Introducing Red Ash Records

What initially started out as a casual conversation over some tins about our love of bands and albums from the deep Southern Hemisphere, they ultimately led us many years later to starting Red Ash Records. 

With so much untapped raw talent surfacing from the shadows of the U.K. and American music scenes during the 60's & 70's, Australian and New Zealand artists were proving to their humble audiences to have the chops necessary to etch their names into the bedrock of their respective nations. 

There was a lot happening in the world for these young men and women and with changing tides politically and socially, their music proved to have the right ingredients to shake things up and still be heavily influential some 50 years later, if not more so. Bands like Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, The Human Instinct, Coloured Balls and Buffalo came out of the gates swinging and left you feeling like you'd just gone toe to toe with the local bruiser down the pub. These sounds and attitudes were not lost on us and we became obsessed with discovering more artists and albums from that time period that had been discarded by labels or mostly forgotten about through the sands of time. 

Sourcing literature like the legendary Aussie music historian Ian McFarlane's epic 'Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop' gave us a solid blueprint to work off, learning about the histories of the bands, music scenes in the cities they were emerging from and the venues in which they performed. The deeper we dug below the surface the more we were caught in the vortex, finding music by bands and artists we'd never heard about that were completely blowing our minds. During DJ sets at our local watering holes we would always pull out a newly acquired slab that had us paying more attention to the sorcery cranking out of the PA than the punters downing ales. The artwork, the photography, the often hilarious liner notes written by band members, everything about these releases absolutely captivated us. 

Realising that the majority of these bands only cut one single, an EP, or a lone album, they have inevitably become as rare as hen's teeth. We wanted to try and play a small part helping to preserve the great music of our beloved homeland and bring these artists' music into the hands of people to discover for the first time or rediscover past fancies without paying the insane amounts that original copies are going for, if you can even find them. With a huge emphasis on staying as true to the initial artefacts as possible using original artworks and cut using analog masters where possible, we want you to be as absorbed in the material as the youth of the day were when they put down their hard earned cash at their local record store for a copy. With the addition of inserts with extensive liner notes by existing band members, historians and contemporaries that were immersed in the scene at the time, as well as never before seen photos of the bands, we're stoked to produce a quality product that does the artists and their music justice.

As we travel down these back streets a little further, we hope we can build a label that represents the artists and bring some deeper knowledge, recognition, and appreciation to their contribution to Australian and New Zealand music. 

Welcome to Red Ash Records, we're glad you found us.