Label Profile: Lost My Dog Records

5 Mag's Label Profile series continues, with curiously in-depth overviews of some of our favorite House Music labels and the people behind them. In the past, we've done profiles on Hudd Traxx, Fresh Meat Records, Guesthouse Music and Nordic Trax.

This month we're featuring an interview with Ian Straker, representative of the handsome crew depicted above that run the UK Deep House label Lost My Dog (facebook, soundcloud, twitter, youtube, all releases at junodownload.com).

Lost My Dog was founded back in 2005 by Ian, Pete Dafeet and Najan Ward and (six years being about 70 lifetimes in the music industry) are remarkably still together, with a label that has assuredly hit it's stride. LMD has a rather uncanny record of breaking new artists long before the rest of the industry catches up with them, and with releases from James Curd, Giom, Jay West, Tommy Largo and many more (discussed in obsessive detail below), LMD is definitely one of the bright lights that has put off House Music's long-anticipated obituary for quite awhile.

In addition to this thorough interview - as has become practice here - Ian also put together an exclusive 80 minute mix of tracks from Lost My Dog's back catalog. Download or play it while you're reading - the full playlist is at the end of the interview.

Haha, yes actually on a few occasions - more than you'd imagine! Most recently my girlfriend was explaining to somebody that I was involved with a company called "Lost My Dog" and before she explained the bit about it being a record label got the response, "Oh how wonderful, what an amazing idea for a business! And what sort of success rate do they get finding the dogs?" Our Twitter account also seems to be a magnet for all manner of followers who have other dog and pet related services.

There are, I think, three of you altogether: Ian, Pete and Najan. In 2011, this is rather unusual, as it's usually just a guy or a girl (and a boyfriend or girlfriend working on spec). Introduce the family and tell us what's the division of labor like, and also how three people who love House Music keep from gouging each other's eyes out over the course of 6 years?

All three of us founded Lost My Dog back in 2005 and are still involved. Pete (Dafeet) is our resident in-house producer that most people will be familiar with and also takes the lead on our online marketing activities, specifically in social media. Najan takes the lead on events, which have ranged from club nights to record store meet-and-greets. He also works on all manner of one-off projects that require some persistence and chasing around - in that respect he's the most dog-like... give him a bone and he'll go at it for as long as required! And then there's me (Ian) - I look after the general day-to-day stuff making sure things get to the right place at the right time in the supply chain, running our promo campaigns and doing most of the communicating with artists.

All three of us are involved in the A&R/musical direction of the label. In terms of not gouging each others eyes out we all have remarkably similar musical tastes at the same time as each hearing something different in the same piece of music.

We have an unwritten rule that we'll only release music that all three of us like and we respect each others opinions on things. We also don't live in each other's pockets - I'm based in the north of England near to Newcastle, while Pete and Najan are in London. We don't actually get to sit down face to face that often so when we do it's more like old friends catching up and just checking everything is headed in the right direction.

In addition to Pete, Najan and myself we've also built up a really good family around us and everyone seems to completely get what we're about, understands our values and they're more than happy to get involved themselves - that ranges from artists like Giom, the Rhythm Plate lads, Dominic Martin, Harold Heath and many more, through to the guys like Katia and Ryan on the events side and countless others who have been happy to get involved spreading the word about releases, flyering parties, giving up their time to take photos and videos and a host of other stuff.

This is interesting to me from a marketing perspective. People grow bored hearing of getting paid in "exposure", but I notice through your indefatigable associate Katia Pereira that you guys throw quite a few parties in the UK on down to Spain. Both generally (and, if you can think of something anecdotal, specifically), what's been the benefit to this?

Our relationship with Katia (and also her partner Ryan) feels like a really natural thing and it's hard to remember exactly how that all came about. From memory, Katia and Ryan were running their own parties in London and had booked guys like Giom, Pete and Rhythm Plate to play. Najan had recently moved to London and was looking to get a couple of LMD parties started - everyone got talking, hit it off and came to the conclusion that by pooling resources we could create some events that had more impact. Katia's fantastically organised and passionate and I don't think that getting "exposure" comes into it from her side - it's just about her passion of getting people together and having a good time, underpinned by House Music. Some people collect stamps, she likes to throw parties! It had been her dream for a while to throw a boat party, so at Sonar/Barcelona this year we got together and made a boat party happen.

From the label's perspective then there's definitely a big benefit in terms of the exposure and profile building the parties generate - there was a moment maybe 18 months ago when we finally realised that there was a lot more to offer than just selling music to DJs via Beatport. The parties, and some of our other more recent activities, are a way of reaching a wider audience of house music fans who access music in many other ways.

What happened to that poor cartoon bird who lost his dog on your "middle period" artwork? I'd feel terrible if he was still wandering out there.

Thanks for your concern! I'm delighted to confirm that the bird is still very much alive and well! He still crops up on some of the banners we do from time to time and he's a permanent fixture on our Lost My Dog stickers which can be found wherever we've left our trail - towns, cities, nightclubs, record boxes, laptops, unsuspecting people... We owe a monumental amount of thanks to our fantastic designer Philippa Waite (of Phirefly) for the artwork - she remains one of our closest friends from back when we launched LMD in Loughborough and came up with a little series of LMD characters of which the bird was one. It's been quite incredible some of the response we've had to her artwork - at our early parties we would post up large A1 posters to decorate venues and by the end of the night they'd all have been stolen by people to take home!

None of them. Not one.

If one is on the outside looking in, releasing music is a three step process: (a.) Find music (b.) Send Music to People (c.) Make lots of money! Can you walk me through any individual LMD release you can think of and tell me, exactly, what happened between hearing the first note and considering it "finished, released, and on to the next one"?

I was completely with you until Step C, which I'd probably change to "Try and make some money (if everything goes really well)!!" I guess there's no one template that can be applied to every single release, but to give an idea I'll focus on our recent release by Humandrone Beyonder EP (LMD046) which came out in July:

This was one of those fairly rare releases that came about as a result of a demo that dropped in from a producer previously unknown to us. Taka's (Humandrone) message was cool, polite and made me want to check out his music. So the initial emailed demo came back in January I think, I listened to the music, immediately liked two of the tracks "Beyonder" and "Deep Sea & The House" so forwarded the email to Pete and Najan with a note about what I liked and why. A few days later they replied to say they also like the tracks, so as a first step I contacted Taka back to say we were interested.

Next stage is for us to have a chat in-house to decide how we think we should release the music - i.e. as an EP of original music, whether we commission remixes or do something else like a sampler or exclusive to a compilation. For this one we felt that remixes would work best given that there were two original tracks and Humandrone was a relatively unknown name - this is where some commercial angle to the A&R comes in because the remixer(s) can help to attract more people to a release and give a relatively unknown name more of a spotlight. So, with that decided I went back to Taka and we talked about potential remixers in order to draw up a hit list based on who he likes, who LMD like, who we each feel could do the right job on it and with a budget in mind.

Around now I also start to roughly think when we can realistically release it based on the other music we have scheduled (we have anywhere from 4 to 8 releases in the pipeline at any time) and how long it will take to get remixes in, how long we need for promo activities etc. I figure we can get it out sometime over the summer.

With the remixer short list I start to contact people and after a few discussions work something out with Joshua Iz. As well as musical style it's a good fit because he's also lined up to play at our Sonar boat party in June so we can get a little bit of cross-promotion going. Pete also agrees to do a remix. A couple of months pass and the remixes of the lead track "Beyonder" are in from Joshua and Pete. At this stage we also make a late decision to get another remix from Remote People - they're a young UK duo who have impressed us with some of their other recent releases and we feel their slower tempo style will provide a nice contrast so we ask them to remix the other track "Deep Sea & The House".

About 6 to 8 weeks before the scheduled release date, with all music delivered I send it off for mastering and subsequently upload the mastered files and other release info to our distributor. I speak to What People Play about running a 2 week pre-release exclusive on their site as we feel the music will fit well with what they do. The pre-release promo also gets set up and starts going out to press contacts, radio DJs and club DJs at this stage.

Over the course of the next 6 weeks I'm collecting feedback, info on radio plays and reviews and feeding this to our distributor, directly to some of the download stores, using it in our own marketing/websites/profiles and passing it to the various artists involved so they can help to spread the word as well. This continues up to the release date and then past it for as long as there is new stuff to talk about.

As mentioned, we generally have anywhere from 4 to 8 releases moving through this "pipeline" at any time so it's never as straight-forward as finish one and move onto the next, there's always something happening with a different release at a different stage in order to maintain a regular schedule.

People probably avoid reading the blog because I've not promoted it well enough! Wherever people pick up information I think that's a positive thing, whether it's on a blog, in books, attending seminars or whatever.

I think there are a lot of people, however, who don't recognise some of their responsibilities in running a label - sure it starts as a hobby for the vast majority (ourselves included) but when you're working with other people's creativity and art then you have a duty to respect that and at some point your hobby definitely starts to act like a business, in which case you need to treat it as such in a professional manner. So many of the artists we've worked with through Lost My Dog are surprised when we ask them to sign a contract, or when they receive sales statements and actually get paid. (Imagine that, getting paid because you made something that other people paid money for!! Only in the music industry could this not be seen as a normal and expected thing!)

But it seems many other labels they have worked with just haven't taken care of those things, which to me is unforgivable. If somebody has spent days creating a piece of music which a label then chooses to release to try and make money from then at the very least the creator deserves to know where they stand and then get paid for it (or at least understand why there is no money owed).

I also think as a label that you have a duty to promote and market the music and artist, otherwise I'm not sure exactly what you're offering that they couldn't just do themselves. And there's also the stuff I hear like "oh I didn't know I could do X or should be doing Y because nobody told me" - again, if you're running a business then it's your job to go and find out the information to run it properly, not just expect it to land in your lap and plead ignorance when it doesn't work out.

I believe that every single label head will tell you that he only cares about releasing the best music. In reality, names drive the game here as anywhere else. You don't play that game and I think you've scooped a lot of people in snagging future stars like Tommy Largo, Jay West, Giom and Peckos when people were still sleeping.

It definitely has to be about the music first and foremost - I think if you're passionate about the music then you'll put more effort into shouting about it and letting as many people know as possible. Running the label is definitely a labour of love, but at the same time it's nice when you can at least cover your costs and occasionally make a little on top. Running it purely as a business based on the latest hot names seems to take some of the passion away for me - the most fun part is finding new music and new artists, then hopefully helping those artists to achieve more. We've somehow been able to pick out a few people who have established successful careers and we generally look to work with people over a period of time rather than the smash-and-grab approach. Some of that has been through us finding the music/artists ourselves and at other times being approached, perhaps because people know we'll listen and give new artists a go. While I'd like to think we have some influence and impact on artists such as the names you mention, a large amount also definitely comes down to the drive within the individuals themselves. We'll always try to support the people we work with and offer any advice where we can too. All of that said, we do also turn to 'bigger names' from time to time, most usually through remixes - I don't think we chase down the latest hot names but we look for people we feel can bring something else to a release musically, as well as offing a different fanbase and a profile boost for the original artist.

Being as objective as possible, how do you measure where Lost My Dog ranks among other UK Deep House labels? Which one did you aspire to become when you were just a wee one and how do you think you've measured up?

It's very difficult to try and figure out where we "rank" compared to other labels when I'm so involved in it. I think that's something that only people on the outside could do and even then it's so subjective. Personally I think we're doing ok, in-house we're pretty happy with what we're achieving while always looking to improve what we do, find more people who like our music and get more people playing the music that our artists create. The two labels that we have always looked up to would probably be 2020 Vision and Freerange, because of musical output, consistency, integrity and how they do much outside the standard 'find music and sell it to DJs' approach. We definitely don't measure up to those guys yet and won't for a long while, if ever, but we also come from a different angle and have spend our formative years in a very different environment to how they spent their first five years. I think the ultimate aim is to become a trusted brand that people recognise for great music - one of those labels where if you land on a download store you instantly think to search for what they've released recently, or when you see an event poster it's an easy decision to go and check it out.

Okay, this is the part where I ask you to go over some classic and more recent Lost My Dog releases and give me any feedback, memories, trivia (hopefully no regrets) that you associate with the tracks...

Subterfuge & Tony Thomas: Gettin' Serious EP

Subterfuge were good friends of ours in the Midlands - we went to the same clubs, listened to the same DJs and also put on some small parties together. At the time, they'd started making a few tracks and were working with Tony Thomas, we really liked one of their tracks and figured it would be as good a starting place as any for the label. While we didn't really think about it at the time, having an established name like Tony Thomas involved definitely helped us to get over a couple of early barriers and meant people checked out our first release.

Tommy Largo: Come On

This was a product of the good old message-board, long before the days or Facebook! At the time we were all avid users of undergroundhouse.net that was a great community of DJs and producers. I think it was Pete who initially heard "Come On" in a DJ mix by Sean from DizzyFunk (an event/promoter in the UK), we found out what it was and got in touch with Tommy Largo to see if we could release it. I think it was his first ever release but may be wrong. By this stage, our fifth release, we were starting to get a better feel for running a label and some of the finances involved so reached out to Phil Weeks for a remix as he was one of the guys we were most into, bought all his releases and closely followed Robsoul.

Pete Dafeet: Lungs

Despite being our 18th release and 2.5 years into running the label this was only Pete's 3rd original outing. Lungs featured his own vocal and was a real blend of influences from acid to classic pianos. We asked Fred Everything to remix it and he provided some extra dancefloor punch and took the vocal to another level. On the flip was a real Chicago jacker in Crackerjack which remains one of my favourite Pete and LMD tracks to this day. In fact this whole release is up there at the top for me.

Michelle Owen: Swing It EP

This one came about because Najan was initially talking with Michelle after hearing some of her music on SoundCloud. Pete and I were keen too and we took on three tracks that were all quite varied from jazzy and jacking to deep and techy. We discussed remixes with Michelle and were all keen to get Pezzner involved, and she suggested her friend Murat Kilic from back in Australia who provided a great mix (and who we went on to work with further).

Giom: Things U Do EP

We'd been fans for a while of Giom's tracks and remixes - he was definitely one of those artists that you could pretty much pick up any of his music and know you'd like it. Najan and Pete hooked up with him at a couple of parties in London, everyone got on really well and we asked him to record an EP for us as well as doing some remixes. He made this EP with a specific eye on Lost My Dog and it clearly showed that our ears were all in synch as it's been our best selling release to date. Giom's firmly part of the LMD family now, we share the same vision and all get on as great friends so it works well.

James Curd: Input? Output? I Don't Know Yet

It may not be obvious but James has been involved with LMD right from the start - he came over to the UK and played at our first ever party in 2005 and we've been friends ever since. The full Greenskeepers band remixed Jay West on LMD008 (complete with new vocals) and James went solo on a remix of Chris Harris & Dominic Martin. Quite why it took so long for him to record an original EP for us I don't know. He'd been sending over loads of great music he was making around the time of his move to Australia so we had a good listen through everything and put together this EP. It's really varied and reflects James' wide ranging styles and influences. It's perhaps not exactly what people expected from LMD but we loved every track, liked the fact it was different to other music coming out and that we could work with an artist who we greatly admire and respect.

You can reach out to LMD at lostmydog.net and on facebook; Lost My Dog's next release is HMD050, Howard Sessions' Meddlin' With Me Melody with Larry Fives and Jesus Pablo remixes. And if you haven't downloaded the Lost My Dog mix - scroll back up and do it! The playlist is below.

Playlist:

+	Artist	Title	Label	Info
01:	Pete Dafeet	Love Undercover (Rhythm Plate Remix)	Lost My Dog
02:	Tom Lown	Love Potion (Harold Heath ReRub)	Lost My Dog
03:	Giom & Joshua Heath	Mister Marvellous	Lost My Dog
04:	Peckos	Sensual Strawberry Soda (Tommy Largo Remix)	Lost My Dog
05:	Jay Tripwire	Harmony & Peace	Lost My Dog
06:	Tom Lown	The Short Straw	Lost My Dog
07:	Pete Dafeet	In Flux	Lost My Dog
08:	Latenight Society	Do It Right	Lost My Dog
09:	Nick Dare	Took My Love	Lost My Dog
10:	Bleep District	Pressurise	Lost My Dog
11:	YSE	Not Wot You Got	Lost My Dog
12:	Giom	The Jam (Part Deux)	Lost My Dog
13:	YSE	Things Never Said	Lost My Dog
14:	Pete Dafeet	Crackerjack	Lost My Dog
15:	Peckos	Silver Sliming (Kirby Remix)	Lost My Dog
16:	Tommy Largo	Come On (Phil Weeks Remix)	Lost My Dog