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Al Bradley & Guy Williams, the label bosses at 3am Recordings, are sounding pretty positive today, despite the recent difficulties some smaller labels have had, including 3am themselves. With new music signed & a fresh lease of life, what’s given them the breath of fresh air?

“Well, it was difficult coming into 2006, as we’d already had a pressing plant we used close down, plus it was getting fairly apparent that for smaller labels like ours, the option of vinyl was an expensive risk,” explains Guy. “Although we’re both from the generation where vinyl was the norm & I suppose in our hearts we wanted to carry on with that side of things, from a business & financial perspective, it’s difficult when you’re funding everything yourself.” So the lads used 2006 to regroup & re-evaluate what could be done moving forward – after all, the older releases were selling digitally & clearly the way forward looked likely to be digital based. As Al had also been getting gigs under the 3am name & there was still a real interest in the label from outside, the guys have put their digital hats on & are now pressing on, undeterred. Al adds the reasons why. “We’d been sat on some tracks for a while & we knew we wanted to release them, plus from a DJ point of view, they’d all been tried & tested out – the Dealer’s Choice track, ‘Funtime’, has been played all over the place for about a year & still gets a reaction every time, plus we’ve got Rithma, Deepitch & Ben Dean releases that we’d been dying to release, so we felt the time was right to move onto a digital platform. In 2005, we had 3am gigs in Poland, Chicago, Paris & Barcelona, as well as all around the UK, so there was never a doubt that the label had appeal, we just needed to choose the right time to kick things off again & that time is now.”

With the success of Beatport in particular & other sites such as Stompy working well for the label, Al & Guy are now wading through the next set of demos for releases at the end of 2007, plus with the Al’s residency at ‘Studio’ at Mint Club in Leeds & the label’s 4th birthday in June, including a party during SONAR in Barcelona, the positive attitude is back to the fore. There’s also the hint of a new spin-off label to run alongside 3am, as Guy adds, “Who knows what can happen now? There’s definitely a new generation of people coming through for whom vinyl isn’t really the romantic thing it was for us & while that’s a shame, you can’t bury your head in the sand. We’re feeling good about things & judging by some of the music we’ve been sent so far, we’ll not be worrying too much about where the next release is coming from!”

So with new music, the 4th birthday approaching & a new label in the forthcoming months, everything seems better at 3 in the morning….

Al Bradley & Guy Williams were speaking to Chris Rowbottom, Leeds, January, 2007

Dealer’s Choice “Funtime” (TAM014) is released on 05/02/2007 with remixes from Pete Dafeet, Holmes & Watz and Ben Dean.