Pushing and running with the music they love, childhood mates Ashley Sykes and Fawaz Al-Jabban release sporadic batches of outstanding music via their own independent record label.
Surviving as a niche imprint is hard given the unforgiving, competitive climate of new music. With little profit to be creamed off hard-copy and even less to be made in event organising, the one criteria essential for success is bare passion and amazing intuition. Signing Bodhi, Ifan Dafydd and Pedestrian, concentrating solely on fulfilling each artist’s vision, the creative processes both Push and Run founders have honed in developing the music they love, is unique. Believing in quality over quantity, every release gets Ash and Fawaz’s full attention. Creating a family vibe within the label, upheld by a supportive team of artists, designers, photographers and filmmakers, Push and Run creates a platform for all the different talented and creative people that make up the label family. i-D finds out more and enjoys a mix made only for us by them.
Who is Push & Run? Push & Run is Ashley Sykes and myself, Fawaz Al-Jabban, though Push & Run is also all the people who support and work with us along the way, from artists to filmmakers, designers to DJ’s, it’s one big family.
When and where was the label first established? We set up the label in 2011, I was working at an independent label and Ash was at a major label, it just felt like the right time to get the ball rolling as we were effectively learning our trade in our day jobs and wanted to put it into practice for ourselves.
Why did you decide to name the label Push & Run? Ash is an avid Spurs fan and it comes from a style of football they used to play in the 1940′s. It also fits the whole ethos of the label, if we like it, we’re gonna push and run with it.
Where do you look to source new talent? The internet obviously plays a big role in finding and hearing new music as well as just keeping our ears to the ground. We get sent stuff quite often which is always a nice feeling, whether we’re into it or not, it’s just cool to have people wanting to release their work with you. We love finding new talent and believe strongly in helping to develop our artists and try to take a very active A&R role with them as opposed to just releasing their records.
After signing new talent, how do you then grow an artist’s popularity? The million dollar question! This is different for every artist – what is right for Ifan may not be right for Bodhi. Our aim is to fulfil an artist’s vision in every sense.
What was the last song you listened to on your iPod? I’ve actually been listening to a lot of ratchet HipHop recently so that would be the Yung Simmie mixtape.
What’s next for Pusha and Run in 2013? We’re currently working on our next release by St Louis based producer, Parisian. He’s got an EP coming out called the ‘Daul Kim EP’ which will be released on the 18th of February. We’re really excited about the release and unleashing the Parisian sound onto the world! We are also planning the second edition of our free EP series called ‘Tings In Boots’ which should be dropping in the Spring.
Text: Milly McMahon
