Stress Records

A short history of the Stress decade:
90/91
Stress stumbles enthusiastically into existence with two instant northern rave anthems courtesy of PKA, 'Let Me Hear You Say Yeah' and 'Temperature Rising'. Upcoming DJ Sasha gets cooped up in DMC's box-like studio 3 to work on his second ever remix, the now legendary 'MFI' version of the Brothers in Rhythm-produced 'Nasty Rhythm' by Creative Thieves. Our distribution company Spartan goes bust - over to SRD for the release of PKA's 'Powergen'.
1992
Refreshed, revitalised, and finding a spiritual home amongst the new wave of van-based distribution companies, Stress comes of age with DJs and clubbers of all shades salivating over the likes of 'Mighty Ming' by Brothers Loves Dubs, 'Last Rhythm' by Last Rhythm, 'Uncle Bob's Burly House', Sasha's mix of Rusty 'Everything's Gonna Change', and the first of the Hustlers Convention disco cut-up EPs.
1993
Things are getting serious, Digweed and Muir create the classic 'For What You Dream Of as Bedrock. Tracks by the likes of Reefa, All Boxed In, Mindwarp, along with new fare from Brothers Love Dubs and the Hustlers puts the label firmly in the dance indie vanguard. The year ends with the ground breaking 'DJ Culture' compilation release, available in both unmixed and mixed formats. The latter being relatively unheard of at the time, and featuring the talents of Sasha and Dave Seaman.
1994
Two of the year's biggest vocal anthems are released: Kathy Brown's 'Turn Me Out' (with the mighty Delorme mix) and Brothers In Rhythm's 'Forever and a Day' featuring Charvoni raising hands nationwide. Chris & James announce themselves big time with 'Club For Life' and 'Calm Down'. Two more compilations follow: 'Club Culture', whose mixed version features the talents of Sure is Pure and John Digweed and utilises the club logos of Golden and Renaissance and 'Remix Culture', with Chris & James and Johnny Vicious doing the honours.
1995
A year where the balance between credibility and accessibility is struck perfectly through keynote releases such as Greed's 'Pump Up The Volume', Anthony White's 'Love Me Tonight', the Tenaglia-produced 'Change' by Daphne, Desert's sublime 'Moods', and Chris & James' Pulp Fiction inspired 'Fox Force Five'. Seaman, Warren and Whitehead produce an inspirational CD set. We make Mixmag's 'Best 50 Dance Labels in the World' list, and are dubbed "no. 1 dominators of the UK club scene." by Jockey Slut.
1996
The Top 40 is stormed three times in eight weeks with the Trainspotting-fuelled reissue of Bedrock, Full Intention's contemporary classic 'America', and Chameleon's 'The Way It Is'. We nail our colours firmly to the mast named artist development and introduce critically acclaimed new acts such as New York one-offs Superstars of Rock, Jersey's epic house icons Sunday Club, Scott Bond's Q:Dos project, and progressive pounders Palefield Mountain. Only black spot is the realisation, despite a well crafted internationally flavoured CD set from Gordon Kaye (UK), Anthony Pappa (Australia) and Tom & Jerry Bouthier (France), we're being muscled out of the compilation market.
1997
A host of quality, critically acclaimed singles include the Brothers In Rhythm / Sasha remixed 'Careful' by Horse, Chris & James' take on Japan's 'Ghosts' with A Man Called Adam's Sally Rogers on vocals, Full Intention's chartbusting revision of 'Shake Your Body', Sunday Club's Paul Van Dyk remixed 'Healing Dream' and the launch of our leftfield sister label Related (geddit? - sorry). We change tack on the compilation front with the release of the much-lauded, lavishly packaged, ahead of it's time 'Zeitgeist: New Wave Club Culture'.
1998
Full Intention go from strength to strength with tracks such as 'You Are Somebody' and the storming remix of Salsoul Orchestra's Ooh I Love It', and we celebrate by expanding their Sugar Daddy imprint into a fully fledged label where Fl are flanked by the likes of Dave Lee, Superstars of Rock and new id on the block DJ Phats. Stress goes into overdrive with Chris & James' humungous revamp of 'Club for Life' and the Anthony Pappa / Alan Bremner produced debut stunner as Freefall 'Skydive".
1999
And so our tale decades out. DMC has decided to leave the label in the decade it belonged to and move the DJ World into 21st Century music pastures.
DMC has always been motorised by DJs. Many of its employees are or have been DJs and the inspiration and the direction the company has provided to the DJ society is legend.

Almost every major DJ has been given a leg-up their career ladder by DMC. We, after all were the first company to put the Club DJ on the front page! DMC was first to recognise the artistic value of mixing. The company was formed in February 1983 as a DJ Only mixing subscription record club and from the monthly releases, which only pro club DJs could subscribe to, came world-wide inspiration. From 1983 onwards club DJs put down their microphones, placed their left hand to the headphone and their right hand on the vinyl.

It was a revolution which flourished as DMC pushed more and more initiative into Mixmag and Update, (now 7 Magazine). Stress was launched to help DJs advance their talents as producers. Every release was produced by or featured a DJ.

Now DMC has closed their main recording studio and exchanged the recording equipment for computers as the company commits itself and the DJs who support DMC, to Cyber-DJs @ dmcworld.com, a site that once again demonstrates the passion DMC maintains for the world-wide DJ population.

”Like most of the best things in life, Stress started out as a bit of fun. Back in 1990, our parent company DMC were publishing Mixmag (which you may just have heard of). Editor at the time was one Dave Seaman (he of trance-fuelled deck heroics rather than the 'tache-fuelled goal keeping feats), aided and abetted by yours truly. DMC pioneered the whole DJ producer thing, so commonplace now it's hard to recall how novel it was then, not to mention how frowned upon it was by the tired old rock industry's would-be cognoscenti.

But I digress. DMC had recording studios with DJs wandering in and out at will with boxes full of tunes and heads filled with ideas, which, if I may paraphrase Bob Dylan (pioneering speed rapper), were driving them insane. Teamed up with the right studio bods with the requisite dancefloor savvy, that insanity was channelled into a slew of rather good house records. The corporate record companies being the lumbering behemoths that they are, some of said tunes were failing to find a deserved home. So we created a label to give them one (a deserved home, that is).

So there it was - the good ship Stress, run by clubbers and DJs for clubbers and DJs (in those far off innocent days you could say things like that without being sniggered at). And looking at our catalogue of 100+ releases, I'd venture to suggest it was a damn good label. For many we were seen as prog house central, thanks to the likes of Desert, Sunday Club, Coyote, Palefield Mountain and Messrs Digweed and Muir in their mighty Bedrock guise. Top bods all, but we also pioneered quality disco house with Full Intention (aka Hustlers Convention), found room for productions and mixes from the likes of Tenaglia, Slam, Claudio Coccoluto and Fathers Of Sound, and put a host of DJ favourites onto vinyl (Chris & James, Gordon Kaye, Anthony Pappa, Jerry Bouthier and his sorely missed brother Tom). Twas a veritable global family of like-minded individuals.

Few UK dance labels have lasted throughout the 90s. In fact, you could probably count them on the fingers of one hand - certainly independents. Stress, however, survived and thrived throughout the decade. This compilation album celebrates that fact and goes a long way towards explaining it.”

Nick Gordon Brown, Stress Label Manager 1990-1999