On The Shelf Records started out in 2005 as a net label, using it’s website to sell music by independent musicians in the south of England. The concept was to act as a middleman between the artists and audiences around the world who couldn’t access their music in shops or travel to gigs to buy it. All the Cds were home produced and sold for next to nothing, at this stage the label was like a tiny distributor. Chris Amblin co-ordinated the sales and ran the website for a few years, also using the site to issue albums by his own solo project Ekocam.

As technology moved forward and it became easy to sell your music online using digital download sites, On The Shelf handed the responsibility back to the artists and they independently sold their music without our help.

Meanwhile in Leeds, Mark Parker was running a small label called Broken Branch, putting out independent releases and putting on nights at venues in Leeds. He established the label as part of an emerging scene of alternative electronic music, before moving to London in 2007.

On The Shelf re-emerged in 2008 with new gusto under the joint guidance of Chris Amblin, Matt Parker and Lewis Baker. Each were recording material under their pseudonym’s Ekocam, Earthkeptwarm and Lethem and were looking to get this music out to a wider audience. Chris and Matt joined forces to record as Nedry and Lewis continued his Lethem project.

To date the label has released 3 albums and 3 Eps, each earning critical praise for their uncompromising sounds and original approach to electronic music. All the releases are available as widely as possible across the various digital download sites, but we encourage you to use Bandcamp for your digital purchases as the money goes directly to the artists and you have a decent selection of format choices. We also do small physical runs of some of our releases; this is an expensive business for us, but something that still gives us great pleasure. You can buy Cds and other merch via our webstore.

In July of 2009, Radio One DJ Huw Stephens featured the label as his DIY Label of the Week and has been a strong supporter of the label ever since on his show. On The Shelf Records’ 5th release ‘Condors’ caught the attention of Monotreme Records and they have since made a deal to re-issue the album in Spring 2010. This is great news for Nedry.

In 2009, 2 new acts caught the attention of On The Shelf, Sam Sally and Capac. Both these acts are self-releasing their material currently and are gathering some great support. On The Shelf Records will be releasing material by both these artists in 2010 as well as continuing to put out material by their current roster.