Skip to main content

History of Fiction Records

This year is Fiction Records' 40th anniversary. Fiction Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Parry and owned by Universal Music Group. Chris Parry is the co-founder of Radio X and the manager of The Cure, and with the help of music publisher Fiction Songs Ltd they founded Fiction Records together in 1978. Both were based in London and also maintained a satellite office in New York. The label is best known for being the home of 'The Cure' for over 20 years. Fiction Records achieved 'The Cure's' first No. 1 album in 1992 with 'Wish'. The song 'Friday I'm in Love' from the album also topped Billboards Modern Rock chart. 

         Image result for the cure fiction records Related imageImage result for the cure fiction records

Fiction was also the home to other artists and released many acclaimed albums, such as 'Eat's 'Sell Me a God' in 1989 and 'Die Warzau's 'Engine' in 1995. Other artists during this time were from the likes of 'The Passions', 'Cult Hero', and 'The Purple Hearts'. 
Fiction Songs also became home to hip hop artist 'Stereo MC', the 'Jungle Brothers', 'Primitive Radio Gods' and 'NY Loose'.

Image result for eat sell me a god fictionImage result for the purple hearts fictionImage result for stereo mc fiction

In 1992, the Fiction headquarters at Charlotte Street served as the first home to 'XFM London' co founded by Chris Parry. A concert in support of this station called 'Great Expectations' was held on 13 June 1993 and a live album of this concert called 'Great Expectations Live' was released July later that year on Fiction Records. It included performances by 'The Cure', 'Damon Albarn', and other acts like 'Catherine Wheel'. 

In January 2005, Fiction was revived and the first release on the ''new'' Fiction was 'Snow Patrol's' single 'Run' which entered the UK singles chart at No 5. 'Snow Patrol's album 'Final Straw' went on to sell two million copies worldwide. And on January 2014, Universal Music Group restructed Fiction Records as a standalone label. 

Fiction's current line up includes acts such as: Crystal Castles, Elbow, Ian Brown, Kaiser Chiefs, The Amazons. The Maccabees, The Naked and Famous, Snow Patrol, Tame Impala, Tired Pony, Death From Above 1979, Spector, Willy Mason, Last Dinosaurs, Kate Boy, Nick Mulvey, Jamie N Commons and Little Matador. 

Related imageImage result for the naked and famous
Image result for crystal castlesImage result for the amazons



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Inspiration from posters and advertisements

I decided to look at some music posters to get some ideas of how music is advertised and for some artistic inspiration. I noticed a lot of music posters have bold colours, shapes and font and want to explore this in my own work. I also noticed the aesthetic of many music posters go with the genre of music. I plan on doing some illustrations of musical instruments with bold colours and shapes inspired by these posters. While researching music posters I came across the work of Craig Frazier . He has been an illustrator and designer since 1978.  “I like to think that one of the explanations for Craig Frazier’s expressive and memorable illustrations is that he has been—and still is—a designer. The search for a concept—and not putting anything down until a concept is found —is what makes the end product great work that communicates, often about difficult subjects.” -  —Ivan Chermayeff,  partner, Chermayeff & Geismar I like his illustrations and the simplici...

Inspiration from film

I decided to look at some of the music videos by bands/artists on Fiction Records to get some inspiration and ideas from film rather than posters/artwork. I particularly liked ‘The Amazon’s’ video for ‘Ultraviolet’ as I enjoyed the different lighting effects and the animation work of different shapes and patterns that bounced off the musicians at different points throughout the video. I thought that this would be a fun thing to try in my own work so I would like to try out some animation like this, maybe some over our own videos. As I go to a lot of gigs and festivals I thought maybe looking at some of the advertising/promo videos would also be useful. I decided to look at some Download festival promo first as it is a festival I am familiar with and regularly attend. I like how the video includes the logo and general aesthetic of the festival.  I wanted to also look at a different festival so I can compare the different promo videos for different kind of festi...