Daptone Records spreads its wings

The studio and label that gave Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson their distinctive retro-soul sound is branching out into garage rock and reggae with releases from different artists

They call it the House of Soul, but fans of New York’s Daptone Records and its in-house analog studio may find that nickname redundant as the Brooklyn crew diversify.

For the label known for devotion to Motown and Stax-inspired classic R'n'B is applying its core philosophy to a wider range of sounds, this year launching a garage-rock offshoot and putting out its first reggae album. Such gambits may appear off-piste for a gang that came to fame by lending its horn-driven house band to producer Mark Ronson, first for his solo work, then more famously on Amy Winehouse's blockbuster album Back To Black, yet the foundations for their success could help a wide range of artists prosper.

Key to Daptone's success has been ownership of its own studio, where every instrument and vocal is lovingly recorded to eight-track tape, based at its offices in the middle of a row of unprepossessing Bushwick brownstones. Before that came the Dap-Kings band, two of whose members – bass player Gabriel Roth and saxophonist Neal Sugarman – formed the label in 2001, beginning with output from soul belter Sharon Jones.

Its roster would expand to include Lee Fields and former James Brown impersonator Charles Bradley, with Ronson returning to the studio to capture its raw energy for his 2015 smash hit “Uptown Funk”.

While Daptone is known for a particularly rough-edged brand of soul, its output has always been reasonably eclectic, encompassing Budos Band's prog-funk and the afrobeat rhythms of Antibalas, yet for a while an even wider range of artists were drawn to its old-school recording desk. As well as Michel Bublé and Pharrell Williams, it was used by Heavenly Recordings psychonauts King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, for their release from this spring, Nonagon Infinity, and blue-eyed soul outfit The Jay Vons, featuring members of latter day garagistes Reigning Sound.

Now Daptone has entered the game with offshoot label Wick, its first release being the frazzled, west-coast guitar pop of The Mystery Lights, whose eponymous debut album dropped in June. For Sugarman, this has been a long-term ambition that finally came to fruition when they were introduced to the Californian combo that had moved to New York. “We have always said that if we found the right bands, we would explore other genres,” he says. “Soul is where our roots are, but I grew up in the midst of the psych revival in the Eighties.”

Sugarman was turned on to the Nuggets compilations of Sixties garage bands and felt connections with his devotion to soul. “The rock bands we are interested in are very much about musicians playing a raw, organic form of rock ‘n’ roll, inspired by what came out of the sixties. A lot of those people were listening to soul records too, they were all listening to James Brown, but just took it in a different direction.” Further releases on Wick are due from The Jay Vons and Richmond, Virginia’s The Ar-Kaics.

As well as freakbeat-inspired guitar pop, Daptone has decided the sound of the summer should be old-school reggae, specifically a revival of the crisp rocksteady variety essayed by another local outfit, The Frightnrs. Unfortunately, this is the last we will hear from this line-up as songwriter/vocalist Dan Klein passed away earlier this year, having been diagnosed with motor neuron disease in 2015, just a few months after the recording of their album Nothing More To Say.

Klein's plaintive falsetto makes the group more than your usual Yankee JA copyists and attracted Daptone's attention, but it is no coincidence they are inspired by a late sixties style that bridged ska and classic reggae.

“Rocksteady, especially, is Jamaican soul,” Sugarman says. “It's slightly different to a lot of the reggae that came after it, a lot of the influence on rocksteady is American groups like The Impressions. Listen to all the great [influential Jamaican label] Studio One recordings and nine times out of 10, they are covering soul tracks.”

Sugarman points out correctly that soul itself is a diverse genre. For him, what sets Daptone apart is that the recording is done in the same building as all the other facets of the business, so each release gets the same care and attention to detail. “From production to marketing, we're a musical group of people.”

The Frightnrs, already fans of Daptone, appreciated the chance to record in its studio, the remainder of the band explain in a joint statement. “We have always admired and longed to achieve the analog warmth and production styles that dominated the sound of records we love,” they say. “We tried to match exactly what our favorite artists did in Jamaica back in the Sixties and Seventies and recording to reel is crucial.” Having said that, The Frightnrs recognise the right equipment is useless without engineers and a producer that know how to finesse a compelling atmosphere from such machines.

They nail exactly Daptone’s secret, that it is a family of music lovers able to indulge their passion. “We're never going to sound exactly like our favourite artists, but we sure can and will continue to try, and in the process find and build our own sound – which in our opinion is less about the particulars of the equipment and more about where we're coming from our hearts – the original analog music makers.”

The Frightnrs' album ‘Nothing More To Say’ is out on 2 September