A new track appearing daily until Dec 16th

One of the founders of LUCKYME® has paid their way into the United airport lounge B2 in Heathrow Terminal 2 and is sat in a far corner alone. The bar back here is playing very quiet Tiwa Savage which is totally fine with me. This isn’t normally my scene but the flight is going to be five hours late and I need somewhere quiet to work. Kučka and Lunice both sent me folders of new music and I have to change the copyline on a Seiho record. The flight delay means we launch this Advent series four hours after I land in LA. First thing on my to-do list is write this blurb. I read back all the prior introductions and I don’t know if I should be embarrassed but I don’t have a big *mission* this year. I’m feeling very un-punk right now. Reading back it feels like there’s been this hanging existential threat over the music or the art but the temperature feels decidedly more mild at present. This year we put out phenomenal records from Omega Sapien, Kučka, Cid Rim, Doss, Cameron Morse, Bloodz Boi, Jacques Greene, Skee Mask, Nathan Micay, Baauer, Eli Keszler, Duendita and Nosaj Thing. Hud Mo came back with a vengeance on Warp and Rustie just played live in Glasgow at Numbers. It feels like things are pretty fucking good right now.

In July we let our 15 year anniversary slide by like it was nothing because a lot of these other labels really be going hogwild celebrating the fact their parents paid their rent for a decade. I’m not sure we all need to observe the anniversary of Fact Mags sixteenth best 12” of 2012 but whatever floats your boat. I guess what I’ve been thinking about lately is legacy looks after itself as long as you just don’t quit. And there are three ways not to quit: do it yourself make a business make interesting music. Play the game sign a deal make pop. Grow up with money. If you notice someone’s been around a long time, it can be a fun game to ask yourself which category they belong to. It’s all good though; something about the fact lots of these people still exist is making me think all my own worry over the years in these blurbs was just because we’re sold disruption and volatility in the attention economy. For the art this year we asked the incredible Paul Peng to create a large illustration that summed up the mood of things opening up post-pandemic: this nervous, frenetic energy on the streets with people ultimately forced to move around structures that always existed. Where LUCKYME® exists in all this is, I think, a place where things needn’t be so stressful. This thing that maintains us making work with friends and artists we love in a way that is self perpetuating. And the more secure we feel, the more we want to create bigger and weirder records and artwork that stretch out into the world. And we have a lot of that ready to run in 2023. Okay they are boarding through gate thirty three I got to go. Hope you enjoy the comp. If you like it, tell people about it. Love from LUCKYME®