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The Maccabees’ Felix White launches label and club night
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 25 July 2016
Maccabees guitarist Felix White and Warner publicist Morad Khokar have launched a new label called Yala! Records and an accompanying club night.
“We thought this could be a nice opportunity to bring this community together, whether it be producers or designers or promoters we have known for a long time, working together on helping new music find its own way, and after that, the sky’s the limit”, says White of the new venture. “Everything starts with the club night though; it will be the focal point of what we do going forward, and with this opening line up we’ve set the bar suitably high for future nights”. Wanna know the line-up? Well, be patient then.
First you need to know that a further inspiration for the new company is White’s fear that new bands have fewer opportunities to build a career in nice neat stages these days – The Maccabees having gone from small gigs, to self-releasing their debut single, then working with Fierce Panda, followed by signing to Fiction.
“All those avenues and opportunities for bands don’t seem to be as prominent anymore, and those interim labels are important”, he says. “If we hadn’t taken those little steps, I’m not sure if we’d have gotten to a point where a label wanted to take a chance on us. [The Maccabees’ debut single] ‘X-Ray’ was limited to 500 copies, but it was released on vinyl with a sleeve and everything, and it ended up getting played by Steve Lamacq. That was the biggest buzz I can remember, even now”.
As for the new venture’s name, he explains: “My grandmother was Palestinian and she used to cross between speaking Arabic and English, and it’s something she used to say all the time: ‘Yala! Hurry up! Let’s go!’ It’s always stuck in my head and it felt like it fitted – let’s stop talking about it and try to make it happen”.
Too right. And that first edition of the new night’s line-up? Well, the first Yala! club night will take place at the Bermondsey Social Club in London on 5 Aug, headlined by The Magic Gang with DJ sets from The Maccabees and Mystery Jets.
