Label of the Month: CircoLoco Records

What do you do when you run one of the world’s most icon­ic par­ties and the world stops par­ty­ing? You start a record label.

After grow­ing from its hum­ble late ​‘90s ori­gins as a free Ibiza after-par­ty into a lead­ing inter­na­tion­al dance brand, Cir­coLo­co had been putting on events all around the globe – spread­ing its wings to Thai­land, Mia­mi, and New York, among many oth­er places – when the pan­dem­ic hit in ear­ly 2020. Wip­ing out the entire­ty of its pro­gram­ming for the next year and a half, which includ­ed the 2020 Open­ing Par­ty at DC-10, its most sought-after annu­al event, the world­wide shut­down left Cir­coLo­co with a gap­ing hole to fill.

Records were the answer. While the shut­ter­ing of dance floors kept dance fans every­where indoors, peo­ple were turn­ing increas­ing­ly to music for con­nec­tion, ramp­ing up their lis­ten­ing con­sump­tion through streams, shows, and phys­i­cal media. Cir­coLo­co co-founder Anto­nio Car­bonaro, know­ing he need­ed to find a home for the diehard net­work of artists, res­i­dents and ravers he had been nur­tur­ing along­side busi­ness part­ner Andrea Peli­no for over two decades, set about turn­ing uncer­tain­ty into some­thing last­ing.

Cir­coLo­co Records joined the game in May 2021, its arrival has­tened into exis­tence by one need: to give its com­mu­ni­ty of house and tech­no lovers a ​“new space” to assem­ble remote­ly at a time when gath­er­ing in per­son was off the table. ​“The ini­tial objec­tive was to not start just anoth­er label,” reflects Car­bonaro. ​“It was to cre­ate a plat­form that reflects the DNA of Cir­coLo­co – mix­ing gen­er­a­tions, sup­port­ing new artists, and keep­ing a cer­tain under­ground spir­it while still speak­ing to a glob­al audi­ence.” 

This com­mit­ment to bal­anc­ing top-tier ros­ters with off-the-radar cool has come to define the very essence of Cir­coLo­co, whose long-stand­ing reg­u­lars include Seth Trox­ler, The Mar­tinez Broth­ers, Tania Vul­cano, Loco Dice, and Luciano, but whose ori­gin sto­ry as an anar­chic, any­thing-goes bac­cha­na­lia endures.

The label wast­ed lit­tle time in get­ting things off the ground, round­ing up five heavy­weights – Seth Trox­ler, Sama’ Abdul­ha­di, Ram­pa, Dixon, and Ker­ri Chan­dler – for the Mon­day Dreamin’ Blue EP in June 2021, and effort­less­ly whisk­ing stuck-at-home lis­ten­ers away to the sweaty debauch­ery of CircoLoco’s infa­mous Mon­day par­ties at DC-10. Anoth­er three col­or-themed Mon­day Dreamin’ EPs fol­lowed (Green, Vio­let and Black), plac­ing the likes of Jamie Jones, Moody­mann and Carl Craig along­side DJ Ten­nis, Butch, TOKi­MON­S­TA, Bedouin, and oth­ers.

Armed with the weight of a huge glob­al par­ty name behind them, and boost­ed by the back­ing of Rock­star Games as a part­ner, Cir­coLo­co Records was fast on its way to suc­cess before it had even bare­ly even begun. Also in 2021, a 20-track com­pi­la­tion brought togeth­er the full cat­a­logue of Mon­day Dreamin’ releas­es, weav­ing through a var­ied thread of sil­very tech­no slam­mers, stargaz­ing elec­tro-house, and the rub­bery tech house that has often played a promi­nent role at the Cir­coLo­co par­ties. 

CircoLoco’s part­ner­ship with Rock­star Games extends the label’s reach into an open-world gam­ing uni­verse – mean­ing Grand Theft Auto V and GTA Online play­ers can cruise around the fic­tion­al LA-like metrop­o­lis of Los San­tos to music from a stream of Cir­coLo­co artists. ​“Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, we were think­ing about ways we could sup­port artists dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time, and the label came to life through those con­ver­sa­tions,” explains Car­bonaro of the col­lab­o­ra­tion. ​“For decades now, Rock­star has cham­pi­oned under­ground artists through their games, just like Cir­coLo­co has at our par­ties. So, when the oppor­tu­ni­ty came to col­lab­o­rate, it felt com­plete­ly nat­ur­al.” 

Notably, Troxler’s ​‘stem-by-stem rein­ter­pre­ta­tions’ of the afore­men­tioned Mon­day Dreamin’ com­pi­la­tion, which spliced melod­ic deep-tis­sue house and soul­ful break­beats with humor­ous voiceovers, were reworked into the CLR Launch Par­ty mix, debut­ing as part of GTA Online’s Los San­tos Tuners update. And the rela­tion­ship with Rock­star didn’t stop there – oth­er Cir­coLo­co tracks have made vir­tu­al in-game appear­ances too, includ­ing the swag­ger­ing hip-house of ​“You Wan­na?” by NEZ, which can be found on a col­lec­table media stick dur­ing GTA Online sto­ry update The Con­tract. NEZ’s ​“Freaks”, fea­tur­ing Moody­mann and Gangs­ta Boo, can also be heard in the game trail­er for Los San­tos Tuners.

But back in the real world, the label has kept up a stacked sched­ule of releas­es – from the crowd-pleas­ing Loleat­ta Hol­loway-sam­pling house of ​“Jeal­ous” by fast-ris­ing Brazil­ian favorite Mochakk to the chime-laced retro raver that is ​“Tur­bo Rosso” by Jimi Jules, com­plete with doppler rush of a car tear­ing past. Else­where, high-octane nu-dis­co is the order of the day on The Boy / Moon two-track­er from Skream and Krys­tal Klear, which car­ries dis­tinct echoes of the latter’s 2018 dance floor weapon ​“Neu­tron Dance”. UK duo Prospa are up next, releas­ing their dan­ger­ous­ly catchy floor-fill­ing debut Free Your Mind on the label in June. 

At the time of pub­li­ca­tion, Prospa’s two lead sin­gles from the forth­com­ing album, ​“Baby” and ​“Free Your Mind,” are locked into the #1 and #2 spots on the Beat­port Top 100. A wild achieve­ment, but hard­ly Cir­coLo­co Records’ only chart flex this year. Jamback’s ​“Pos­i­tive” recent­ly became the longest-run­ning Beat­port #1 in the platform’s his­to­ry, hold­ing the top spot for a stag­ger­ing 64 days and offi­cial­ly sur­pass­ing FISHER’s 2018 smash ​“Los­ing It,” which pre­vi­ous­ly held the record at 62 days.

What unites all of these releas­es, above all else, is their sense of fun. Car­bonaro admits there’s no fixed for­mu­la for select­ing artists – it comes down to instinct, feel­ing, and whether some­thing tru­ly con­nects with the iden­ti­ty of Cir­coLo­co. ​“We look at the artist as a whole – we’re inter­est­ed in artists who don’t just fit into a scene, but who are active­ly shap­ing it.”

He con­tin­ues: ​“Our DNA is in under­stand­ing that sup­port­ing new tal­ent is just as impor­tant as work­ing with more estab­lished names. It has to feel hon­est. If it doesn’t feel real, then it doesn’t belong on Cir­coLo­co Records.”

That authen­tic­i­ty is built into the label’s ethos – not least because the label and par­ty exist with­in the same ecosys­tem, where tracks can be road-test­ed in front of real dance music fans. ​“That kind of real-time reac­tion to hear­ing some­thing new on the dance floor is some­thing you can’t repli­cate any­where else,” says Car­bonaro.

The label’s visu­als also mir­ror the par­ty – the blood-red colour palette brings to mind DC-10’s delib­er­ate­ly raw, min­i­mal aes­thet­ic, while art­work for releas­es like Mon­day Dreamin’ leans into a more sur­re­al dig­i­tal direc­tion that cap­tures the label’s retro-futur­ist son­ics. Car­bonaro agrees that the visu­al lan­guage is a fun­da­men­tal part of the label’s iden­ti­ty. ​“In a world where peo­ple con­sume music so quick­ly, the visu­al side is anoth­er way to cre­ate a con­nec­tion and asso­ci­a­tion with our releas­es. It sets the tone before you even hear the track.”

In a rapid­ly chang­ing music land­scape – and all the chal­lenges it brings – that nee­dle-sharp clar­i­ty of vision cer­tain­ly helps Cir­coLo­co Records cut through the noise. Car­bonaro, for his part, wel­comes the pres­sures. ​“They force you to be clear about who you are and what you stand for. The chal­lenge is to stay patient and build some­thing with long-term val­ue,” he reflects.

This phi­los­o­phy runs through every­thing Cir­coLo­co does – favour­ing longevi­ty over flash-in-the-pan viral­i­ty, and deep melod­ic jour­neys over big-room drops. That the label found its foot­ing dur­ing the tur­bu­lence of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic stands for a lot. ​“When we launched, the indus­try was still deal­ing with the effects of the pan­dem­ic; no clubs, no dance floors, no clear time­line. So, the usu­al feed­back loop that elec­tron­ic music relies on was miss­ing. We had to trust our instincts more than ever before.” If Cir­coLo­co Records can do all of that – carve out a mean­ing­ful iden­ti­ty and aes­thet­ic, con­ceive a ros­ter of for­ward-think­ing artists, rack up a raft of killer releas­es, and embed them­selves son­i­cal­ly in one of the world’s biggest gam­ing fran­chis­es in the shad­ow of a pan­dem­ic – the next five years look very rosy-red indeed.

Lis­ten to the Cir­coLo­co Records ​‘Label of the Month chart here.