Recently, there's been quite a few drastic changes happening to the Sarah label, such as them releasing punky, noisy and even dancey records, and, apparently, accepting money from Sony in order to get things released. I got the impression that, a few years ago, they wouldn't have dreamed of releasing punk or dance, let alone having anything to do with a major label! Not entirely pleased with the way Sarah Records have been going of late, I decided to ask Matt a few questions.

1. Is there a particular reason why nothing on Sarah now sounds like the records you were releasing a few years ago? Does no-one send you demos like this anymore or have you just gone off music like it?
Well - the policy's always been that if we hear something we like, we release it, and if we don't like something (even after we've recorded it), we don't release it. Full stop. There's been no conscious effort to change, and I'm not really sure there's been any great change - I know recent releases have included, say, BOYRACER and ACTION PAINTING!, both of whom are much noisier/punkier than BRIGHTER or ANOTHER SUNNY DAY... but it's pure coincidence that those two came along together - and anyway, HEAVENLY were being fairly loud and thrashy back at SARAH 30, while THE GOLDEN DAWN (SARAH 9 - six years ago!) owed as much to Sonic Youth as anything jangly... It's really only THE ORCHIDS who've gone dancey - it was a natural development for them as they got involved more with the club-scene in Glasgow; besides, their first dancey thing was "Sigh", nearly four years ago... and THE FIELD MICE had "Kiss And Make Up" out in Autumn '89, and "Triangle" in June '90 which was entirely sequencers... so it's not a recent thing at all... People always think they know what our bands are supposed to sound like, and mostly have the idea that it's something objectionable - which is why every good review we do get starts with "this isn't typical SARAH..." - but since that's been said about twenty odd different bands... I'm not sure what's left to be typical! People who don't like us just hear what they want to hear; one review of HEAVENLY's first single said that "like all SARAH releases, it has a female vocal" - when it was actually the first thing we'd released with a female vocal. Obviously they'd heard what we were supposed to be - what? - fragile, fey, emotionally inadequate? - and equated us with being female - the usual unthinking sexism. And Blueboy's "Popkiss" got reviewed by NME's Steven Wells (a man with serious problems with people who don't obey his rules on gender and sexuality... but then he used to write a fanzine with James Brown, ex -NME features editor and now editor of new "lads" magazine "Loaded"...) as being "yet another boy moaning about not having a girlfriend" - when it's actually about Society's hypocritical attitude to homosexuality... it's the reviewers who are blinkered and narrow-minded, not us.

2. Are you releasing noisy and dancey stuff to get out of your "cute" and "twee" image (that I don't think you really deserved in the first place)? What's your attitude towards the fact that you have been labelled as "cute" and "twee"?
The whole record industry is still relentlessly MALE... sure, the press will pay lip-service to Riot Grrrl, but you just have to look at how eagerly they fall in love with Primal Scream's new we-are-the-lads, booze-drugs-and-chicks image to realise how superficial it is... When HEAVENLY were Talulah Gosh, they were loathed to an absurd, hysterical extent by people who basically couldn't handle the idea of women being in a band and yet NOT conforming to stereotypical "rock-chick" roles or simpering at the mike-stand in various states of undress - of women actually IN CHARGE and ON THEIR OWN TERMS - doing what they wanted, not what men wanted them to - and doing it by BEING THEMSELVES, not by mimicking male attitudes and poses and trying to prove that "women can rock just as hard as men". So they were labelled cute and twee, and basically patronised for displaying their feminine side ; the unspoken sentiment being that girls couldn't make serious music because that was BOYS' stuff... and we get the same treatment for our similar refusal to conform and to play along with the sad old leathery rock 'n' roll clichés that the music industry loves; they feel threatened, and try to keep us outside their cosy club by calling us names, in the hope that we'll finally give up in despair, just like Talulah Gosh did. People who use "cute" and "twee" as insults because they're uncomfortable with us being un-rock 'n' roll and non-macho say more about their own insecurities and traditional reactionary attitudes that they do about us.

3. Would you ever release any rave or metal? Please give reasons.
No - not necessarily because I don't like it, but because we've established our own character and way of working - a way we ENJOY, but not a way that would suit, say, dance music, which is very much geared to releasing things on faceless 12" white-labels to clubs - our world of 7" EPs in plastic bags etc. just wouldn't be appropriate. But that doesn't mean I don't like rap, dance, whatever - people have this weird idea that we like only the sort of music we release... but that's like saying Agatha Christie only liked whodunnits because that's all she wrote - whereas I'm sure she enjoyed all sorts of books... whodunnits were just what she was good at doing and enjoyed doing. And, in the same way, marketing records "in the SARAH style" is what we're good at and enjoy... but rave on a 7" EP would just be stupid, and a 12" white-label and then 10 re-mixes just wouldn't be SARAH.

4. Do you regret ever releasing anything? Do you regret rejecting any bands?
No... really! We argue about the worth of everything so much beforehand that things always get chucked out before the final stage. And no, I don't regret anything we've rejected... the only possible exceptions are that we had the chance to do the first Galaxie 500 single, and turned it down because they only had one good song... but that song ("Tugboat") is so good that I do sometimes regret that it never came out on SARAH... and The Pale Saints had a few good songs... but lots of indifferent ones too, and I don't know how we'd have ensured we only got the good ones... except by throwing masses of money at them and arguing a lot. All the other bands we've rejected were and still are crap. Apparently the Manic Street Preachers still treasure our rejection letter...

5. Are you going to do any more flexis and/or fanzines?
When we began SARAH, we didn't want it to be just records - we felt that the ATTITUDE we wanted the label to represent could be symbolised just as well - and sometimes better - through fanzines, flexidiscs etc. Because reading a brilliant fanzine should excite you in exactly the same way as listening to a brilliant record, and the flexi format should be chosen deliberately for all its POSITIVE qualities, not as an apologetic cheap alternative to "proper" records. That's why we gave our fanzines and flexis regular catalogue numbers alongside the singles, and why we've always tried to include bits of writing in the records and so on... and why SARAH 50 was a board game - it was just as much in the Spirit of Pop as any record, possibly more so. There's more to popmusic than popsongs! Sadly, everything takes time and we just don't have enough -I'd like to write more fanzines, but finding the time seems to be impossible...

6. Do you have a favourite Sarah record?
No, it's always the next one. Ask me in twenty years...

7. What's all this about accepting money from Sony to get records released? I thought Sarah was supposed to be "fiercely independent".
Er - what??? All I can imagine you're referring to is the fact that when our records are licensed to Japan, they're released on a label which is owned by a chain of department stores (imagine being released by Debenhams, say... they actually have concert-halls for bands to play in on the top floor... you go up the escalators...) - and that company is in turn part of the Sony Group... so I suppose in effect all the manufacturing and publicity over there is paid for by Sony... but the only money we get is from sales, so you might as well say that we're funded by EMI because our records are sold in the HMV shop (it's the same company)... which in turn means that the profit from our records is being used to fund nuclear weapon research, because that's what Thorn EMI do. The only way of being independent of everything is not to sell - or BUY (that means YOU) - anything. And then, of course, you'd die.

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