From an underground operation to a celebrated label that keeps both music fans and its employees busy, Svart Records’ black circle logo has established a meaning as a seal of “you’re about to find something interesting”.

Finnish independent record company Svart Records is often perceived as an extreme metal label – a view which Svart’s Wikipedia page also endorses. It might’ve played an important part in the late noughties’ doom revival but it would be unfair to call a label as diverse as Svart a metal label. The 250 artists Svart has released or reissued span from the aforementioned to post-punk, free jazz, occult techno, Americana and beyond. In fact metal has faded in the margin for a quite simple reason.

“I’m so tired of heavy metal in general”, says Tomi Pulkki, the founder and A&R of Svart. The label he represents seems to represent his taste in music.



“If we release a metal album it has to have an experimental or otherwise interesting perspective towards the genre. Like for example the Gravetemple album”, says Pulkki referencing to the trio featuring musicians from Sunn O))) and Mayhem.

Svart was founded in 2009 by Pulkki and Jarkko Pietarinen. The latter is responsible of the manufacturing side of things. In addition to them Svart employs CEO Jukka Taskinen and two part-time hires for shipping and handling and paperwork. Last year the label put out almost 100 releases. An exhausting quantity by any meter imaginable.



“It’s partly because of publishing rights and their tight schedules of Liisankatu series”, justifies Pulkki referring to the dozens of archeological jazz and prog releases excavated from the vaults of the Finnish broadcasting company Yle. A topic that gets Pulkki so enthusiastic that it’s easy to pin down at least one of the reasons the label was founded.

“I find it more important to release an obscure piece of Finnish electronic music from the 60’s that will sell 70 copies worldwide rather than a much safer album – economically and music-wise – by a hyped current band. I believe this kind of cultural documentation will pay off in the future.”

