Small DIY labels are at the heart of emerging music. To support these labels and their artists, Floorshime Zipper Boots will be having a label day on Friday from time to time. We previously featured Mouca Records Day on FZB. Today is the second installment of this feature as it is Mama Coco's Funky Kitchen Day on FZB.
While operating as a label and PR firm in many ways, Mama Coco's Funky Kitchen is actually a DIY recording studio, music collective and general cross-pollinating brain hive. According to principal, Oliver Ignatius, they don't own or control the music that is recorded at the studio (although with everyones' great relationships, no one minds us using or borrowing their music for, say, a compilation). They began as an affordable, high quality recording solution, with the primary objective of facilitating the freedom and individual creative expression of all the bands, working with them like a great A&R would to find what made them special and bring it out of them into the records. Quickly the operation grew and expanded, the bands started bonding together, we started rolling out our regular PR campaigns and doing the frequent live showcases (there have been 20 in the last year). At this point there are over 40 bands in the MCFK stable. Everyone has the freedom to come and go as they please, but the vast majority keep coming back because we have a good thing going.
While operating as a label and PR firm in many ways, Mama Coco's Funky Kitchen is actually a DIY recording studio, music collective and general cross-pollinating brain hive. According to principal, Oliver Ignatius, they don't own or control the music that is recorded at the studio (although with everyones' great relationships, no one minds us using or borrowing their music for, say, a compilation). They began as an affordable, high quality recording solution, with the primary objective of facilitating the freedom and individual creative expression of all the bands, working with them like a great A&R would to find what made them special and bring it out of them into the records. Quickly the operation grew and expanded, the bands started bonding together, we started rolling out our regular PR campaigns and doing the frequent live showcases (there have been 20 in the last year). At this point there are over 40 bands in the MCFK stable. Everyone has the freedom to come and go as they please, but the vast majority keep coming back because we have a good thing going.
Oliver Ignatius, founded the studio in 2010, first in his bedroom and then in his parent's basement. They moved into their current space, a large commercial space in Windsor Terrace, a little over a year ago. Oliver at 23 years old, has been a musician since he was 3. His first real exposure to the music industry was as a teenager: "When I was 15, my band Hysterics surfed a wave of early blog-hype and was featured on MTV's TRL, in the New York Times and some other places. We were signed to V2 before it folded, and played SXSW." Although they had some great experiences, it was generally a pretty bumpy and unhappy ride, which found Oliver unsatisfied with how their album came out. After that band split up, he took some time off to sort of regenerate, and came back with Mama Coco's Funky Kitchen and his new band Ghost Pal. With MCFK, he was really just initially seeking to solve his chronic unhappiness in any recording studio he'd ever been in. "I never felt really listened to or cared for during recording, and it sucks to lose control of your vision. I wanted to open up Mama Coco's as a place where you could count on that never happening." Oliver has done all the production on the records that have come out. "At this point the operation is expanding, some members of the collective have been brought on board as junior engineers in training, and a couple others have stepped up to take over our PR operations (previously I was running those myself too, but I've just about reached capacity as far as what I can do alone)."
Several MCFK acts have been reviewed on FZB and Oliver's band Ghost Pal has a new EP, God Save MCFK. You can stream and download it at the link below. Also below is a link to Mama Coco's Funky Kitchen: Section 3 compilation. You can download the compilation for free.