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Label Spotlight: Gallery Recs
One of Eora's freshest names celebrates its fourth birthday with a tell all interview.
Gallery Recs, to many across both Eora/Sydney and Naarm/Melbourne, has become a name and image synonymous with the new wave of popular dance and electronic that emerged in our post-COVID world.
Australia’s musical exports are wide and varied, but Gallery Recs explores a range of sounds to be found at some of the country’s and the world’s most exciting main stages. Dance music is, undoubtedly, more popular than ever before. Gallery has capitalised on this wave of excitement across the only four years it's been active, with a multitude of events, largely in its hometown of Eora but now comfortably placed in Naarm, and over 30 releases under the belt of its label.
As Gallery approaches its fourth birthday, set to be celebrated across two events in both aforementioned cities this coming weekend, we sat down with the label’s founder, Angus Russell (he/him).
Originally working at one of the big three record labels, Angus told me about his wealth of experience in the space before he’d even thought to start Gallery. His, & soon-to-be Gallery collaborator Will Bentley-Hawkins’ (he/him) crowning achievement in this time, was the launching of Of Leisure. Featuring the likes of Young Franco, Human Movement, Thandi Phoenix and Muto among more, the label gave the two a taste for what running a label all on their own could feel like.
“If you go to work in the music industry, you're best to have a crack at doing it yourself,” Angus told me, as we first started our conversation.
Angus, originally launching Gallery as his own endeavour, saw the opportunity to start something that encompassed everything he cared for about music: helping artists, events, and of course the music itself.
“It was originally a management sort of set up for the first six to twelve months, but with a label int the pipeline, If I'm going to create a brand, what do I know, which is the label landscape and what do I want to do, which was events,” he reflected.
The management arm of Gallery, while involving a number of artists over its lifetime, still currently works with two of Eora’s most respected and now seasoned artists, Human Movement and Lex.
While Gallery’s mission and timing originally appeared impeccably timed, as with so many musical projects, COVID-19 got in the way. When “COVID happened, we got a launch event in and we didn't do another event for like 18 months,” Angus said.
Gallery, like all of us, was forced into a standstill. Angus and the artists he was working with had to take a pause, and many of them are very understandably still catching up on the time that was lost to lockdowns. “It unfortunately set a lot of artists back at a point where they were probably looking at having their biggest moments over that period of time. The artists that I was working with were building towards probably that 18 month period being by far their biggest momentum builders, and they just got restricted” Angus said to me, clearly still pained by the experience.
“But that said, COVID was in some ways a bit of a blessing in disguise because it allowed me to get all the structures right for the label and actually focus on it as a label first and foremost.”
Gallery’s first series of releases, and the relationships it developed since then, are all clearly a result of a shared enthusiasm for the music and scenes of which they are a part. COVID-19 saw many with an interest in music, albeit often in positions of privilege, granted with the opportunity to spend far more time than ever on learning or refining music production.
“People were looking for creative outlets, producers were making a lot of music. It allowed us to put the time and energy into doing the label properly.”
Angus’ reflection on this period was very clearly not without its helping of exasperation. Over this period, Gallery was forced to work with its roster of artists in figuring out other sources of income. Patreon campaigns, live streams and far more of a focus on the digital collection of music were just a few of the avenues that Angus explored, to varying degrees of success.
It became clear very early into our conversation that, with his label and Will’s label experience behind them, Gallery was not a side project.
Angus’ recent move to Naarm (though Will is still based in Eora) was, as he told me, motivated by the desire to open up more opportunities for Gallery, for himself and for Will. Australia and New Zealand, while growing hugely as musical markets, are by and large not at the point where many artists, let alone independently run labels, are able to make a living.
“We're probably outside of the UK the second biggest dance market in the world. At least that's what the streaming stats are saying” Angus told me.
So often, the stories of people creating culture within our broader dance community, particularly within Australia and New Zealand, are about people working second jobs or foregoing a decent livelihood in pursuit of their passion. There is an inherent and often unspoken bias away from the idea that wanting to be paid for your work is actually perfectly reasonable.
Angus sat before me as a person quietly confident that he, Will, and all the artists that Gallery work with, could have their cake and eat it too. His wealth of experience and understanding of what the business of music looks, feels and sounds like, made this incredibly clear to me incredibly quickly.
At no point in our conversation did it ever feel however, that Angus was anything other than incredibly passionate about what he does.
“Passion never disappears if you’re a music fan. You’re always discovering things, you’re always excited by it. Being independent and self-funded puts a lot of stress on that passion, but because we love it, it's like, fuck, it's worth it,” he said proudly.
Angus and Will’s understanding of how to put a release together has seen huge success for many of the artists on their roster. Most notably, the likes of Pretty Girl, James Pepper, Rino and Wretla (fka Cassettes For Kids) have had hit national records with Gallery, and a number of them managing to crack the ever alluring overseas scene.
“Pretty Girl was definitely one that jumps out. We had great success with that record. Her first single, ‘Sun Phase’, that was the first record that got global attention. Her follow up releases have been really successful and she's now doing incredible things,” Angus said all too humbly.
So too, collaborative projects with artists like Sam Alfred has demonstrated Angus and Will’s knack for developing personal relationships with people whose music is fresh, exciting, and clearly what listeners want. “Basically all of our artists that we've ever signed, we've had the discussions with them before they've had a management team. So we've been essentially the first team member for basically our entire roster,” Angus went on to explain.
This focus on collaboration and a personal connection from the get go has opened Gallery up to a wide variety of sounds across its many releases. Modern dance and electronic music blurs lines more than ever before, and this fluidity is something that Gallery clearly wants to embrace in all of its releases. “I can't even tell you what genre something is these days”, Angus joked.
“It used to be like a gag as a kid, when I was in a band and we were dabbling a lot more with electronic music and listening to lots of different stuff. One of my band members was like, “this is minimal tech house.” We all thought that was a made up genre, and now I'm like, “that’s so much of what everyone is making.
“[For us] it's always more about the emotion or the response that it brings out of someone. Rather than like, “oh, that genre is cool or like that's trending”, it’s more about asking “what kind of emotional response can we evoke?””
Gallery’s extensive list of releases has seen them working with AK SPORTS, STÜM, Roy Blues, Oliver Henry, and every other artist mentioned so far. With a laundry list of incredible artists, many of whom have already broken overseas, Angus spoke at length about the potential he and Will feel Australia has in comparison with music markets internationally.
“We’re trending upwards in terms of the music that the general listener is engaging in. This dance space that we work in is probably the most popular dance space now in Australia,” he said. “This space” in this context, was Angus’ way of describing community oriented producers making music that’s generally more approachable to the average listener.
Though our conversation had been filled with a sense of confidence, excitement and wonder about where Australian dance music can go, Angus admitted that he is concerned about the state of modern music sharing. “The whole streaming landscape is ever evolving, and it's in a pretty scary space at the moment,” he said pointedly. “Spotify's editorial playlists are not necessarily moving the dial, and it's a lot more algorithm based now, which is good for discovering catalogue, but is really tricky for discovering new artists.”
“I think the general next-gen of music fan is spending a lot less time discovering music than they would have probably five years ago due to the rise of TikTok. People are essentially watching TikTok videos and engaging on social media, when they're commuting to and from school or work rather than are listening to music. It just changes how essentially we need to approach things and market things dramatically.”
As dance music becomes all the more popular and influential the world over, it’s clear that while discerning different genres may to the average listener become all the more difficult, we’re lucky to have people like Angus and Will representing the interests and desires of more underground culture in more commercial spaces.
This trust extends, of course, to their ever-expanding community of both fans and collaborators. This weekend sees them running events in both Eora and Naarm to celebrate the label’s fourth year of existence. Featuring artists like KSMBA,FUKHED, Claire O’Brien, as well as mainstays like Lex and Human Movement, Gallery’s fourth birthday is set to be a proper celebration of the influence and understanding that the label has.
In discussing our excitement for the events, Angus’ key focus was on the artists, saying “we don't get many opportunities to get a lot of the roster together. We do a lot of events, but they're definitely a lot more artist focused. Whereas these ones are a bit more focused on celebrating the label and everyone involved with it.”
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In sharing his favourite memory of the time with Gallery thus far, given how technical our conversation had been up until this point, I expected Angus to come to me with a specific release or moment of success that the label had experienced overseas.
But Angus’ favourite memory of Gallery thus far, to me, felt like a perfect embodiment of why he, Will, and the label are not only good at what they do, but why we all love to be a part of it in the first place.
“It was the second birthday that we did and the first time that we managed to get the whole roster together. It sold out in a heartbeat.
Everyone was playing their own songs that we had released on the label throughout that whole night and with such an awesome crowd response we were celebrating the releases but also celebrating the artists.
James Pepper played his collaboration with Black Loops, called ‘Three Drops’ and the crowd reception to that song was one of the highlight moments of the night.
I remember that one because I was standing up the back behind the front of house desk. That was the first moment of the night that I actually got to relax and just soak it in. I'll always remember that moment.”
