ADE 2022: first GLB Records showcase

The label has returned from its first showcase at Amsterdam Dance Event, and here is a record of it.

ADE is the week the business goes to Amsterdam to meet itself. There is a day part, with panels, and a night part, with clubs, and largely the same people attend both. It rained most of the week.

Mark Neilson, Tom Ashby and I had eleven meetings, with distributors, promoters and two sync agents. Perhaps three of them led to anything. The most useful was with a cutting engineer Tom had wanted to meet for years, and they spent an hour on lacquer supply while I took notes on who was still booking slots for spring.

The night itself

The label had four artists and a room near the water. It was not a Long Count, since a showcase does not have time for everyone to play three hours, and Anselm Reuter raised this with me several times. Lena Vogt found him two hours and twenty minutes in the end.

Ilse Morgen went first, a week after "Mainufer" came out. She is twenty-seven, and she played to a room that was mostly other labels with their arms crossed, and put a breakbeat into the set at a quarter past nine.

Margaux Delorme sang live over her own set. The monitor on her side failed in the second song, and she sang the rest by watching Frieda Lux, who was not on until later but had come to stand by the booth and fed her the count with two fingers.

Frieda closed, on vinyl. The room loosened up gradually. I would not overstate it, but a few people stayed who had other places to be, and Lena had four enquiries in her inbox the following Monday.

It cost more than budgeted. The label will go again next year.