Dawn Raid x Clientele Records interview (2004)

NZ Musician Oct/Nov 2004 (Vol: 11, No: 8) By Stephen Jewell

Dawn Raid's New Clientele

Since releasing their first artist album, Deceptikonz' 'Elimination' to great acclaim in 2002, South Auckland-based Dawn Raid Entertainment have gone from strength to strength.

'Elimination', which has sold 6500 copies to date was followed by Deceptikonz' lead rapper Mareko's debut solo album, 'White Sunday,' which put them on the cover of NZM's June/July 2003 issue, and went on to reach gold status.

But Dawn Raid's big success to date is r'n'b duo Adeaze's nearly double-platinum debut album, 'Always & For Real' which has sold over 25,000 copies since its release in May.

Dawn Raid are taking ever bigger steps, including the recently announced joint publishing arrangement with Universal Music in Australia. 2005 should be another bumper year with Mareko's fellow Deceptikon Savage's solo debut 'Moonshine' set for release early in the new year.

But in the meantime, Dawn Raid co-founders Andy Murnane and Danny 'Brotha D' Leaosavaii have just launched Clientele Records, a new label headed up by former Kog Transmissions' press officer Mark Kneebone which will first release the debut albums from Deceptikon Alphrisk and Onehunga-based trio RES.

"Danny and Andy have been thinking of setting up something like Clientele for a while," says Kneebone when I meet him, Alphrisk and RES at the central Auckland offices of the labels' distributor Universal Music.

"The RES album has been in production for quite a while now and then Alphrisk came out of nowhere with a whole bunch of tunes of his own. He put his record together quite quickly and suddenly Dawn Raid had two albums and was quite pressured for time when it came to getting them out before Christmas. Dawn Raid is also obviously quite high profile now and a number of acts have asked to come on board. So we wanted to create a different avenue, somewhere other than Dawn Raid, to get this stuff out."

Since leaving Kog last year, Kneebone has established his own company, Isaac Promotions and continued to run his own label Tardus Music, which is home to Minuit.

"I've also been label managing Dawn Raid's Australian stuff for four months now and Clientele actually came about on the last flight that Andy and I took to Sydney," recalls Kneebone.

"The movie screen on the plane was broken so we had to talk to each other for three and a half hours. The basic idea of Clientele came about through that conversation, where we talked about different ideas, different marketing techniques, different artists and ways of getting music out. We realised that as great as Dawn Raid is, to a certain extent, there are certain things that it cannot do because it is so big now. So we wanted to create something that could connect back to the street, which is where Dawn Raid originally came from. Andy asked me to become involved and I jumped at the chance."

Alphrisk's 'Best Kept Secret' and RES's 'Red Eye Society' are being promoted as 'street albums'. "My album's not going to get the big push or have a lot of money behind it," says Alphrisk. "So it all depends on the people. If they love the music and they get into it, that's going to be my push."

Unlike Mareko's 'White Sunday,' which was partly recorded in New York with big name American producers and rappers, 'Best Kept Secret' is mostly a homegrown effort.

"Brotha D told me to do a mix tape and gave me a couple of beats so I did some raps to them and created some tracks," says Alphrisk. "He then gave me some more so I did more tracks. Then Brotha D told me not to worry about the mix tape and to make an album instead. But Dawn Raid have got so many acts at the moment and such a busy schedule that when Clientele came about, I jumped on that."

Apart from one track by American Scram Jones, who previously contributed to 'White Sunday', 'Best Kept Secret's' beats are supplied by various members of the Dawn Raid family including Mareko, RES producer Nate D and resident sound engineer, Vitaly Zolotarev.

"My album has got the same feel as 'White Sunday' but I didn't have that much pressure on me to do my album," says Alphrisk. "I pretty much did what I love doing so all the music that you're going to hear on my album is what I love."

RES - which stands for Red Eye Society - first rose to prominence when members of the originally six-strong group contributed some biting rhymes to the suitably named Deceptikonz track, Verbal Abuse from 'Elimination'. Since then several members have departed and old hands Tech Swift and Venomous have been joined by newcomer JesOne, while beatmaker Nate D lurks in the background.

"We started out in Onehunga drinking together and then we started rhyming together so we thought we should actually sit down and write something," recalls Tech Swift.

"We put some tracks together on a four track and did some radio shows and freestyles. And while all that was going on, this cat (JesOne) was doing time. Then we cut a few people from the group and when he came out, we checked him out because we could see that he had a bit of talent in him. We thought we could work with him, so now RES is three people and one producer (Nate D)."

Like Alphrisk, RES are happy to describe 'Red Eye Society' as a street album.

"If it wasn't for Nate's beats, not many people besides the heads, who really listen to the lyrics would get into it," says Tech Swift. "Nowadays many people who get into hip hop do so because of the catchy hooks and the bouncy beats. Some of our lyrics are just too much for your average listener."

Like Dawn Raid's main catalogue, Clientele will be distributed here through Universal Music and in Australia through Sydney-based independent Inertia.

"It made sense straight away," says Kneebone. "There wasn't really any decision to be made. Clientele was always going to come through Universal here and Inertia in Australia. It was just a case of telling them both what we were doing and they both jumped at it straight away. And once we've got Alphrisk and RES out of the way in New Zealand, the next mission for Clientele will be getting them out in Australia, hopefully before March next year."

Dawn Raid's publishing deal with Universal Music Australia begins with the Australian release of Adeaze's 'Always & For Real' through the label. Adeaze also headlined the first Australian Dawn Raid tour last June, which took in nine sold out gigs in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and the Gold Coast.

"The response so far has been amazing," says Kneebone. "During the first Dawn Raid Australian tour a few months ago, the smallest crowd they got was 500 and the largest was over 1000. The demand in Australia is huge. People have been importing in copies of 'White Sunday' so we really had to get our stuff together and get it out really quickly."

And while Alphrisk and RES have been associated with Dawn Raid for several years, future Clientele releases will venture into some previously unexplored territory.

"There's a whole bunch of demos in Danny and Andy's offices which cover everything from rock'n'roll to r'n'b. There's even some heavy rock stuff. We haven't actually decided which ones we're going to release yet but there's one act in particular that will really turn a few heads in terms of being quite different from what Dawn Raid usually does."