A soulful man with a blistering voice: Sipho, at Studio 9294, reviewed

When I were a lad — back when you could buy the entire back catalogue of the Fall for thruppence and still have change to get into a New Order show on the way home — record labels mattered. Well, a cohort of independent labels mattered, because their imprints stood for something. There was Creation, with its dedication to a twin axis of 1977 and 1967 as the only years that counted; 4AD, with its arty sleeves and its wafty, diaphanous music; there was Factory, somewhere between an elaborate practical joke and home to the most forward-thinking musicians in the country.

You don’t get many labels like that any longer. The new economics of the music industry militate against the model of the record label as an aesthetic statement, rather than purveyor of vulgar commerce. Of course there are still specialist labels for genres; there are still label owners with a world view rather than just a balance sheet. But there aren’t many labels whose artists and vision suggests something more at work than either ‘The regulars will like this’ or ‘Can we get this on the front of Spotify?’

Dirty Hit, however, could have existed in my 1980s youth: it’s a label with a sense of identity. On the one hand it has two commercial powerhouses — the 1975 and Wolf Alice. Below that are some biggish cults — Beabadoobee, Rina Sawayama and the Japanese House. And below that it has others. It’s not a big roster — 19 acts in total — but you can listen to each of them and understand why they are there. It’s the only successful record label of which I would be willing to sample everything it has signed.