6 Images... | | ID: | 13 | | Name: | Moonshine Music | | Profile: | Moonshine Music Moonshine Music, no longer with us, was a U.S. based music label headquarted in sin city, Los Angeles, CA which specialized in "electronic music and DJ culture," embracing genres such as techno, trance, breaks, drum & bass, house, happy hardcore, gabber, trip hop, all flavors of the general category commonly referred to generically as "electronic music." Beginning in 1992 and continuing until its eventual demise thirteen years later in 2005, Moonshine Music managed to release a considerable volume of DJ mixed compilation CDs featuring some of America's top DJs at the time, such as Keoki, DJ Dan, DJ Dara, D:FUSE, Christopher Lawrence, Donald Glaude, AK1200 and Omar Santana among others. In addition to a dizzying volume of compilations and compilation series, in both mixed and unmixed varieties, mixed in studio compilations and live DJ sets of varying quality, Moonshine Music also released several single-artist albums and singles. Striving to build up America's biggest and best independent record label dedicated to electronic music, Moonshine Music eventually imploded and failed as so many ventures before them have. Following the prototype of the archetypal American business, Moonshine was born in a garage, Steve Levy's garage to be precise in October 1992, racking up over 100,000 unit sales with its first release, the rather blandly titled Techno Truth Volume 1. Ten years later, if Billboard is to be believed Moonshine Music was still a synonym for Steve Levy's garage. Interesting fact: sales figures for Moonshine are atypical as far as the average garage sale is concerned. As if floating a trial balloon and performing an experiment to determine if Techno Truth had been a fluke, the Moonshine garage pushes beyond conventional popular dance music tempos in the 140 BPM Plus series. It's no fluke. Over 250,000 units sold suggest that Levy is onto something. Within a year the garage sale goes online and does the unthinkable: unversed in music industry dogma and conventional wisdom, Moonshine Music offers digital downloads, something so obvious and yet so heretical within the existing cartel so fixated on maintaining the illusion of scarcity by artificially constraining music product to physical media. Over the next several years, Moonshine would continue to offer compilations neatly categorized into various subgenres of electronic music including DJ mixed compilations, starting with DJ Keoki's Journeys in March 1994, that neatly packaged an over an hour of club-like ambiance, some fully digital and professionally tweaked, others semi-live using a DJ's own vinyl and eventually even live mixed DJ sets recorded in a real nightclub. Imagine that! A few months after DJ Keoki cleared the path, mega DJs would follow. Paging Paul Oakenfold: Journeys calling. June 1994 Oakenfold delivers. There's no turning back now. Journeys featuring mega mega DJ Tiesto with an attached suicide note was the next obvious step, possibly too obvious. Sidestepping that, Moonshine instead declares "welcome to the jungle" by hooking up with Suburban Bass at the dawn of 1995, and quickly introduces America to trip hop. Can you say Chemical Brothers? Fatboy Slim. Thought so. By the end of the following year, in October 1996, the very first Crystal Method CD hits the shelves sporting the Moonshine logo. For some perspective, consider this: David Geffen's label moved a cool million copies of Crystal Method's follow up, making it one of the top selling electronic acts sprouting from America. But with the good always comes the bad, and sometimes even the truly horrific. Case in point: January 1997, Happy 2b Hardcore Pt 1. The truly horrific part is that five more parts would follow. Moonshine snags "the world's No. 1 DJ," and it's not DJ Tiesto or it is going under the too obvious not to a pseudonym handle Carl Cox. It's May 1997. Seemingly unable to do no wrong, discounting Happy Hardcore of course, Keoki's Ego Trip with Dave Aude spinning the knobs arrives in July 2007 causing an untold number of people around the world to spontaneously wet themselves. Another 100,000 units of product are tallied up at the garage sale. Moonshine (it's)OverAmerica, an annual event, debuts in September of the same year. And time marches on. By the end of the millenium, sales figures have more than doubled in a single year. Chalk up over $12 millon USD for Steve Levy's modest online garage sale. Moonshine remains an unstoppable force that will eventually supplant the existing music industry. Yo Mixmaster, cut faster, and he does, with Moonshine and without the Beastie Boys in September 2001. Nostalgia time, can premium vinyl be far behind? No. One month and one catchy name later and Moonshine RGB launches. Closing out the year that commercial airliners crashed into buildings in New York City and two rather large towers fell, Iceland's gusgus signs with Moonshine. Moonshine Movies arrives to greet the new year that was, in 2002 and to fill the multimedia gap in its catalog. A decade of rather amazing growth for Steve Levy's Moonshine Music and no end in sight. And in three years time another milestone would be reached. Moonshine Music itself and all of its parts, including its website, its neverending compilations and even its groundbreaking digtal downloads would simply vanish. The details will be filled in eventually, but for now we'll simply rely on the Wayback Machine at archive.org. It stores archives of website snapshots taken over an extended period. The final snapshot for Moonshine Music was taken in January 2005. And it would appear that all is well at the label, the final dated message is unremarkable, containing no hint that the end is near, that moving vans are coming, that the locks are being changed, not so much as a cryptic "so long and thanks for all the fish." If the demise of Moonshine Records was announced on its own website to its customers, it lies elsewhere. [quote 01.04.2005 Moonshine Music specializes in electronic music. We are the only label in the world that regularly releases live DJ mixes in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound! Moonshine Movies releases specialty DVDs created by independently minded people.[quote Jan 18,2005 Apparently requests for the Moonshine Music website redirect to BPM Magazine. Who turned out the lights? Like a thief in the night and without a public farewell? Sad if true. What's the story? To be continued...? | | Sub-Label: | | | Contact & Info: | (Head Office) Moonshine Music, 1680 N. Vine Street, Suite 221 Hollywood, CA 90028 USA. moonshinemusic.info@gmail.com | | URLs: | | | Sumitted By: | Maitreya | |
| Entry Created: | 2005-05-02 23:56:55 | |
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