** Rescheduled **

2 October 2022,
10.30am to 4.30pm (Free entry)

To celebrate the last weeks of the acclaimed Sweet Harmony: Radio, Rave & Waltham Forest, 1989-1994 exhibition at Vestry House Museum, we have teamed up with local record label Mais Um to host a record fair featuring independent record labels, record dealers and record shops all based in Waltham Forest for a celebration of the contemporary underground music scene in the borough today.

“The exhibition captures the previously undocumented impact that Waltham Forest’s pirate radio stations, producers and DJs had on the UK’s 90s dance music scene, and the record fair links the borough’s current labels and talent with those that have gone before giving the community an opportunity to celebrate the continuation of musical talent in the borough”, says Katherine Green, exhibition curator.  

Whether it’s the “honest electronic music” of Steven Julien’s pioneering Apron Records, the eclectic experimentalism of Warp Records off-shoot Disciples (run by Matthew Jones from E17 reggae-disco ‘General Echo’), host label Mais Um’s melting-pot of genre-fusing artists from South America, Asia and Africa, or the jazz, funk and global sounds of Quinton Scott’s legendary Strut Records, Waltham Forest is home to some of London’s most exciting independent labels, and the record fair offers local residents the chance to pick up vinyl and merchandise direct from the labels themselves as well as a chance to visit the Sweet Harmony exhibition before it closes on 2 October 2022.

Also present will be jungle and hardcore veterans Bizzy B with Brain Records and Roy Balfourth with Quayside Records and the jungle and breakbeat vibes of Modified Magic and Yellow Machines, plus four local record dealers and two record stores: Leyton’s Dreamhouse and Walthamstow’s Vinyl Vanguard.

The record fair will be in Vestry House’s Garden Room, situated in the midst of the museum’s award-winning gardens, where there will also be a bar serving local beers plus a sound system on which DJs from each label will spin tunes from their labels. The Vestry House café will also be open selling hot drinks and food.

The full line-up of participants is:

Record labels: AD 93, Apron Records, Brain Records, Chocolate City, Disciples, Leng Records, Mais Um, Modified Magic, Quayside Records, SlothBoogie, Spacetalk, Strut Records, Yellow Machines 

Record dealers selling drum and bass, hip hop, house, garage, jazz, funk, soul, rare groove, reggae: Jake Ferguson (The Brkn Record & The Heliocentrics), Linden C, Patrick Richmond, Roy Balfourth (Friends FM).

Record shops: Dreamhouse, Vinyl Vanguard

Vestry House Museum
Vestry Road, Walthamstow
London E17 9NH

More info

Named one of the UK’s ‘best boutique labels’ by The Guardian, Mais Um releases music from Japan’s Minyo Crusaders and OKI, Brazil’s Metá Metá, Beijing’s Howie Lee and other trail-blazing international artists who fuse styles, disregards genres and (occasionally) irritate purists. Formed in 2010, Mais Um’s artists can be seen at festivals such as Green Man and Womad, heard on BBC radio 6 and read about in The Guardian and Pitchfork – “What Mais Um does is amazing,” said Gilles Peterson. See maisumdiscos.com for more information.