A tale about PAPER and Repap Records:

when we first started talking about setting up a record label it was January 1993. It was a dark miserable night in Manchester that would have done any self respecting Smiths fan proud. Miles and Elliot had just finished their second recording as Salt City Orchestra with a singer from Sheffield called Vernon and we were sitting around wondering whether it should be sent to labels in London which seemed to be the norm for most house music at the time.

After more than a few beers we decided to stick to fingers up to the rest and dig our heels in. We chucked in a couple of hundred quid each and got an office in a local business centre sharing with Andy ‘Mad Hatter', a local soul and hip hop aficionado. We owned a telephone, fax machine, one desk, 3 chairs, a dry wipe board we updated with new swear words and pictures daily oh, and an answer machine. Paul Cleary (the genius behind our visual concepts) created the first designs for "Paper Music", as it was first called, and this was the existence of Paperecordings circa 1993, for about 6 months. No releases, just fags, booze and lots of boys talk.

At the time myself, Miles and Elliot (we'd all met at the Hacienda in 1990 ) were working at the seminal Yorkshire house club "Hard Times", famed for its championing of American house music. It was there that we met David Piccioni who ran Azuli records and distribution. We booked him to DJ at Hard Times all the time and we played him a track called "The Book" by Salt City Orchestra and immediately cracked a deal. The record was pressed up and we were off.

To our amazement the single really captured the atmosphere of the time and gave us all every excuse we ever needed to carry on hanging out in the office pretending to be teenagers. Refusing to do any interviews or encourage press interest in the early days gave us an element of mystique. We signed music from the world over, being the first to sign a Norwegian house album in 1997 (a member of whom is now Royksopp), Crazy Penis (Crazy P or Loco Pingo!) arrived as a cassette in 1995 from Wales; they have now released their 5th album and perform globally as a 6 piece live band.

We always wanted to develop artists in the same vein as indie labels such as Factory, Warp and 4AD rather than being a label chucking as much at the wall and to see what stuck. Hard though it’s been through the inevitable tough times; watching bands progress from the bedroom to the stage has been the most amazing thing; constantly reminding us why we started a record label.

Now it’s 2008, the internet has empowered everyone who has a passion for music: so what better time to dust off our dancing shoes, join the party and release our 101th single and 24th album?