Constellation Records (Canadian label)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Constellation Records
Active years since 1997
founder Ian Illavsky, Don Wilkie
Seat Montréal, Canada
Website http://www.cstrecords.com
Label code CST
distribution Southern Records
Genre (s) Post rock , avant-garde , progressive rock , indie rock

Constellation Records is an independent label from Montréal , Canada . The label became known through album releases by bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor , A Silver Mt. Zion, and Do Make Say Think .

Founded in 1997 with the aim of offering the flourishing underground music culture in Montréal a concert space for performances with a later affiliated label, the concept soon had to be discarded due to bureaucratic discrepancies, so that record production and live performance (under the title Musique fragile ) finally started at the same time.

Originally from a simple apartment acting in the inner city, Constellation moved in 2004 in the heavily multicultural influenced Anglophone Mile End -District, one of the artistic centers of Montreal.

Ethos

Constellation Records pursues an anti-commercial, anti-capitalist and anti-globalization corporate culture; According to the founders, their mission is to create a form of independent, cultural production that could at least avoid the worst dispositions of the modern music industry ( "a mode of cultural production that critiques the worst tendencies of the music industry" ). The label also hopes an ethos independent ( Engl. Independent ) music restore and preserve that looks more and more degraded by big business to a mere commodity it.

As a consequence, Constellation tries to prevent its products from being sold through retail chains such as HMV or Virgin Records and therefore prefers smaller local companies.

The packaging of the music carriers also takes up this attitude: the ubiquitous jewel case is replaced by specially hand-made cardboard paper wrappings, the elaborately designed CD and record covers are created - as far as possible - by local artists and craftsmen. According to its own information, Constellation puts three to four times as much effort into designing the packaging material as commercial labels.

The most striking result was the back of the album Yanqui UXO by the band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, which showed in a diagram the connection of the four major labels AOL Time-Warner , BMG , Sony and Vivendi Universal to the arms industry .

On February 25, 2010, the founders Ian Ilavsky and Don Wilke, together with 500 other artists, signed an appeal to support the international campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israeli apartheid .

A handwritten acknowledgment is attached to deliveries by Constellations mail order.

Artist

Web links