Taste making Modular Recordings

A small record label tucked away in Sydney's Surrey Hills is home to some of Australasia's hippest bands - and now Modular Recordings is gaining a tastemaker reputation across the globe, Allister Hayman writes.

In a spare apartment in the tight streets of Sydney’s Surrey Hills, the head of Modular Recordings, Steve Pavlovic, sits with the label’s brains trust: UK director Phil Hutcheon and creative director Glen Goetze. Out of the office for a change of scene, they’re hunched around their laptops. It’s the end of the year and time to reflect and plan ahead.

“We’d rather be at the beach,” Pavlovic sighs, “but we’ve got release dates to sort out.” In a horizontal stripped T, boutique jeans and white canvas trainers, Pavlovic – or Pavs - is everything one imagines the head of an indie record label to be: nonchalant, cool and wearing a considerable attitude. And he can afford to.

The label that he began back in 1998 has had a phenomenal year. After the international success of artists like The Avalanches and Cut Copy, 2006 saw the explosion of Wolfmother, the coming of age of The Presets and the emergence of new talents Van She, New Young Pony Club and the Klaxons.

As Modular expanded into the UK and the US, their blend of bands and mash up parties found favor with the music press, with rock bible the NME voting them the best label of 2006. Then, in a rare crossover feat, they were voted label of the year by dance title DJ Magazine.

“The year has been amazing,” Pavlovic says as we take a seat on the couch. “Since we started Modular there’s been a lot of hard work and a lot of flying by the seat of our pants. But this year is perhaps the first opportunity we've had to realize some of our goals and to be able to actualize our vision for where we’ve wanted the label to be.”

Pavlovic has come along way since the early nineties when as a fledgling tour promoter he was bringing US alt-rock acts down under. But he demonstrated his nous early on when in the summer of 1992 he booked a little-known Seattle trio named Nirvana. When Kurt Cobain and his attendant chaos arrived in Australia, they were ensconced at No. 1 on the US Billboard charts and were the world’s biggest band.

After this success, Pavlovic spent much of the nineties promoting bands and running a small alt-rock label called Fellaheen Records, which for a short time gave him a taste of what a label could be. “That particularly incarnation didn’t really work,” he says of the label’s short life. “My partner was just happy to run it as an indie label out the back of an indie record shop and that was the scope of his vision whereas mine was larger.”

Pavlovic left the label and continued promoting, but all the while worked out a vision for the kind of label he wanted. “I really liked stylized labels like Blue Note and Sup Pop,” he says. “You kind of knew what you got: the art work the packaging, it was very specific and the music was genre specific as well.”

But with a relatively small music scene Pavlovic realized that a focused label was unlikely to succeed in Australia and decided to keep things open. “I thought rather than pigeon hole ourselves we’d leave the band width open and anything goes so long as it’s good,” he says.
In 1998, Pavlovic set up Modular Recordings in a deal with EMI, which gave the new label a considerable amount of latitude. “EMI’s Australian repertoire was woeful,” Pavlovic recalls. “Basically they didn’t have anything, so they were really flexible with the deal, which meant we had a lot of freedom.”

Pavlovic’s first signing was a little known hip hop outfit from Melbourne called Quentin’s Brittle Bones - “four scrappy kids” that later became The Avalanches. “They sent me a demo because they wanted to support some of the bands we were bringing out,” Pavlovic says. “It was literally a shitty tape. It barely had phone number on it. But it was really good.”

Pavlovic got a number for the band and gave them a call. “They’d only just played two shows or something and they didn’t have anyone putting their records out, so I told them I was trying to set up a label with EMI and I’d give them some money to make an EP.” Pavlovic also signed singer-songwriter Ben Lee and alt-rock outfit, The Living End, having known both through promoting gigs.

All three artist went platinum several times with their debut albums, with The Living End’s eponymous effort reaching No 1 in Australia and selling more than 350000 copies. But it was The Avalanches critically acclaimed “Since I left You” which entered the top ten in the UK, that gave the label real momentum.

“Their record is a timeless classic kind of piece that just keeps selling for us around the world,” Pavlovic says. “It’s just a continual thing, you know. It gets name checked a lot and a whole new generation of people discover it.”

On the back of the success, Pavlovic signed more Australian acts, including Cut Copy, The Presets and later, Wolfmother, as well as tying up the Australian licenses for overseas acts such as Jack Johnson and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

But by 2004, with Modular’s artists achieving overseas success, the loose arrangement with EMI became strained as the major began pressurizing Pavlovic to renegotiate their deal. Eventually Pavlovic cut Modular loose by buying EMI out with a Jack Johnson record.

“Basically I said I’ll give you this record and you can put it out for six months and enjoy the sales but I’m leaving with all my catalogue – and if you don’t agree to that then I’m going to go anyway and give the record to someone else because I’m not obligated to give it to you,” Pavlovic says. “It wasn’t exactly what they wanted to hear and they were upset about it, but it seemed like the only rational thing to do at the time to resolve the situation.”

Pavlovic left with the entire Modular back catalogue and in 2005, with Wolfmother about to break, he signed a new three-territory deal with Universal Music Australia, Island UK and Interscope US. “They put a pretty convincing case together,” Pavlovic says of the deal. “We ended up selling half our company to them as a joint venture - now they own half of what we do and fund us and have given us a lot of freedom to go out and sign great new bands and develop our brand internationally.”

The deal, understood to be seven figures, allowed Pavlovic to retain his role as managing director and gave him full creative control. It also enabled them to expand their offices in New York and London, as well as Sydney. “Since we’ve had their help on board as partners we’ve really been able to grow those other territories. It's really given us the support to take out the business side of it – we can utilize their infrastructure: all their staff and all the bits and bobs and bangs and whistles and that allows us to focus more on the creative side.”

Through a savvy promotional mix, incorporating online and street marketing, promotional hookups, edgy design and uber hip parties, Modular has built a brand associated with the ‘tastemaker’ crowd, both in Australia and abroad. “Doing the parties is a big part of what we’ve been doing,” Pavlovic says. “It’s integral to what’s happened in the UK and has really helped us develop the profile of the label.”

Modular parties are aspirational marketing par excellence, featuring a mix of bands and DJs – both Modular acts and guests- and incorporating hook ups with other successful Aussie exports, like jeans label Ksubi (formerly Tsubi). The parties attract hip young things and people with influence, who are then introduced to the label’s latest signings. “Through the parties and through the people we’re associated with we’re able to introduce our new bands to a kind of tastemaker crowd all around the world and they get the word out,” Pavlovic says. “It certainly worked for Wolfmother.”

Wolfmother’s story is illustrative of how the label works. After hearing word of a new Sydney band that was like “a commercial White Stripes” Modular got in touch. “They sent us a four track demo and we played it over and over in the office and thought it’s fucking great,” Pavlovic says. “We just couldn’t stop playing it and then we went and saw their show. I think it was the third or fourth show they’d done, and we were blown away at how good it was and we pretty much offered them a deal the following week.”

With only a dozen people at the first shows, Pavlovic watched the band build a following in just a few months, before deciding to take them overseas. “We thought it was something people would get and it was the right time for it to be out in the world so we took them over to New York and then to the UK and all the industry people came along and were like, oh my god, these guys are great.”

After taking the festival circuit by storm, Wolfmother went on to sell more than 800,000 copies of their eponymous album making it one of the most successful Australian rock debuts in decades. The album entered the US billboard charts at No 22 with singles like “Minds Eye” and “Woman” on high rotation on radio and music TV. To cap an extraordinary year, the band won ARIAs for album and single of the year and were nominated for a Grammy.

Pavlovic says Wolfmother’s success was a result of great songs and a lot of groundwork. “We spent a year developing Wolfmother before they went of to make an album, which took another six months. We were 18 months into the project and had spent a lot of money but had had the band touring all around the world and kind of developing and growing, which gave them a launching pad.”

Wolfmother aside, it’s the indie dance scene that Modular is most associated, with Cut Copy, The Presets, Van She, MSTRKRFT and new signings New Young Pony Club and Klaxons all playing various dance rock hybrids, while the Modular parties feature guests like DFA, Digitalism and Soul Wax.

But Pavlovic denies the label has become pigeon-holed. “People say it seems like you're a very indie dance sort of fashion thing and I can see why they might think that,” he says. “I mean, I’d be lying if I said that twelve months ago I wasn’t taking a lot of ecstasy and jumping around in night clubs to sleazy electro music, so that might be reflected in what we were signing.”

“But maybe prior to that we were jumping around at a rock club and that’s what we were into and maybe next week we’re going to go black metal. We’re open to anything so long as we like it, and in a way maybe that’ s a bit ‘fashionista’ and it might be a bit shallow, but we just kind of ebb and flow with whatever’s going and whatever’s appealing to us.”

Whether Modular are leading or following trends is moot, but Pavlovic admits fashion and design are integral to the label. “The thing that seems to hold us up and makes us run behind schedule is the art work and the videos because we don't just take anything. We spend a lot of time trying to make parts that we’re all happy with so when it comes out people think, wow that looks kind of cool.”

But while he has a strong vision for the “look” of the label, Pavlovic says this is not dictated to the bands. “We’re really involved in that element of it, but at the end of the day the final say is with the bands. We work with them to try and complement whatever they’re making musically to make something visually interesting and exciting.”

Though Modular have had offices in New York and London for two years it was only last June that they signed their first non-Australian act: London disco punk five-piece New Young Pony Club. But Pavlovic now receives music from all over the world – “we get tonnes of it every week”- and out of that slush pile came the label’s latest signing: a San Diego band called the Softlightes who play a sweet blend of west coast indie pop. The band is to be introduced to an Australian audience at the inaugural V-festival in March, where Modular are curating their own stage. Along with NYPC, the Softlightes will release their debut album mid-year.

The label also has new Australian music to release in 2007. Cut Copy are now in the studio; leftfield hip hop act The Bumblebeez will release a debut album – as will electro pop act Van She; and The Presets are writing new material. But after waiting six years, the most eagerly anticipated release is the new Avalanches album. “I think they felt a lot of pressure having made a hugely well received and critically acclaimed album and they wanted to make a record that was even better than that,” Pavlovic says of the band’s long delayed follow up. “They put themselves under a lot of pressure to make something that was beyond beyond.”

Pavlovic says that since returning to the studio the band had scrapped at least two albums and had lost their way. But now they’re back on track. “They’d been trying to make this epic sad sorrowful pop record and we listened to it and it was boring. Then about a year ago they said fuck me, we’ve hit it, we’re just going to be The Avalanches - we’re going to make a fun party record. The direction they’re on now they feel really positive about and recently they played us the framework of the album and it’s amazing. I have immense faith that they’ll put out a record this year that’s every bit as good as the first one.”

If that is the case then 2007 will be as exciting as 2006, for Modular Recordings and music lovers alike.

A version of this article first appeared in Remix magazine.