After ten years, Ben Watt is closing down his independent label Buzzin Fly – it will not release any new material but will continue to sell back catalogue.
The Everything But The Girl singer said:
“I loved every minute, but all good things come to an end. It simply feels like the right moment. Buzzin’ Fly was born out of my commitment to the culture of DJing and helping young artists, but these days I am edging away from it towards other challenges – a new book I’m writing, research for another one, and a long-planned solo music project.”
“At heart I have always been a creative person – whether as a writer or musician – as opposed to a business person, and after ten years in clubs and in the office I need time again to focus fully on my own stuff rather than other people’s.”
“It feels appropriate to stop now in our tenth year and leave the label with, I hope, a strong reputation for what it has managed to achieve, rather than to continue with a muted presence. Someone asked why I couldn’t hand over the reins to someone else, but I don’t think it would ever have been the same. In the meantime, I hope my ongoing show for BBC 6Music’s 6Mix can still be a distilled showcase for some of the great music I come across. You never know, there might even be another imprint one day.”
Ben Watt was previously famous for his twenty-year career as a recording artist with Tracey Thorn in alt-pop band Everything But The Girl (1982-2002) which spawned nine albums.
Watt set up Buzzin’ Fly (named, like sister imprint Strange Feeling, after a Tim Buckley song) in 2003. “There was so much good music that never got released and I thought I could be this conduit for it,” explained Watt.
Buzzin’ Fly’s first release was Watt’s own single ‘Lone Cat (Holding On)’, an acclaimed raw house track, initially release as a limited one-sided promo at the end of 2002. It went on to sell 10,000 copies on 12″.
Over the years the label broke a number of artists including Justin Martin and Mlle Caro & Franck GarciaIt as well as drawing defining work from remixers such as Ame, Radio Slave, Charles Webster and John Tejada
As a farewell, the imprint is slated to release five retrospective Buzzin’ Fly digital anthologies later in the year, encompassing all of the label’s sixty-eight 12″ releases. Each volume will cover two years of the label’s history, released at monthly intervals starting in April and ending in September.
