| Heavenly Records | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1990 |
| Founder | Jeff Barrett |
| Distributor(s) | EMI |
| Genre | Indie |
| Country of origin | UK |
| Official Website | http://www.heavenlyrecordings.com/ |
Heavenly Records, aka Heavenly Recordings, is a London-based record label, distributed by EMI. Founded by Jeff Barrett, a former press officer for Creation Records and many successful indie bands of the time including Happy Mondays, Heavenly Recordings' first releases were 7" and 12" singles for bands Barrett had discovered. The label's early releases included singles and albums by acts such as Flowered Up, Saint Etienne, East Village and Manic Street Preachers. Their most significant early release was Saint Etienne's Foxbase Alpha album, released in 1991 to widespread critical acclaim and a Mercury Music Prize nomination.
In 1993 Barrett partnered with former East Village lead singer/songwriter Martin Kelly who had worked alongside Jeff since 1989 and given up making music to manage bands. Together they brokered a distribution deal with BMG which enabled them to sign Beth Orton, The Hybirds, Monkey Mafia, Dot Allison, Q-Tee and Espiritu. Beth Orton's first album Trailer Park was well received by critics and sold modestly well. It won her two BRIT Award nominations and a Mercury Music Prize nomination. She won the BRIT Award for Best British Female in 2000 for her second album, Central Reservation. In 2000 Heavenly Records sought a new distribution deal with EMI and soon signed Manchester band Doves, 22-20s, and singer/songwriter Ed Harcourt. Beth Orton was dropped from the label in 2005 but continues to make records for EMI. Doves became a great success for the label, scoring four platinum albums in a row with Lost Souls (2000), The Last Broadcast (2002), Some Cities (2005), and Kingdom of Rust (2009). The Last Broadcast and Some Cities gave the label their first #1 album. In 2004 the label signed brother/sister quartet The Magic Numbers. The Magic Numbers debut album went on to out-sell anything else the label had ever released, quickly becoming one of the biggest British bands of 2005 and earning them a BRIT Award Nomination in 2006 for Best British Newcomer.
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The label created The Heavenly Social club in 1994. Initially a Sunday evening club in the basement of The Albany pub in Central London, it was created to showcase the talents of two young DJs the label was championing at the time- Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, together known as The Dust Brothers and then - due to legal issues with another production team of the same name - The Chemical Brothers. The Heavenly Sunday Social was a pivotal moment in London club culture and the music created there by The Chemical Brothers spawned an entire genre known as Big Beat. The club was frequented by indie royalty of the era including Oasis, Primal Scream, Manic Street Preachers and The Charlatans. The club was closed when it began to draw too many people for its modest capacity. Barrett and Kelly, along with Heavenly Records press officer Robin Turner and Chemical Brothers manager Nick Dewey launched further club nights at Turnmills and Smithfields in East London and at The Bomb in Barrett's home town of Nottingham. These club nights saw The Chemical Brothers grow from underground cult DJs to international rock stars, signing to Virgin Records and releasing a string of hit albums, many of them featuring guest vocals from recording artists they had encountered at The Heavenly Social - including Beth Orton, Tim Burgess of The Charlatans and Noel Gallagher of Oasis.
In 1999 Heavenly opened their first bar in Central London near Oxford Circus, The Social. It was soon followed by another restaurant/bar in Islington North London, Bristol and a fourth in Nottingham. All are known as The Social, except the Bristol branch, which is on a permanently moored boat and known as the Thekla Social.
The Chemical Brothers released Live at the Social Volume 1 in 1996, through Heavenly.
Similar to Food Records' Christmas EP of 1989, Heavenly Records released an EP in 1992 (Heavenly/Columbia HVN 19CD). However, unlike the Food Christmas EP that featured the label's acts covering each others songs, Heavenly's EP featured Heavenly acts covering Right Said Fred songs for the charity, the Terrence Higgins Trust.
The artists and songs involved on The Fred EP were:
The Saint Etienne version of "I'm Too Sexy" had different lyrics to the original, managing to reference both Right Said Fred and Jeff Barrett, the founder of Heavenly Records in the same sentence.