Label Profile
“CHALLENGING MUSIC FROM SCANDINAVIA…”
Uhrlaut Records is a Danish recording label specializing in releasing challenging electronic music and video by Scandinavian artists. The label was founded in 2007 and was initially known as Urlyd Records, but changed its name to Uhrlaut Records in 2011 to cater to a more international audience.
The musical profile of the label spans the entire electronic spectrum ranging from lush, ambient landscapes and abstract glitch sounds over vocal driven electronica singer-songwriting to more challenging, danceable breaks and beats.
Uhrlaut’s artistic approach is audiovisual and aims to make all releases combine music and digital visual art in unison, thereby enabling the music artists to explore their audiovisual expressions – often in collaboration with one or more established video artists. See our back catalogue to learn what that means.
Creative Commons pioneer label
Uhrlaut Records embraces file sharing and Internet culture and believes in the strength and sustainability of an open sharing culture. As a result Uhrlaut was the first label in the world to use a Creative Commons license on actual, physical records with retail distribution while being supported by a collecting society; namely KODA in Denmark. From back then and all up until today it has been printed on the back of the records: “Please copy this record to all of your friends”. Sharing is the key component in the Uhrlaut sustainable artist business model. Learn more about how it works.
The pioneering release was Small Arm of Sea on LP/DVD and CD/DVD (by female electronica artist and KODA-member Tone), which was released in Danish stores on January 21, 2008 (and later, in 2009, in stores all over Europe), just a few days after the official announcement by KODA that Creative Commons non-commercial licenses were now legal for its members to use. This new option allowed artists to share their music for non-commercial purposes (for instance home listening) while still being able to collect commercial revenues through KODA. A major breakthrough for open culture and, as it turned out, a great platform for the Uhrlaut roster of artists.
The release was a bold move that spawned media attention from all over the world and the quality of Tone’s music propelled her to charts and stages worldwide including SXSW, Eurosonic, Roskilde Festival, SPOT, Nordklang and many, many more. Read the official Creative Commons International blog entry here and the official announcement of KODA‘s adoption of CC licenses here.
Behind the label
Uhrlaut Recordings was founded by Christian Villum and Sune Petersen in 2007. As of today, the label is run as a music collective headed by Villum as label manager, with Petersen acting as technical coordinator alongside a crew consisting of Mads Weitling (web developer), Yngve Stensaker (graphics designer) and Danny Kreutzfelt (social media manager).
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Christian Villum is a project bootstrapper, disruptive-technology geek, open data/society activist & electronic music buff. Alongside Uhrlaut Records, he is a project manager at the Danish Design Centre and a member of the Science Friction art & technology crew in Copenhagen – and furthermore often serve as inspirational speaker about open culture & new technologies. With a background and interest in media and culture entrepreneurship, community creation, hacktivism and everything open, he enjoys bringing people together to share new ideas – and to create movement.
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With a base in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sune Petersen is a multifaceted digital artist with a background in producing live visuals, computer mediated graphics and interactive installations in a wide range of contexts. He is known as one half of the MOTORSAW vj team, specialize in photography – and even produce tracks every now and then. Past credits include being part of visual group Sea of Tranquility, working at the Copenhagen-based science centre Experimentarium, Ars Electronica Future Lab (Linz) and the University of Aalborg.
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Danny Kreutzfeldt is an autocratic composer and web entrepreneur based in Aarhus, Denmark. Working professionally with web stuff, Danny is also helping Uhrlaut with various online activities. He maintains a lot of other music related endavours. Mainly the industrial dub techno & submarine noise solo project Periskop. And the drone & doom metal netlabel Drowning.
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Web designer, music composer, sampling wizard and general tech geek extraordinaire Mads Weitling serves as the web developer of the Uhrlaut team. Spending his time with everything digital, Mads is also known under his artist alias Kiloton, when producing brisk electronic music with high acclaim.
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Yngve Stensaker is Norwegian, yet now based in Aalborg, Denmark, and functions as the Uhrlaut graphic designer. He is a graphics designer by trade but spends time as a visual creative working with a wide range of expressions and formats including video, light painting, sketching, coding and much much more. He is a founding member of the TS Collective, an Danish artistic hacking collective, and is also heavily engaged with cultural web portal Nitusind.nu. Additionally, he produces music and spins records under the moniker Yngvesin.
