MUMBAI: Bastard Jazz Recordings celebrates 20 Years.

The label touches on everything from funk to hip-hop, house music to forward thinking beats, soul to jazz and international sounds, along with its unrelenting commitment to the vinyl medium. Radioandmusic got in touch with Aaron Schultz, founder of the Bastard Jazz Recordings to know in-depth of the celebration and growth of the label.

Bastard Jazz started early as so many nascent DJ-oriented imprints came into existence, as founder & president Aaron Schultz just barely out of his teenage years was beginning to find his footing as a DJ in Brooklyn, New York. Culling together a small group of artists early on, the label ran as a side project for many years, releasing a handful of records per year.

Check interview below:

You started off in 2001. How did you start exactly and what made you pick these genres of music?

I was just DJing out a lot at the time and was playing a certain style of mellow, instrumental hip-hop/trip-hop music, I was friendly with some producers in the US making this kind of sound – there wasn’t a very big scene in the US for it (more in UK and Europe) so decided to start a label pushing this kind of music in the US. 20 years later we’ve expanded far beyond this genre of music, but it still resonates at our core.

What is your biggest release up till now? And how do you decide you want to pick an artist for the label?

It’s really hard to say but Captain Planet & Chico Mann’s “Un Poquito Mas” became a worldwide smash on more global friendly dancefloors and was used in a number of very big television ads and TV shows.  Potatohead People’s new song with De La Soul titled “Baby Got Work” was also a big one for us, and many other full-length LPs along the way.

How are you celebrating your 20th Anniversary? Anything special happening?

We are releasing a double gatefold 4xLP vinyl pack with 20 songs on it featuring half new material from our current roster and half classics from our catalogue, as well as throwing 20-year parties in both New York and Los Angeles.

Music has evolved in the past 20 years. Tell us your experience with this and the label.

It’s been very important for us to change with the times musically and keep a young spirit, the last thing I ever wanted this label to be was a static outlet that was stuck in a rut, doing the same thing over and over – jaded and dismissive of new sounds. We’re always changing, reinventing, and trying to evolve with the times. That doesn’t mean we change who we are at our core – but evolution is really important to us.

Share with us your future roadmap. What’s planned?

We’ve got a stable of really great new artists right now who are just getting their feet wet releasing music – we’d like to build them up to a point they can really launch their careers and do this full-time, while continuing to nurture our longer-term artists and help them grow even more, all while continuing to grow the brand at the steady pace we always have. This is the way.