Cleopatra Records was founded in 1992 by long-time music fan, Brian Perera. Brian acquired his love for the music business by becoming an active participant in the Los Angeles club scene through the 80's and 90's. The label was officially launched with three releases, Pressurehed (a space rock band from the SF bay area) followed by the release of Motörhead's "On Parole", which had long been out of print. The third release, was actually a series of reissues by electronic pioneers Kraftwerk.
They specialize in all genres, including A Capella, Acid, Adult, Aggro Rock, Ambient, Big Band, Blues, Breakbeat, Breaks, Chill, Drum & Bass, Electronica, Experimental, Gothic, Hardcore, Indie, Industrial, Krautrock, New Wave, Oi!, Punk, Reggae, Synthpop and Techno.
1992 address: Cleopatra, 8726 S. Sepulveda, Ste. D-82, Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA
2000 address: Cleopatra, PMB 251, 13428 Maxella Ave., Marina Del Rey, CA 90292
CLEOPATRA RECORDS INC.
11041 Santa Monica Blvd PMB #703
Los Angeles CA 90025
(310) 477-4000
E-mail: cleoinfo@cleorecs.com
Cleopatra gets a lot of hate. and for sure some of it is justified, but they also used to be a reliable place for a good slice of goth and industrial artists back in the late 90s up to early 2000s. They would also try to help new or smaller bands with their Unquiet Grave comps, or putting smaller bands on the Tribute albums. Now they seem to have expanded in 6 billion directions and lost their identity along the way, but to simply write them off is to not look at the positives they have had over the years. They are also releasing things from older artists who cannot find a home with larger labels anymore. That is important too, for the fans of those bands. I just think they are trying to keep up with the times, and while they are not the label I once liked, they are doing what they need to do.
The complaints about this Labels' business practices are hardly unique in the realm of the music industry. A quick dive in the Discogs database will tell you that there are labels who are worse at at least one item of this companies long list of sins.
But Cleopatra seems to have an edge and I think it's the frustration based on the things they did get right: They have legitimate releases that are relatively important and they have been somewhat instrumental in making music accessible that would otherwise not be.
It's just that they're really, really, really sloppy about it and you're left with this feeling of disappointed frustration because of it. It could've been good, but they didn't pay attention to the parts that would've made it good.
If you were to create a list of everything this label does correctly, the list would definitely not include: art/design, typography, proofreading, or taking care with audio fidelity of source material. Honestly, I'm not sure what's left to be good at. Rakin' in the dollars? I guess.
Never realized how bad this label was until I found out that they're releasing Brokencyde's next album. Let that sink in for a moment: A Brokencyde album. In 2018. (as a side note, they seem to be pretty much directly ripping off $uicideboy$ now, which is hilarious because Brokencyde makes $uicideboy$ look like Run the Jewels or something). Anyways, I just knew them as an odd label that made a very random assortment of the many, many industrial albums I bought in questionable used condition as a teenager, so I was fine with their existence. I can imagine this being rather helpful in the pre-internet days for someone into some of this music. So props to that. But looking now, boy is this a messy discography. I kind of had a feeling about this when the releases I saw back in the day seemed to have absolutely no overarching aesthetic or purpose (other than being vaguely "spooky gawth music"), and the more you look into that that theme becomes clear as ice. Like it's vastly less coherent than Metropolis, even. I kind of remember the Tribute To... albums and how trash they were but looking at them now they are really a laugh, and the misspelled artists/titles and wrong track lists are the cherry on top.
Super unethical sleazebag art theft in such profusion. I feel like I have a cocaine hangover and I just woke up on a leather couch and am squinting painfully at the too-bright shards of sunlight filtering in regular shafts through the venetian blinds over the sliding glass door, my clothes rank with the stench of menthol cigarrettes as I try to remember whose beach condo I am at; this is what Cleopatra Records brings to mind. I once bought a CD "by" this label in Amoeba Record's Hollywood store, OSTENSIBLY a goth compilation of some sort, only to discover that the contents of the disc were all recorded by one person aimlessly noodling on some synths without even stopping for individual track entries, ALL THE BANDS LISTED WERE FAKE (didn't exist). I tried to find this fake comp on this discography (it had a black and white picture of Dracula, maybe Bela Lugosi) but I soon realized it's probably not even accounted for. The word "ostensible" will be useful in attempting to understand the difference between what Cleopatra claims and what she offers. This coffin-crawler's cocaine-financing operation exists to victimize music fans willing to take a chance and it does this with cynical reliability. They can't be trusted to care about the accuracy of the printed information on their releases; Cleopatra can be trusted to act like a criminal parasite because music is for suckers who can spell.
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 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...
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eboethrasher
February 10, 2021