Cleopatra

In a time just before the internet became popular, this record label did a lot for the goth scene. Before it was easy to find music you heard in clubs (especially since the DJs wouldn't tell you who the tracks were by, fearing you'd take their job) and related music you hadn't heard yet, Cleopatra was the most available source of goth track discoveries in my part of the u.s.a.

Personally I appreciate the effort of any label willing to bring out its (or others) best out into the world but the case with Cleopatra is they were always reaching worrying levels of underground's absurdity - be it 'Tributes', re-releases with horrific cover designs (hence the cover for Kraftwerk's 'The Model') or as many point out - mispellings...

What fascinated me at first with Cleopatra was their enthusiastic (or desperate?) search for identity. They released far too many itchy-kitchy gothic-preferred records alongside which even those of more respectfully re-issued anthology (Kraftwerk, Clock DVA, V/A 'The Whip' etc) seem like piracy.

There is nothing bad about their catalogue for people who are willing to explore the dark side of life (or the funny side of pretending it) but I'll agree that Cleopatra seems more like a hybrid desperado than a label with properly built identity - the irony has it, in the end, this constant desperate feel became their identity and eventual reason for it being ridiculed...

Let's not forget that this is the label everyone loves to hate, if only because of their almost religious tendency to keep releasing "A Tribute To..." compilations. Yes, they sure do give us a lot of suspect material but for them to keep going, not to mention the sheer catalogue size and volume, means that they must be doing something right.

Be warned that label sometime uses a vinyl sources when they release CDs. Listen closely for surface noce, and Kellog's "snap, crackle, and pop". On a positive note, at least they make an effort to release long out of print vinyl on CD. I owned Psychic TV's "Force the Hand of Chance" CD (what's up with changing the original cover artwork?) on Cleopatra until I got a hold of the official 1997 Some Bizzare release.

They also have a horrible habit of releasing and re-releasing cds with either misspellings of the artist name or album title, or completely incorrect track information.

This label issued domestically (in the U.S.) a lot of Zoth Ommog Records' catalog; their other releases are mostly forgettable.