BAKK records

TONAL UNITY records

25 Aprile 2020

„In a time when technically everybody can start a label and release a record, we want to create works of art that show that it’s worth to bring out a release”

Founded in 2013
Founders: Nicolaas Borst, Ruben Verkuylen and Thomas van Linge
City: The Hague (NL). The city is good because it consists of a lot of different undercurrents but has never been able to capitalize on it.
Genre: electronic-minded and open for what’s possible between dancefloor and living room.
Artists: legowelt, sfv acid, don’t dj, cucina povera...
Mission: Have fun and keep surprising ourselves.
Artwork: Mike Kokken. He is an insanely wide interest and is able to create artworks that meander between graphic design, collage and something else. For some releases Ruben Verkuylen or Heer Badoux are also involved.

Our label was found in 2013 from the sheer and simple reason to just release a record because we can. We started off with techno'ish material appreciated the recent past but with a forward-thinking approach (instead of simple nostalgia). It ended up being underdog Robert Bergman and legend Legowelt for the first release.
As the first release was received well, more different types of music enriched our musical narrative. Coming from an art educational background, we as founders considered artwork to be just as important as the music itself. We wanted to differentiate from the labels, and we did this by exploring weird, fun and non-techno aesthetic combined with doing all the print work ourselves. We wanted to be strong by taking the label into our own hands from start to finish.
Our in-house designers (mostly Mike Kokken and often Ruben Verkuylen and Heer Badoux) pushed the envelope by “sampling" from widely different backgrounds and disciplines we all found interesting (comics, furniture designs, sculptural art, outsider art, etc.) and translated this to artworks that sit interestingly somewhere between graphic design, collage and something else. And of course, with every release we looked for new ways to use inks, printing techniques and specific types of paper to create releases you’d simply want to have for the looks.
Every physical side of every release is really important moment for the label, the act of printing every sleeve ourselves. It means a kind of control and experiment which is not really possible when an external company does all the printing. Every single copy we brought out touched our hands because we printed it ourselves.
Over the past few years our label developed as an example that the look and feel of the carrier is as important as the content. Musically our scope widened a lot, ranging a versatile club-oriented sound all the way more experimental and abstract (on our Plafond series). Visually we embrace weird and bold but don’t resort to plain jokes. In a time when technically everybody can start a label and release a record, we want to create works of art that show that it’s worth to bring out a release.