company that’s been pigeonholed into a certain genre and we certainly won’t be with this label. However, what we can say is that the artists we choose to represent will be ones of the highest caliber. They will divide opinion and they will bring us together but they cannot be ignored nor can anyone say that they’re not an exciting prospect in their respective genre or scene. The label will represent artists that we truly feel will last the test of time in this forever changing business.

We will continue to carry on this mentality of forward thinking, memorable music as we develop the next stage of our company, Astral People Recordings.