Paper Recordings
Label Profile

Paper Recordings celebrated its 25th birthday last year (in 2019) - which makes me feel old, but those memories of discovering the label, hunting down releases, being on their promo list, wearing the t-shirt and using their stickers burn bright. It was the label that shaped the early uk house scene and began a surge in Northern House that was littered with classic tracks and cool tunes.

When Paperecordings started in 1994 in Manchester UK, they lead the underground UK house upsurge in a scene previously dominated by US cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York. With bold designs and  consistent musical quality control, it started its journey as one of the world’s most treasured and loved record labels.

Founding quartet Ben Davis, Pete Jenkinson, Miles Holloway and Elliot Eastwick pioneered fresh deep house sound, unearthed Norwegian dance gems and even reviving themselves when faced with the shredder in the form of a sizeable debt.

"It was all downhill from our first record!" laughs Ben Davis, co-founder of the label alongside Pete Jenkinson, Miles Hollway and Elliot Eastwick, among others. "I think we started exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. A year or two later, there were quite a lot of other UK house labels about, but they didn’t seem to have quite the same cache. We had the profile thanks to Miles and Elliot, who were pioneering a new kind of UK house sound through their DJ residency at Hard Times in Leeds, and got off to a flier”.

Paper’s first 12-inch, Salt City Orchestra’s The Book - a collaboration between Hollway, Eastwick and fellow Manchester producer Si Bradshaw - is a prized gem in my collection. Over the decade that followed, they established themselves as one of the UK’s leading quality house labels.