Southern Records

• Name — Southern Records • Founded — 1992 • Founder — John Loder Allison Schnackenberg Danielle Soto • Distributor — Southern Studios Forte Music • Genre — Various • Country — UK US • Location — London, England Chicago, Illinois • Website — www.southern.net

Southern Studios was a recording label owned and operated by John Loder from the 1970s until his death. Loder became friends with musician Penny Rimbaud and collaborated with him in an experimental band called EXIT. Rimbaud later formed anarchist punk band Crass, and Loder and his Southern Studios were chosen to record their first album, The Feeding of the 5000. That record was originally released on Small Wonder Records. When Small Wonder encountered problems manufacturing the release, due to the allegedly blasphemous nature of the lyrics, Crass decided they needed their own label to take full control of their output. Loder facilitated this by acting as the business manager behind Crass Records. He arranged manufacture, distribution and accounting. After the Crass record's success in 1978, Loder became the go-to alternative distributor for a generation of independent musicians. This connected Loder with the emerging international independent record business. He formed alliances with small distributors around the world to distribute Crass's output, and in the process U.S. labels like Touch and Go found outlets for their releases overseas. Circa 1984, he formed a lasting partnership with Dischord Records. In 1986, Ian MacKaye traveled to London looking to forge a deal with Loder that would satisfy the demand for Minor Threat records in the UK. The deal struck resulted in Dischord records being manufactured in a factory on the European mainland that Southern had contracted with, and for decades Minor Threat records were stamped "Made in France." Southern served as their pressing agent and distributor through 2008.

Label founder Loder died in 2005. The same year, Allison Schnackenberg, label boss, set up the Latitudes imprint to record and release one sessions, in a similar spirit to the BBC's Peel Sessions. Starting in late 2008, Southern closed its international office and moved all operations to London. Chicago closed November 2008, Le Havre closed July 2009, and Berlin closed December 2012. On 14 December 2023, Nomeansno posted on their Facebook page that the label has been selling their records without payment to the band for years and are not an authorized source of their recordings.

Other label imprints operated by Southern include Black Diamond, Latitudes, Midwich Records, and Truth Cult.

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