On the record: punk micro-label is doing music the old-school way
Meet Dennis Van Hoof, founder of Oddie Records, a one-man micro-label specialising in vinyl and cassette releases
“A handshake deal”
In fact, you could easily take Van Hoof home to meet your parents. He’s a polite, nicely dressed, well-groomed 25-year-old from Zoersel in the Kempen region east of Antwerp. He’s definitely punk rock, though.
The ethos of Oddie, his one-man record label, is rooted in the self-reliance, artistic freedom and anti-corporatism of the American underground and British New Wave of the 1970s and ’80s.
“I try to approach things with a punk, DIY ethic,” he says. “I love meeting people, getting introduced as you go along, just building something with people who are passionate about music and want to create something cool together. And that stuff you can only do if you do it with an independent label.”
He’s been building his network since the first Oddie release, Sketchy Kids Volume One, which came out in July 2014. It’s a compilation of 10 songs by 10 bands including Mountain Bike, The Future Dead, YAWNS, Tubelight and Alpha Whale.
Sketchy Kids was actually his graduation project for his Bachelor’s in music management from PXL University College in Hasselt. “There was a final big project,” he says. “I chose to put out a vinyl rock record. I paid for the production of everything, including promo, and the bands just had to contribute a song.”
Since then, Oddie has put out more music by The Glücks, Double Veterans, Mind Rays, Teen Creeps, Equal Idiots, Tin Fingers, Dead High Wire and The Mary Hart Attack. “The first record was all done officially, but for all the others, it’s a handshake deal.”
Break-even story
These bands are the core of Van Hoof’s network, but distribution is also key. “I had some talks with companies, but if I have 300 records and there are, like, five cool independent record shops in Belgium, I can just take the records there,” he says.
Among those cool shops are Fatkat Records and Me and My Monkey in Antwerp, Consouling Sounds, Music Mania and Vynilla in Ghent and 72 Records in Brussels.
Because Oddie is vinyl and cassette only, there are the factories, too. “Sketchy Kids was pressed in the Netherlands at a place that’s gone bankrupt,” he says. “Since then, I’ve used MPO in France, Ameise in Germany, who only do seven-inches – I think they are extreme left-wing punks – and XVINYLX in the Czech Republic. It’s a break-even story most of the time, but the records will sell out, so you get your money back.”
The bands are growing faster than Oddie Records, but I’m happy to see them go to the next level
Wait, cassette tapes? They never truly went away, Van Hoof insists: just underground. He gets them made at Duplicate in the Netherlands. “Tape is much cheaper than vinyl, and fast,” he says. “Vinyl takes at least 10 weeks, tapes they can do in three days.”
Another Oddie throwback to the days of 1970s punk is the fanzine – also called Sketchy Kids – that Van Hoof publishes with Siebe Le Duc, a graphic designer, and his brother Kobe, a photographer.
There are limits to being a one-man micro-label, of course. “The bands are growing faster than Oddie Records, but I’m happy to see them go to the next level – even if it’s without me.”
That might be the case with The Mary Hart Attack. Though bass player Wil Mathijs says that “Oddie is a cool label, and Dennis is a lovely bloke,” they’ve just finished recording an album and are looking for a label that can handle iTunes and Spotify for them.
Way of the future
The band still stick to Oddie’s ethos of independence, though. “We record DIY in our rehearsal studio, a disused restaurant in Lovendegem,” says guitarist Kristof Souvagie.
To Van Hoof, there’s a right way and wrong way for bands to grow. “Tubelight and Double Veterans are on the next level, but they are also very much aware of what they don’t want to do: get to the final of Humo’s Rock Rally, get a nice review in Knack, spam everyone on Facebook to get the likes up, be sent by the label to do promo… You can do all that, but it’s just not going to be effective as it once was. The punk rock way is the future.”
To illustrate, Mary Hart Attack drummer Kris Vlaeminck recalls a show at the Vooruit in Ghent that was “nowhere near sold out, by a band who have way more airplay than we do. But if you go to a gig from the underground scene, like Mind Rays, it’s always full. People who are really interested in music are looking for gigs like that.”
Van Hoof: “The routes outside Studio Brussel and the Rock Rally are becoming easier for bands to see. The old-school approach is coming back. Go to Germany playing shitty places on a real tour. That’s where the magic happens!”
The Mary Hart Attack play Café Video in Ghent on 4 January; Mind Rays play Charlatan in Ghent on 16 January
