Have to agree with as said above. For me, Tribal America definitely had its own sound and its realises are a must for anybody who is serious about their house music collection. You can pick up a lot of the back issues quite cheaply in the UK (London) which i think has more to do with large manufacturing runs rather than poor quality. Tribal lives on to a small degree in Twisted America records although the sound has of course moved on to something else. Of as now (may 2009) house music, with its many ups and downs, is on an upward course, its gaining popularity in clubs again, new records continue to come out and older stuff, eg- Tribal gains a new generation of fans who where young children when Tribal first came about.

When I think back to the time I first got into Tribal records I can remember at the time House music was really beginning to kick off as far as the masses were concerned and was becoming (increasingly) more and more mainstream, which for me spelt the end of a two or three year period of House music being still relatively 'underground' Artist's were crossing over into the (UK) charts with increased regularity, which for me just seemed to sanitize the House scene in general as most of the people who were now hearing House music for the first time were experiencing, what I considered to be, a waterdown version of the real thing. If you wanted the real thing deep, stripped down minimal grooves with an evil bottom end but without all the screaming 'higher! higher!' divas which were punctuated by ludicrously long breakdowns every five minutes then Tribal offered the perfect vinyl sanctuary.


With hindsight it would be easy to knock the label as being, perhaps, a little to 'camp' but at the time the Gay scene was still very much a dominant force in cutting edge underground House music. Personally, I still consider Tribal USA Records to be one of the most important, groundbreaking and devilishly entertainingly House labels to date. Their output always seemed to be touched by the (production) hand of God in some way and was always of a consistantly high quality. The demise of the label was a sad day but I still cheerish the momories and the vinyl.