Goodbye 2021, Hello 2022....

Hello Everyone,

So this is likely the last blog post of the year, and usually people do recaps or something about the year gone by, I think? I don’t know. I have some skills in the music areas but not so much in the “how normal people behave” areas. Still, as you have read so far, why not do an enormously long blog about 2021? Exactly.

So let me start by saying, despite the long, irritating, and exhausting issues with vinyl, 2021 may well have been the best year I have had in this industry. It was relentlessly busy, but so much has happened that it is hard to even know where to start. So let’s do it via the people who made it all happen.

The Customers and Supporters

Right at the top is you guys. Yeah it’s cheesy as hell, but it is the base that everything we have been able to do is built upon. You guys have made this year not just possible, but incredible. The faith you put in my label, the outpouring of support and remarkable patience you guys have shown when issues have arisen, and the amount of music you guys have...

A Statement Re: Suburban Base

Due to ongoing legal procedures, I will stick to documented and verifiable facts.

The situation as it stands:

1. Suburban Base was asked informally, and then via a lawyer, to provide a contract or other legal evidence showing their right to sell music written by Austin Reynolds. 
To date, they have not done so.

2. Suburban Base were then issued a cease and desist from the lawyer. They have refused to comply.

3. Suburban Base was aware of all of this before they released the recent vinyl containing Austin Reynolds work.

4. Suburban Base continues to sell Austin Reynolds work, and to license his music, without his consent, and without any legal right to do so.

Why are we making this public?

1. Suburban Base is currently selling, and  clearly intends to continue to sell the music in question illegally, and against the wishes of the artist.

2. Suburban Base has not paid any recording royalties to either Austin or myself in over two decades despite numerous licensing deals and the music being sold on all the major digital sites and on vinyl.

3. Other artists will perhaps be in a similar situation and will benefit from this information. If...

Updates on ALL the delayed vinyl and Pre-Sales

Hello everyone,

I wanted to give you all an update on the pre-sales, and what we have been told, and what I think is going to happen, because those two things are not the same lol.

Firstly, have a look at the image:

The keen observer will notice that all of the releases are set for “March 2022”. Basically, that’s what we have been told is the delivery date of everything. As you must know by now, Kniteforce has a huge number of releases that have been cut, and most of which have had the test presses delivered, but the actual finished runs of the records have not arrived. According to the record press, ALL of them are coming in March 2022, or maybe April 2022.

I sincerely hope not lol. At last count, that would mean a delivery of roughly…

93 x 10” and 12” singles

and

6 x Box Sets

Which is, I don’t know, 100,000 records? Lol. I don’t think they are all going to come in March 2022. If they do, we will have our own personal record fair. But here is what I have done as far as priorities go:

The above pictured...

Updates and reveals

Hello everyone,

I would like to thank everyone for the support on the House Crew Box Set. I know Pre Sales are a pain, but this is a prime example of why we need to do them - I had ordered a certain amount, and I have had to DOUBLE that order. It is nearly impossible to guess what I will need to order when it comes to box sets, but I can tell almost instantly what I will need once the response comes in for the first few days. 
I order based on the initial sales, then I can make an educated guess on how many more will sell in the coming weeks and months, and then I add a little more to that so I have enough to cover everyone.

In this box sets case, we quickly reached the amount I had ordered, and have been able to up the order to cover current and expected sales. So a huge thanks to all of you. In this messy time of vinyl ordering, it saves me a huge headache and it assures you will get the music rather than have it sell out because I did not order enough!

Updates and THE HOUSE CREW! WHOOP!

Hello Everyone,

How are you? I am knackered, thank you for asking lol....It has been a crazy few weeks…and I expect it will stay that way for another week or two, really. So lets jump right in with the most exciting thing ever...

The House Crew Box Set

This is finally ready to go live on Friday 3rd December, which, to the regular KF people, means 7pm on Thursday 2nd of December. This Box Set is genuinely amazing featuring a huge range of talent on remix duty, including Manix, Ratpack, Blame, Acen, Hyper-On Experience, Ant To Be and Liquid..., not to mention the first three new tunes from The House Crew in decades, and of course the origianl classic tunes, all lovingly remastered....I am so excited to finally be able to put this up for pre-sale. 

As mentioned previously, this pre-sale, like all pre-sales, is something I would rather have avoided. But remember the Acen Box Set? We ordered 500 of that, and at the time we were worried we would have loads left over. And we ended up needing 1500, all of which have sold. Actually, we could have done...

The Immediate Future....and a little bit after that too....

Hello everyone,

Right, lots to talk about so we will get straight to it. This blog is here to tell you about the current and upcoming things, and the why’s and how’s!

Firstly, we have the super exclusive Kniteforce Khristmas Hamper, as pictured:

This is limited to a little under 200 units, and will be available from Thursday 18th November - that is, this week!
It contains a 12” vinyl record that has never been repressed and that originally only came out on test press. Like all the items in the hamper, it is exclusive to the hamper - none of these things will be available in any other format or on their own at a later date. Likewise, there is a USB full of goodies, a brand new CD, a mug, a slipmat and a keyring, plus a calendar and an Xmas card from yours truly. I realise the Xmas card might put you off buying it, but it is, at least, amusing.
And we have a video for it, because why not…

A week after that is the Black Friday sale. We are doing that as a 48...

KF176 Acen - Trip To The Moon (Dubplate Mixes) - the promised record to apologise for the delays....is very delayed...Update

Hello everyone,

This is a quick blog to explain the situation with the promised free record:
KF176 Acen - Trip To The Moon (Dubplate Mixes)

To recap (because oh my god this is ridiculously late)…Due to the Acen Box Set being delayed to many buyers way back at the beginning of the year, we told those late receiving customers they would get a free record. 

We then cut and ordered the record.

And here we are, nearly 6 months later, without the record.

There is a special sort of irony in the fact that this record, to make up for the late box set, is so very much later than the box set was. It would be funny if it wasn’t so terrible. Sigh.

Now, it SHOULD have been here in July or August. It is one of maybe 10 records that we have in production that should have arrived in August. In fact, August should have seen releases from Fizby, Innercore, Dee Sub, DS1, Sub Foundation, Nutty Tax, Sandman, and New Decade as well as this record.

Since then, there have been the 8 or 9 records due in September, which include Ramos & Supreme, Dj...

New releases and updates!

Hello Everyone,

Wow, its been a while since I did a blog post. This makes sense though because it has been insane.
The last 3 weeks Lee and I have been flat out doing orders. Nearly 3000 have gone out.

At this point ALL Baraka orders, ALL NRG Box Set orders and ALL the orders we have that contain KF153 - Jonny L - Hurt You So original (but NOT the KF154 Remixes) have gone out.

We have not yet received KF154 Jonny L - Hurt You So (Remixes). We don’t know when that will arrive, despite asking. Frankly, the delays are so absurd that if we get it before Xmas I will be thrilled.
I know some of you have ordered that along with other records. So if we don’t have it in the next 4 weeks or so, we will probably go through all the orders and send out what we can. We will absorb the extra postage costs as a gift to all you loyal customers and because the wait is ridiculous.

Right, on to all the news! We have a ton of releases about to drop on Thursday 21st! First up we have two new vinyl...

All The Vinyl Problems and Solutions

Hello,

And welcome to the “depressing state of vinyl and what we are gonna do about it” blog. 

I am making this post because I find I am answering the same questions repeatedly, so instead of doing that, I can link people to this post and all will be explained nicely! 

In a nutshell: Records are delayed because there are not enough pressing plants in the world to meet the current demand for vinyl.

Vinyl has risen in popularity by an insane amount - I cannot offhand remember the figures, but it has been a steady rise in popularity for the last few four or five years, and then late 2020 into 2021 it rose by 400%, or something crazy. 
Much of this has been driven by hipsters buying reissues of Fleetwood Mac or whatever hipsters buy. Vinyl is basically the “in” format for music, and has overtaken CD sales for the first time in decades.
The problem is, in the early 2000s, vinyl was deemed dead. Even in our own scene, very few labels still pressed vinyl, and that was the same worldwide for pretty much all the music industry. This meant that many of the record pressing plants...

Liquid - Lethal

Hello Everyone!

Anyone who follows this blog regularly knows that I tend to get very excited and talk about all the things. And today we are talking about an album I have barely mentioned at all, even though it is seminal work by one of the leading artists in our scene, a legend in his own right, and all around thoroughly nice chap. I am of course talking about Liquid, and his brand new album “Lethal”.

Why Chris? Why haven’t you mentioned it until now, the day of the pre sale?

There are a few reasons, but the main ones are that I wanted this album to get your full attention,, and because Liquid and I have been working on how to put this out for a while. It has been a tough one to put together because unlike most of the releases on Kniteforce, this is both full on, proper old skool business release of the sort of quality you would expect from a master of his craft such as Liquid, but it is also more than that.

What do you mean Chris?

Ok, look. Some things are just a thing. Other things transcend the thing they...