label.recordLabel

Staalplaat

Staalplaat is a label for sound artists: an organization network with a music label, an e-zine, a radioprogram, a shop, and a mail order and distribution company, now based in Berlin, Germany. The label was founded by Geert-Jan Hobijn and is famous for its Mort Aux Vaches series, which is a collaboration between Staalplaat and the national Dutch radio VPRO, in which the station provides the recording sessions and Staalplaat releases them in a limited edition. Staalplaat has a long history of organizing events—in the 1980s it was the co-founder of a concert space called the NL Centre in Amsterdam. Here it organized concerts, partially released on tape in the NL-Documentatieserie series, which are denoted by the ST 00X catalog numbers. The letters ST come from Staaltape, as the label was called back then. After being based in Amsterdam for many years, Staalplaat relocated to Berlin in 2004. Staalplaat’s sister company was Soleilmoon Recordings, which is based in the USA. Each distributed the other in its home country. They parted ways in 2000 following the death of Bryn Jones (Muslimgauze).