At the start of this week, we wrote about Grizzly, the new label from Sinden.

A resident at Fabric and a host on London’s Kiss 100, Sinden’s DJ sets have pushed the best in European bass music, African house and more for years now, so we’re pretty excited about a new outlet for him to pursue his vision of club music from.

We caught up with him this week to talk about his plans for the label, including collaborations, remixes and artwork.

So you’ve started your new label, Grizzly, tell us about it.

“Its my new label, i’ll be releasing on digital and pressing up vinyls too – very important. I’m not pushing any particular sound, and in a similar approach to the way I DJ, I’ll be pushing music that I’m interested in which is kind of everything at the moment. Im always buoyed by new music so, anyway, there’ll be some curve balls. There isn’t a model for the label or something to compare itself to, it’ll now doubt mutate over the next few years.”

You’ve obviously been DJing, making and writing about music for a while now – why choose now to start the label?

“That was the only thing missing, the producing, DJing, remixing thing was locked so i wanted another voice – to release music that I love and to bring through and nurture artists that send me fresh music. The timing feels right now, I can actually commit to this and I’ve got a great team that are able to assist me. Before I was running the Counterfeet label with Switch and whilst that was fun at the time it wasn’t run like a tight ship. Its important that infrastructure is right.”

What are your intentions / aims with it?

“Thinking short term just to establish it over the next few months and get a buzz with release consistency. The aim is to be turning around releases but to hold back too if things don’t make the grade. This isn’t a ‘banger’ label to so its about releasing music that sticks to its guns. I’m kind of starting from scratch and creating awareness for now.”

What releases do you have planned right now? The ones you can tell us about at least.

“First up is the collaboration with SBTRKT, two tracks. One is kind of techno with bass the other is a more kind of grey area garage thing with percussion and chords. The 2nd release with Brodinski is a more techno release. Unwittingly the first few releases are quite techno-y. The original’s really cool built around a burp sample and there’s some standout remixes from Tony Senghore, Egyptrixx and DJ Sega on the way. After that i’m introducing a guy called WAFA. He’s got a track called Ewid Disco which is some kind of bastard italo track with crazy Super Mario Brothers bass lines. I like him alot, i’ve known him for years back when we did parties with the Jaxx. There’s a release with a duo called Bassanovva (Grahm Zilla & Jess Jubilee) from North America who I really love too and that will take us right into the Summer.”

What are you doing for artwork?

“I commissioned The Zonders on my artist logo and was so impressed I had to go back and ask them to get creative on the label’s logo. Once I had the name locked they thrashed out some ideas, literally loads of options. For now I’m gonna stick with the ‘grizzly’ logo as being prominent on each release, keeping the consistency but flipping the colours as we go through the year. It’s pretty pared back, which I like.”

What’s it like working with SBTRKT?

“I knew the collaboration with SBTRKT would be a good click. I actually used to run into him at club nights at Plastic [People] and hanging out in record shops back in the day so we’ve known each other for over five years. The mad thing was I found out about him on myspace at the end of 2008 and we kept in touch since, [him] only revealing his real identity once I booked him for a club night. We’re definitely already talking about the next one – but we’ll probably flip a different sound again.”

Any plans for a Grizzly label launch, or label party?

“There’s talk of a few label parties happening in the future but nothing confirmed yet.”

And what else does Sinden have planned for this year? Count and Sinden album is finished, right?

“Yes the album’s finished – we were in the listening room at Domino playing the label the final tracks this week. The last few months has been really creative, it seems like the bulk of it was made in that time. Looks like June / July for the album drop date with a single leading into that. I’ll be dropping some solo things later on this year too on the label. Also The Count & me will be throwing a one off party at the Macbeth on the 1st of April with the Moda boys (Andy George and Jaymo) called Mega Mega Moda. Zinc & Paul Epworth will be joining us for this too.”