Unrivaled Music chalk up the big deep 200 with Soultrak & The Cloudshakers
Interview by Joel Sumerling
Deep house imprint Unrivaled Music mark their landmark 200th release with the Soultrak & The Cloudshapers’ melodic deep house vocal anthem ‘Salute The Floor’. Unrivaled label boss and DJ Paul Sawyer tells us more about this special record and Unrivaled….
Can you please briefly tell us about the history of Unrivaled Music? When did it start? What inspired it? How did it come together? Where is it based?
Unrivaled Music was created by Wez Saunders as the Sister label to Endemic Digital back in 2009. Focusing on deep house for its releases, Wez went on to run the label until early 2014 until Darren Braddick took over due to Wez moving to Defected and naturally Unrivaled was taken under the Krafted Music Group banner. Unrivaled is based in the South of the UK just outside of Portsmouth and has constantly stuck to its guns with pioneering deep house ever since its formation.
Congratulations on the 200th release. ‘Salute The Floor’ is a timeless slice of deep vocal house. How did this collaboration / release come about?
Soultrak as a collaboration came about after Paul Moore and I had been playing at a few events during 2014. We’ve already had a few releases on Bloxbox Records, Endemic Digital and EJ Underground under this guise. ‘Salute the Floor’ wasn’t initially going to be our next release, but we decided to switch our schedule after starting to work with Beulah, the vocalist on Salute and Simon Sinfield, aka The Cloudshapers. The result of a week in the studio changed our mind as we simply couldn’t wait to release ‘Salute the Floor’ and follow it up later with our initial project with Beulah. The initial project called ‘Hustle’ fused such a great relationship with ourselves and Beulah that she came to us with a proposal for ‘Salute’. She had already recorded the top line for MK, but the project didn’t move forward due to contractual issues and Beulah offered the top line to us to work with. We jumped at the chance as soon as we heard the vocals and I had been working with Simon already on a few of my own projects, so really wanted to get him involved with this release too. I found that we had the same views and direction when creating music, so working together on this project just came naturally.
Was it easy to get legendary producer Steve Mac on board to remix?
We’ve had huge respect for Steve Mac for years, he’s got to be one of the most respected producers in the dance scene and generally within the music industry. It was always a goal of ours to have Steve involved somehow in one of our releases and we’d spoken about asking Steve to come on board with us for some time. From a promotional point of view, it had to be a release that had something to really shout about, so waiting for the 200th release milestone was the perfect opportunity. Not that we don’t shout about all of our releases, but we invested much more into this release and we assigned a bigger budget to mark such a milestone. Darren sent Steve Mac the original mix and within minutes he was replying to Darren agreeing to remix the track. You can imagine how chuffed we were to find out that Steve was complimentary of our work and to have such a legend providing a remix was a massive achievement for both us and the label.
Two hundred releases is something to be very proud of – how hard has it been to keep it going?
Unrivaled is part of our company Krafted Music Group that now manages ten labels in total, so the quantity of demos that hit the inbox are immense. It’s a juggling act all the time, but we have been lucky that so far, there’s been so much quality music being sent to us recently that we have had more trouble saying no to producers as we have so much already signed! One of the biggest problems with keeping the label going is ensuring that each release gets the exposure that it deserves. There’s so much being released every day, so we really focus on building a close community around the Krafted Group and reach out to as many people as we can to build the awareness of what we do. One of the main reasons for turning to some notable remixers and artists with the forthcoming releases is that there is always that extra bit of interest when you have artists involved that people already follow.
You have signed many artists, who can we expect to see future releases from?
We’re already planning the next release from Soultrak, as mentioned above. ‘Hustle’ is the next release and we’ve already got some heavy weight remixers involved. Robbie Rivera and Acid Washed are involved with the release, so the package is really coming together nicely. We are also organizing some sessions in the studio to build a Soultrak album with Beulah, which will be starting soon. There’s a release from The Cloudshapers that features a local vocalist from Southampton called LST (Leigh Samuel Taylor). This one will be including a remix from D Ramirez and will be out later in the year. And finally we have just signed a release from Terry Farley of Junior Boys Own fame, so we’re excited to get that release scheduled.
What’s in the next in the pipeline for the label?
We’re really focusing on building the brand more and trying to gain as much exposure as possible. We’re planning some label nights to showcase our artists and introduce more people to what we do and represent. In particular, we are organizing a weekender in October in Holland with a friend of ours who’s based out there and also an artist on the label. More information on this is on our Facebook page. Our Krafted Music Radio show is now syndicated to six stations and always use the show to showcase some of the releases. We plan to increase the stations that use our show in their schedule which in turn helps us to promote our artists and their music.
Are you planning on any live dates/touring with the label and any of the artists?
Yes, we have an Unrivaled Music label party at Lakota in Bristol on 31st July that features Soultrak. The event is being run by our EDM label EJ Eternal and we are hosting room 2, and celebrating the 200th release as part of the party. The plan is to take Soultrak to festivals during 2016 and a few more club events. It was important to build the name first through the releases and follow this up with gigs to keep the profile going. We are also looking at some live PA’s with Beulah as she is amazing live and it would be great to see the reaction to ‘Salute the Floor’ being sung live at events. With the album in the pipeline, it also makes sense to promote the album in this way.
What are you Top 5 Unrivaled releases?
– Mono4 – The Mole feat Jamie Moore
Sat in the top selling tracks for Unrivaled since January 2014
– Soultrak – Son of a Gun
Rework of JX ‘Son of a Gun’
– Ken Fan – Din Da Da
Sat in the Top 10 selling tracks since 2011
– Chris Schambacher – Arise
Chris has a huge following in the States and is constantly touring the US
– Rishi K – Another Profound Moment (Deep Active Sound Remix)
Sitting in the Top 10 selling tracks since 2013
Finally, Can you offer any advice to budding producers? How should they go about getting their music heard?
Be prepared to invest your life and as much budget that you can afford into building your profile. It’s all about online presence and obviously keeping the quality of your music consistent. We’ve learnt the hard way from the ground up and were lucky to have already built a circle of contacts through DJing over the years. Meeting as many people within the industry is so important as there are so many producers out there and you need to make yourself known to the people that you want to work with. Getting your music in the right hands and getting it played at as many gigs is really important too, so investing time and money in promoting your releases is a major factor.
