NuNorthern Soul’s Phil Cooper interview: “When everyone was finding it difficult, that was when they needed this kind of music”
We celebrate a decade of Balearic bombshells with NuNorthern Soul
Ever since a gaggle of British DJs necked their first pills in Ibiza in the mid 1980s, debate has raged about what Balearic music actually is – and how to define it. Is it, as one music scribe famously wrote, “pop music that sounds good on Ecstasy”, or, as some others believe, more of a “vibe” or feeling that’s not tied to any one musical genre or style? All these years on, are we even any closer to knowing what it is?
Perhaps a better way of judging what “Balearic” music is in 2022 is to defer to those record labels who are currently regarded as leading lights within the scene. Those drawn towards Balearica would cite a handful of long-serving labels, most notably Mudd’s Claremont 56 imprint, Italy’s Hell Yeah? Recordings, Coyote’s appropriately named Is It Balearic?, Kenneth Bager’s Music For Dreams and NuNorthern Soul, an outlet that this month is celebrating its tenth birthday.
“Last year I did an interview, and I came up with a definition of Balearic that I’ve seen a few people using,” label founder Phil Cooper says. “’Balearic is a journey through music with no boundaries or genres.’ But it can be about time and place, too – a record you might hear in Sainsbury’s queuing up to pay for your shopping might sound terrible, but if you’re stood on a beach and the same record’s playing, it works. It’s about context I guess.”
Although context is important, you could argue that Balearica – and particularly the eclectic, sonically detailed collection of singles, EPs and albums Cooper has put out on NuNorthern Soul over the last decade – is the ultimate form of musical escapism. The greatest Balearic can transport you, internally at least, to sunnier climes, evoking images of beautiful, sun-soaked places far beyond your current environment.
“I like that idea as well,” Cooper enthuses from his home on the White Isle (Ibiza). “Blair French did this incredible EP for me that he recorded during the harshest of Detroit winters, in a studio based in the outbuildings of a farm on the outskirts of a Motor City. Yet listening to that EP, he sums up Balearic perfectly.”
Cooper’s first musical love was not Balearica, and he initially made his name as a resident DJ at Liverpool superclub Cream in the 1990s and early 2000s. While it would be years before NuNorthern Soul was launched as a label, he was already using the name during that period.
“At that time, I was out DJing a lot, but when I returned home every Sunday there would be these laidback listening sessions at my flat and friends would drop in and out,” he remembers. “One day a friend opened a bar in Chester, where I lived and ran a record shop. He asked whether I wanted to do something like that on a Sunday there. So, I started it, and Jim Baron from Crazy P would come and play because I’d been at school with him. At one of the events, a guy came up to me and said, ‘I love these sessions – it’s like the Northern Soul crowd the way there’s a community. It’s like new northern soul’.”
The phrase struck with Cooper, who has a history of founding or co-founding record labels (most notably the broken beat and future garage imprint Sick Trumpet, which was active between 2005 and 2008). The idea for what turned into the NuNorthern Soul label arrived after an enjoyable evening down the pub with his friend – and sometime 20/20 Vision and R&S Records label manager – Andy “Ticker” Whittaker.
“Through Andy, I found out that Ben Smith of Fug and Akwaaba lived closed to where I was living at the time in London,” Cooper recalls. “Andy introduced us, we went for a couple of Guinnesses and Ben told me he had hard drives full of music he didn’t know what to do with. So, I listened to it and narrowed it down to an album’s worth of stuff. That became his debut solo album, The Movedrill Projects, which was the first release on NuNorthern Soul.”
Smith has been a key part of the NuNorthern Soul story ever since, releasing countless projects on the label, including the Dedication to the Greats series, in which he delivers bespoke, Balearic-minded cover versions. Fittingly, Smith is the only artist featured twice on the label’s 10th anniversary release – a lusciously packaged vinyl box set which boasts a mixture of previously digital-only highlights (only a fraction of the label’s material is ever released on wax for a variety of reasons) and previously unheard exclusives.
“It kind of sums up the atmospheric sound of the label,” Cooper says of the box set. “The ten tracks I’ve selected are on there in roughly chronological order, and if you play all the tracks one after each other it flows nicely as well. To make it DJ friendly, there’s five slabs of wax on there, with a track a side, cut nice and loud at 45 RPM.”
It’s undoubtedly a wonderful package, and one that perfectly summarises the sonic sound world that Cooper has created for NuNorthern Soul. Smith’s ‘Over Land & Sea’, an epic that has never before been released on vinyl, is a slowly shifting, widescreen vision full of sliding fretless bass, hissing cymbals, meandering melodies and sunrise chords; Torn Sail’s ‘Disconnected’ is a sunset-ready neo-folk gem; Tambores En Benniras’ ‘Camino a Cala Llonga’ is a classic-sounding Balearic soundscape to get lost in; and old pal Jim Baron’s remix of Nordset’s ‘You Started It All’ (credited to his Ron Basejam alias) is a chugging, slow-motion Balearic Soul delight that’s racked up many millions of streams online.
Throw in some fantastic tracks and remixes from some well-regarded names of the ambient and Balearic scenes – think Johnny Nash, BEGIN, Willie Graff and Seahawks’ offshoot Captain Sunshine – and you have a sublime collection of suitably sun-soaked sounds.
The compilation is landing, 10 years and 2 months almost to the day from release number one, when NuNorthern Soul is arguably in ruder health than it has ever been – something that Cooper puts down not to his own A&R skills, but rather the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The first lockdown was an important moment for us,” Cooper reveals. “A lot of labels decided to pull back on releases, especially vinyl, but I thought it was a time when people needed music the most, especially the kind of music we release. So, I ploughed ahead. That poignant moment during lockdown when everyone was finding it difficult, that was when they needed this kind of music.”
Since the dawn of the pandemic, NuNorthern Soul releases have come thick and fast, both digitally and on vinyl. As well as two vaguely themed series of digital-only EPs released in the summer of 2021 and ’22 respectively (the Hints of Ibiza and Myths of Ibiza series, each of which came with bespoke artwork created by a different White Isle-based artist), Cooper has released a sublime album from Coyote, a couple of must-check vinyl samplers, and even a handful of reissues of genuine Balearic gems from the dim and distant past. Buyers have responded, not only copping the label’s new releases, but digging through the back catalogue too.
“That music, to me, is timeless, but circumstances – the pandemic, people wanting softer music in hard times – brought it to the fore,” Cooper says with a smile. “Yes, it has been 10 years of the label, but it’s the last 18 months to two years that has put us on the map. What started out as a hobby has become a vibrant label.”
Matt Anniss