NEWS

MethLab is to shut down over the next few months. The DJ agency will cease business this month and the label will stop releasing music in February.

The announcement was hinted at on New Year’s Eve on the brand’s social media pages but made official this afternoon:

MethLab began as an agency representing acts who excelled in the leftfield, experimental corners of bass music including Broken Note, Current Value, Disprove, Audeka, IHR and Allied. Over the years the brand morphed into hosting its own events before launching the label in February 2016 with Allied’s Obscurity EP.

Pushing a strong future-focused, explorative message and aesthetic, the label had such momentum, filled such a particular gap in the bass landscape and had such a strong resonance with fans it won the Best Newcomer Label award in the Drum&BassArena Awards within less than a year of being launched.

Since then the label has constantly fine-tuned and recalibrated its futurist, often dystopic and consistently pushed boundaries with releases from the likes of Audeka, Disprove, Balatron, Rawtekk, Djrum, Hydro and of course Current Value who recently released his double album PEUR / SENEX on a unique Souped Up / Methlab collab project which we announced at the time.

In a neat cyclic twist of fate, the label will close down exactly four years after the launch, almost to the very day with Allied’s debut album Kailash.

Before that, the label will also release EPs from Subp Yao and Skylark and singles from Recue and Oskilator. This Friday will also see the digital release of the Sentinel album. Previously released on vinyl, Sentinel is a powerful V/A exploration across all electronic boundaries with tracks from the likes of Zan Lyons, Audeka, War, Culprate, Disphonia, Inward, Hanzo & Randie x Merikan, Grey Code x SubMarine, Disprove, Missin and many more. MethLab described the album as a manifesto, it seems a fitting way to end a unique era of uncompromised, forward-thinking explorations.

“It’s been an amazing decade full of incredible experiences and experiments. The idea behind MethLab has run its course though and it felt best to leave it on a high note.” state the label.

No information on future plans, or what comes next, is available at present, but we’ll keep you posted on anything if it arises. Having supported many of their releases and artists on this site, and announcing many of their plans, we’re sad to see MethLab leave the game… But excited to see what comes next from all individuals, artists and creatives involved in the collective. We wish them the best of luck.