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We’ve asked Tambourhinoceros some questions about their label & their experience running a business during lockdown. Read what they had to say below and check out their website here.

1. Who are you? Tell us a bit about Tambourhinoceros.

Tambourhinoceros is a Copenhagen based label and publisher founded in 2010. We began as a small artist driven label platform for our community that we ran in our spare time. And now we’ve grown into something that’s still pretty modest in size but is actually the livelihood of a handful of people working for our artists. We try to support our artists in a holistic way where the music and businesses of our artists are equally important to our work

2. Can you suggest 5 of your favourite artists from your label for someone who may not have heard of you before, to listen to?

Ha, that’s like asking a parent about their favorite child, so instead I’ll refer to the 5 artists we’ve done campaigns with most recently.
We’ve just put out the debut singles from Swedish Lucky Lo, a project filled to the brim with positivity and human connection. Think Joan As Police Woman meets 80s Bowie and merging with Japanese prog and Scandinavian folk
School of X is also in the middle of an album campaign with his 2nd LP coming out in September. It’s the solo project of Danish multiinstrumentalist/songwriter/producer Rasmus Littauer – indie pop at its finest IMO – for fans of artists like Jadu Heart, MGMT, or Spoon.
Annsofie Salomon put out her debut EP digitally this June. Anyone into artists like El Perro Del Mar, Joanna Newsom, or Angel Olsen should get their ears on that EP. It’s so good. Admittedly she’s also still too much of a secret as an artist still. It’s been really tough to introduce brand new artists in a tourless pandemic for us
Then there’s Communions whose sophomore album Pure Fabrication we released in April. They can craft timeless brit poppy alternative rock like no other. The record is a big 60 minute double LP release that really
Earlier this year we did a 3-song release by Molina, a wonderfully quirky artist whose song “Hey Kids” has created a real soundtrack for hundreds of thousands of teenage weirdos (in the best sense possible). Molina has a lot of really amazing shoegazy experimental synthpop music lined up for us to put out in the foreseeable future.

3. Is there a specific style of music that your label represents, or are there many? If so, can you name the main genres?

We’re quite diverse – but I think there’s a certain adventurous approach to making music throughout the catalog, much of the music we put out is pretty emotional too. In terms of genres we often find ourselves doing alt rock, alt pop, indie folk and dream pop records but we also have opera, punk, hiphop, experimental, and straight up pop records in the catalog. It’s all just music you know?!

4.  What do you enjoy about working in music?

It’s the music itself first and foremost. Experiencing and helping artists succeed in realizing their artistic vision is so fulfilling. The personal relationships to the artists and our partners also really adds to why it’s a meaningful career choice. Both due to the product being an artform and because the business aspects are so insane, there’s a special shared experience across the independent community that’s quite nice.

5. How have you coped running the label since the Covid Pandemic?

The main challenge for us has definitely been that we’re mainly working with newer and/or smaller artists and are trying to build them an international fan base. And touring has historically played a major part in that process for us. With that gone and no real replacement for it lined up, it suddenly got super difficult to introduce artists across borders in a big enough way to make a lasting impact.
That realisation inspired us to take some time to think hard about how to bring as much value as possible to the artists and our company which have been really fun and rewarding. I think we’ve gotten better at focusing our resources on the activities that really serve the artists – and at creating meaningful content for the folks following the label. Like the Inventory series on our website, where our artists and their collaborators share what’s helping them to stay inspired. Or our newsletter that I think is much more fun to get now than it was a year ago, the same thing goes for our playlists World Peace, New Releases, Artists Picks, Discography and Champagne. There’s some related projects in development that I’m really excited about too.
With a pretty stable digital business we haven’t been struggling too much financially though – thank god. But of course, our physical sales have been hurting a lot from the missing shows and stores shutting down although we’ve managed to save a bit from an increased D2C focus.

6. What are you most looking forward to in the future & when things go back to normal (e.g. any specific artists / releases / tours you’re looking forward to?

We cancelled 4 label nights in 2020 celebrating our first 10 years in business, so I really hope we can do some of those soon and do some major partying with our artists and their fans. It’s always so fun to see the fans of a certain artist get psyched about another artist coming from the label.
Also, I live 10 minutes away from the Roskilde Festival site and getting that amazing week back every July is something I personally really look forward to.

7. ANYTHING ELSE you’d like our followers to know?

Go ahead download and stream our 10 year ‘World Peace’ compilation on Bandcamp here to get to know our catalog. If you find something you like, tell your friends about it <3