words: JT
shutter: ryan parks - www.ryanparks.ca

Jerome Robins

Part 1 of 2. Behind the scenes of Canada's young entrepreneurs and future talents.
This month we caught up with Jerome Robins of Release Records.

KL: Who was behind Release Records and why did you guys decide to open a Record Store?

JR: Myself, Michael Bertolli & Adam Nathan are the owners of the shop. Having lived in the UK for most of the nineties, myself & Michael weren't necessarily happy with where we were going & we both felt our time in London had run its course. After experiencing what was happening in European clubs, we wanted to try to bring what we had seen to Toronto. After a long & hard decision, we packed up our belongings & came back to Toronto & re-united with our long time friend, Adam Nathan. However it may have seemed at the time, we now see how fortunate we were that the club idea couldn't even get off the ground. At the end of the day, we just simply didn't have enough money to open a large scale club...so the end result was what you see today.

KL: What got you into DJ'ing? What keeps you in the scene/business?

JR: I just fell in love with it while living in the UK. I would frequently visit clubs such as Ministry of Sound, Turnmills, The Cross, etc & I just loved the overall experience I had each time & I really admired what the DJ's were doing. This in turn got me into collecting vinyl...hearing what was played either in the clubs or on BBC Radio 1, id then scour all the London record shops looking for each track I'd heard the previous week. I remember the feeling you'd get as an avid collector finally finding the tracks you were looking for. This in turn led to some gigs in London clubs, & by the time myself & Michael had left England (1999 I believe), we knew we both wanted a career within this industry. When we started the shop, we just wanted to survive. As we grew, we wanted to compete with the larger international outlets (i.e. Satellite, Plastic, 3 Beat, etc). Nowadays, we know we not only compete with them, but surpass them in many facets of the business. So having those goals achieved, the next goal for us is to take the shop & labels into a greater commercial realm...and its in this area where we have devoted much of our focus, time & resources.

KL: How did the Record Labels come to fruition and what purpose do they serve in relation to the store?

JR: The labels are an absolutely huge part of our business. Essentially, what we've done with Release (in almost every facet) is follow the examples set out by successful UK record shops. We saw first hand what the labels had done for their branding & we knew in order to compete with them in terms of profile, we simply had to do same. So in October of 2001, we launched Release Records the label. Initially, we really didn't have much of a budget & had to bring lesser known artists on board in order to get the label off the ground. Three years later & we now run 3 in-house labels (Release Records, Release Elements & Release Grooves) & have about 40 releases under our belt. And the quality of artists making appearances on the label has improved dramatically over the years. Nowadays, artists such as Hybrid, Way Out West, Luke Chable, John Creamer & Stephane K, Gabriel & Dresden, Rui DaSilva, Lee Cabrera are some examples of the level of talent we now bring to the table. This in turn has increased the profile of the shop dramatically as we have become one of the top underground dance labels within our genre globally. This, in turn, led us to start our Label Group Management Company. The Release Records Label Group was set up in 2003 to offer independent record labels an alternative to the standard pressing & distribution deals being offered by the large UK based record distributors. We now have 12 labels involved in the group including labels from MV (Tao Recordings), Max Graham (Shinemusic), Benz & MD (Aurium Recordings), Moshic (Contrast Recordings) & Yunus & Subsky (Red Flag Collective)...just to name a few...and every day we are bombarded with new international labels wanting to join the group. So I guess its fair to say, starting the initial Release Records imprint was definitely a step in the right direction for the shop.

KL: Who currently works at the store and what are their respective functions and titles?

JR: At the present time, its myself, Adam & Michael running the overall show as the owners. The staff consists of Mitch Alexander, who pretty much runs the shop now & is the face that most people relate to when they think of Release Records. Angus Robinson is our principle web developer & breaks buyer, which is now the best in North America. Other employees include Tommy Illfingas who heads up the growing Drum & Bass section while Jeremy Crack, Richard Raiban, Matt Coleridge, Glenn Charles & Michael 'Deko-ze' Babb assist in a number of areas around the shop. We have also just recently added Myka (a well known Toronto house DJ) to the shop to assist with the shop's house & tribal departments. Another area we have touched (which I think no other shop globally has done) is to add an international staff to the mix. We have Thomas Penton in Miami, Chloe Harris in Seattle & Simon 'Progsounds' Jones in Cardiff, Wales assisting in their own specific ways all via the web. Its really amazing when you think about it...in today's world, you can even have staff on the other side of the globe working for you.

Release Records Part 2 will be featured in our December issue.


The store is located at:
Release Records
527 Yonge St.
Toronto, Ontario
CANADA  M4Y 1Y5
Tel: 416.962.1400

www.releaserecords.com