We talk to the dirtybird boss at his home in San Francisco about the label’s fifth birthday compilation – and we’ve got some unseen footage of Claude playing out at last year’s T In The Park…

Put a record on without looking at the label, and if it’s on dirtybird, you’ll know.  There’s something about the funky, freaky, big bass thump of the San Francisco-based imprint’s records that makes them truly unique. Claude VonStroke’s dirtybird really has a sound all of its own – and that’s not something you can say about many labels.

dirtybird started life in 2003 as a party named after a drawing of a bird that Barclay Crenshaw (who we now know as Claude) used to draw when he was a kid. When Barclay decided to expand the party into a label, his girlfriend (who’s now his wife) said: “I’ll give you one year to make this record label work. I’ll pay the rent, food and bills. If you make $X amount of dollars you can do it forever. If you don’t, you have to go back to work for corporate America the rest of your life.”  So in January 2005 the label was born with The Southern Draw by Justin Martin and Sammy D. A few month’s later came Deep Throat by Barclay himself – it ended up selling more than 11,000 copies on vinyl, doing 20 odd licenses and  surpassing what seemed to be an impossible financial goal for a first year record label.

So now it’s dirtybird’s fifth birthday, and to celebrate, the label boss and co-founder Justin Martin have put together a three-CD monster of a compilation. Disc one includes all the greatest hits and most loved dirtybird tracks, including Claude’s classic Who’s Afraid of Detroit? and the Martin Brothers’ anthemic Stoopit. On disc two, Justin Martin creates a mix using bits, pieces and parts from more than 30 dirtybird classic and future tracks. And on disc three, Barclay shows off a year’s worth of record hunting with a load of new classics representing the future of the dirtybird sound.

We talk to Barclay to find out what the future holds for the label, and how it was creating such a huge project so soon after own artist album, last year’s Birdbrain…

5 years of dirtybird is out now. Visit www.myspace.com/claudevonstroke and www.dirtybirdrecords.com

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