CRR Featured In Bandcamp Daily

Take a Dip in Brighton’s DIY Underground - Hayden Merrick

https://daily.bandcamp.com/scene-report/brighton-uk-diy-scene-report

"Archie Sagers did just that. Leaving the remote Wiltshire village where he grew up, Sagers relocated his non-profit label Crafting Room Recordings to Brighton, joined the band ladylike, and maintains about a hundred other altruistic music pursuits. “Brighton is a really uniquely lovely scene,” Sagers says. “People are very supportive of one another and you’ll have people starting up and others trying to give them a foot up—bigger bands, like Lime Garden didn’t have to have [ladylike] support them. Everyone looks out for each other.”

Referring to Brighton’s under-the-radar status, he says, “I hope it can become nationally known in a couple years’ time, like Bristol or London’s Speedy Wunderground scene.” He goes on to mention The Windmill, the legendary London venue synonymous with the label Speedy Wunderground and incubator of buzzy UK acts such as Black Midi and Black Country, New Road: “It feels unique because it’s got such a community around the venue—people filming it, committed sound engineers making good mixes and putting them online. Green Door is the closest thing we have, somewhere people go as a community. You might go there not knowing who’s playing and just trust the curation.”

Like many others, Archie Sagers saw Brighton as a far-off beacon of cool shit he wanted to be a part of, looking specifically to Bella Union, the legendary label run by Simon Raymonde, as well as Third Kind (“a very Bandcamp label” that specializes in shoegaze cassettes), and Goo Records. Sagers ultimately chose to join his influences by moving across the country and bringing his nascent non-profit label with him.

An artist himself (with ladylike, but also under his own name), Sagers makes sure to minimize red tape and give Crafting Room’s signees as much freedom as possible. “I should make [signing bands] more official and actually define what I’ll do and what they’ll do,” he admits, “but I want it to be as easy as possible for an artist, and be as hands off with what they want to do. They’ll come to me with a single or an EP, and if I like it I’ll agree to what they say—how they wanna release it, what format they wanna release it on—and I just give them a bit of money I guess.”

Sagers also ensures that there are many strings to Crafting Room’s bow, that it is more than just a label. “I try to bring everything I do back to Crafting Room Recordings,” Sagers explains. “This zine I’m doing is Crafting Room Magazine, and it’ll be tied into a compilation on the label. And the Hidden Herd nights [he co-runs at The Albert] are Hidden Herd X Crafting Room. And I film and edit video sessions and Farm Road Studios, and those are Farm Road X Crafting Room. I try to bring it back to give some extra exposure to the label at every opportunity.”"