Drums Of Death’s five favourite record labels

When the shadowy figure that is Drums Of Death burst on to the electronic music scene in 2008, little was known of his origins and inclinations. To this day, he remains an alter ego with a mysterious, otherworldly edge – something evident both in his macabre look and the sonic bastardisation of his rambunctious electro-rave productions.

In preparation for his headline live set at Mixmag presents Energy Sessions sponsored by Relentless Energy Drink, we delved deeper into his schizoid psyche and musical inspirations by asking for his five favourite record labels.

Arcola

“I loved this label. It was a short-lived offshoot of Warp run by one of their lot. I guess it’s named after Arcola Street in Dalston... but that’s a guess as I was picking these up when I was learning how to DJ in Glasgow. The first 12” is a white label by Brothomstates featuring insanely good reworkings of Prince and Eric B & Rakim. The Milanese one is sick – an over-driven banging acid tune. I could have chosen Trax here, but I wanted to write about a label that maybe not loads of folks know about but I'm sure is fondly thought of.”

Night Slugs

“The new Bok Bok record is crazy long but it works. I love the Egyptrixx record – it's a total downer album but in a really wonderful way.”

Numbers

“This pretty much ties with Night Slugs for putting out the dopest fresh music. Numbers takes the win, though, because of the recent DJ Pierre re-release. The label has a pretty big team and it shows it's a group effort. The parties and the releases are wonderfully designed. I did a remix for Offshore (who's now on Big Dada), who was on the label run by Numbers before it was Numbers. It was 100bpm and the slowest thing I've made. This is a dazzling true story.”

Civil Music

“My people. This label has released dope records by Om Unit, Starkey, dÉbruit and Reso. All these artists hit different sounds and all do it with great aplomb. This is my manager's label and it took me ages to do something for it. It’s a really good place to be. It may be the youngest label on this list, but it’s putting so much new music out.”