The label was never the plan

I started my own label as a reaction. I had a certain belief that I could do this as well as all the other small labels out there, which was a touch optimistic for a man sitting in Os outside Bergen. One of the big drivers was all the rubbish I had been through with record companies, not least in Germany. Strictly speaking the first step came even earlier: our first Punishment Park CD went out on Punishment Park Records, PPREC, a name that existed only because the pressing plant needed something to refer to.

Hate You Records began properly in June 1995 with the Punishment Park cassette Blendwerk, exactly 512 copies, H.Y.R. 001, with the kind of fold-out cover only a cassette can carry. It was sold and used for promotion, it went fast, and most copies left Norway. Today it counts as a rarity.

Three more releases followed. A promo 7 inch with Punishment Park and MU330 from the US, Time Bomb EP, 1,000 copies in May 1998. Another 7 inch with Punishment Park and Link 80, Nothing Lasts Forever EP, 750 copies in August 1998. And the compilation Genetic Mutations Vol 1, made with my good friend Andy Kline and his DHMG in London, 1,000 copies that mostly ended up in the UK and central Europe. That was the last record to carry the Hate You name. There was never a vision or a mission behind the company. I wanted to do my own things on my own label and answer to nobody.

Why did I change the name? I was not so angry anymore, and then Hate You Records felt a bit silly. In November 1998 I had two children, both born in October, so October was my party month of the year. October Party Records. That is the whole story, explained and settled once and for all.

I had no ambitions for the new name beyond getting my own things done my own way. My little booking outfit, DIY Concert Agency, moved in under the same roof. The first release as October Party Records was Genetic Mutations Vol 2 in 1999, again with Andy Kline in London, 1,000 copies. I never chased known bands for those compilations, I chased tough songs that people in our scene would like and where they could discover something new.

Enkelt, genialt og med en mening bak.

Simple, brilliant, and with a meaning behind it.

BOKEN OM MITT ROCK N ROLL LIV

In 2006 Jef was going to tour China, so I got Kang Mao from the Beijing band SUBS to try to start October Party Records in Beijing with me. There was no plan. We knew the authorities could club us down before we had begun, but so what, we just did it. The first release was the Jef EP He Knows He Hears, 3,000 copies pressed for the April 2006 tour, and according to the Chinese it was the first official international punk release in the country ever. The two other Jef EPs followed that summer, 3,000 copies each.

Kang Mao is the person who made everything in China possible. She knows the system and how to move forward carefully, and she has done more for more people through October Party Records in Beijing than anyone will ever count. I had a wild idea, she liked the wild idea, and together we managed it.

The free compilations are the numbers people never quite believe. We made deals with some of the biggest music magazines in China to tuck a free CD of Norwegian bands into their pages. Bergen Rock City ran to eight volumes through X Music Mag from February 2006, 10,000 free copies of each, 80,000 discs of Bergen bands. When friends from other parts of Norway felt left out, Kang Mao and I came up with Norwegian Wood Music For China, thirteen volumes through Not Only Music Magazine China between September 2007 and August 2010, roughly another 130,000. And when Thomas Eiene asked for a Stavanger disc, Stavanger Rock City Vol 1 followed in October 2007.

Count it up. Twenty-two free compilations at 10,000 copies each is 220,000 physical CDs of Norwegian rock spread across China, 422 tracks in all, an average of 19.2 per disc. Multiply those and you get over four million track copies out among Chinese listeners. Some discs we handed out ourselves at stands, including at the MIDI festival, where October Party Records stood alongside the big Chinese music magazines. On top of that came the artist albums we released over there in pressings from 3,000 to 15,000, and digital distribution through companies like China Mobile. We did all of it as volunteer work, in our spare time.

Dette hadde ingen i verden gjort før oss i Kina.

Nobody in the world had done this before us in China.

BOKEN OM MITT ROCK N ROLL LIV

People ask why the pressings are so small. Because the label was never about money. It was about having fun and creating possibilities where they turned up. I pressed what a release needed and no more: 512 cassettes, 250 or 500 pieces of vinyl, promo CDs given away free by the hundreds. When Punishment Park went on white 10 inch vinyl in 2000, 250 copies, I sold them to get back what the pressing had cost, because I could not afford to sit on boxes in case somebody wanted one twenty years later. Today people ask after those records, and I have none left.

The same idea carried the last series. Real Punk Rock Music Is Not On The Radio ran to ten volumes from May 2018 to June 2023, each on its own color of vinyl and every one pressed in 500 copies only. This time the bands shared the records between themselves when they came out, so the vinyl went fast, was sold all over Norway, and quickly became sought after by collectors both inside and outside the country. Roughly one album every six months for six years. Small pressings find their people.