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Sarah Records

the official site

  • Sarah
    • Introduction
    • History
      • There And Back Again Lane
      • Between Hello & Goodbye Exhibition Guide
  • Music
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      • The Hundred
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    • Listen
  • Images
    • Band Photos
      • 14 Iced Bears
      • Aberdeen
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      • Another Sunny Day
      • Blueboy
      • Boyracer
      • Brighter
      • East River Pipe
      • Eternal
      • Even As We Speak
      • Field Mice
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      • Heavenly
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      • Northern Picture Library
      • Orchids
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      • Shelley
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    • Posters and Flyers
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      • Anti-Capitalism
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    • Sarah 100
    • Before Sarah
      • Introduction
      • Kvatch
      • Are You Scared To Get Happy?
      • Flexidiscs
    • After Sarah
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      • 14 Iced Bears
      • Aberdeen
      • Action Painting!
      • Another Sunny Day
      • Blueboy
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      • Brighter
      • East River Pipe
      • Eternal
      • Even As We Speak
      • Field Mice
      • Forever People
      • Gentle Despite
      • Golden Dawn
      • Harvest Ministers
      • Heavenly
      • Hit Parade
      • Ivy
      • Northern Picture Library
      • Orchids
      • Rosaries
      • Sea Urchins
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      • Shelley
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      • St Christopher
      • Sugargliders
      • Sweetest Ache
      • Talulah Gosh
      • Tramway
      • Wake
    • Sarah
      • General Label Press
      • Sarah Compilations
    • Singles of the Week
    • Before Sarah
      • Are You Scared To Get Happy?
      • Fanzine Culture
      • Sha-la-la
  • And…
    • Popkiss
    • My Secret World
    • Between Hello & Goodbye
    • Shinkansen Recordings
      • Introduction
      • Discography
      • Texts

Category Archives: Heavenly

Engine Common (Dave Morrison, Select)

Sarah Records Posted on April 20, 2016 by MattApril 20, 2016

Engine Common

Posted in Field Mice, Harvest Ministers, Heavenly, Press Field Mice, Press Harvest Ministers, Press Heavenly, Press Sarah Compilations, Press Sugargliders, Sugargliders | Tagged Field Mice, Harvest Ministers, Heavenly, Sugargliders

Heavenly, Atta Girl (NME)

Sarah Records Posted on February 25, 2016 by MattFebruary 25, 2016

Atta Girl

Posted in Heavenly, Press Heavenly

Heavenly vs Satan ad, NME Feb ’91

Sarah Records Posted on January 27, 2016 by MattJanuary 29, 2016

Heavenly vs Satan advertThe problem with Sarah, of course – as the music press insisted on telling everyone every week – was that we had no ambition; we were just happy in our bedrooms, mailing out 50 copies of everything to people we knew personally. Sigh. This is a quarter-page ad from the NME, 9th Feb 1991. The thing below it is a quarter-page ad for My Bloody Valentine’s Tremolo EP on Creation. Ah, Creation – they wore leather trousers and did drugs and had a photocopier and everything, just like a proper label (James Brown – journalist, not Godfather of Soul – once mocked us, to our face, for not having our own photocopier). Is Tremolo one of the good ones? – I can’t remember.

Posted in Adverts, Heavenly, Talulah Gosh, Wake | Tagged Heavenly, Talulah Gosh, Wake

Melody Maker front page, February 1991

Sarah Records Posted on November 12, 2015 by MattNovember 12, 2015

Melody Maker CoverOur bands didn’t often make the cover of Melody Maker or NME so, when they did, it was a moment to treasure (Heavenly, third down, small turquoise text, left-hand column). What’s also interesting here, of course, is the context: how awful are all these other people? And yet still Heavenly can’t get any better than third down, small turquoise text, left-hand column. Obviously it’s easy to say this with the benefit of hindsight, but we said it at the time too. The Farm! Ocean Colour Scene! Jane’s Addiction! The Sisters of Mercy! Actually, the Sisters’ Body Electric and Adrenochrome and Alice and Floorshow are great, but we shouldn’t let ourselves get sidetracked into early eighties Yorkshire goth. There’s a time and a place for that. Yorkshire. In the early eighties.

Posted in Heavenly, Images Other Artefacts

Sarah 100 Party ticket

Sarah Records Posted on August 28, 2015 by MattAugust 28, 2015

Sarah 100 Party TicketWe’ve got the date function turned off on these posts, because it’s generally not really relevant. Just for the record, though, we’re posting this at 8pm on 28th August, 2015.

A Day For Destroying Things.

Posted in Blueboy, Boyracer, Brighter, Harvey Williams, Heavenly, Images Other Artefacts, Orchids, Sarah 100, Secret Shine | Tagged Sarah 100

Heavenly, The Laurel Tree, Camden Town (David Hemingway, Melody Maker)

Sarah Records Posted on August 9, 2015 by MattAugust 9, 2015

Heavenly Laurel Tree

Posted in Heavenly, Press Heavenly | Tagged Heavenly

La Nuit Pop de Sarah, Lausanne, 1990 (flyer)

Sarah Records Posted on June 25, 2015 by MattAugust 26, 2015

La Nuit Pop de SarahA night in Lausanne, Switzerland, where I’m not sure we’d ever sold a single record. We also didn’t know, till we saw the freebies on the door, that it was sponsored by Marlboro. “Le décor vous appartient” translates roughly as “the decor is owned by you” – I’ve no idea what that means, but I’m sure Alison from Brighter would love to know who owned the bit of decor that split her head open during soundcheck. She still played, after a trip to Lausanne A&E, but in a bit of a painkiller haze, so probably didn’t notice the mass pogo that broke out when Brighter started, and stopped seconds later when everyone realised they weren’t the Damned. All very peculiar. But probably what you’d expect from something that used the words “happening” and “jam session” on a flyer.

Posted in Brighter, Field Mice, Heavenly, Images Posters | Tagged Brighter, Field Mice, Heavenly
Sarah Records Posted on June 10, 2015 by MattJune 10, 2015

Keith and Paul, HarlowA photo of Keith and Paul watching Heavenly at the Harlow Square in July 1992 – I know it was at the Harlow Square because, if you look closely, you can see the T-shirt stall, on which I’ve stuck a rather forlorn note offering a free poster to anyone who can give me a lift back to either Epping or Loughton station afterwards. I presume somebody must have obliged, otherwise I’d have had to spend the night in Harlow, and if I’d done that I’d now be twice divorced with three kids and living in… Harlow. The poster would have been the one we did for Heavenly’s Le Jardin… tour. Though this one here advertises the gig itself.

Posted in Blueboy, Heavenly, Images Blueboy | Tagged Blueboy, Heavenly
Sarah Records Posted on May 7, 2015 by MattMay 7, 2015

HeavenlyAn amusement arcade in Japan.
l-r: Cathy, Amelia, Peter, Rob, Mathew

Posted in Heavenly, Images Heavenly | Tagged Heavenly

December 1990 Christmas Party poster

Sarah Records Posted on May 4, 2015 by MattJune 25, 2015

1990 Christmas Party PosterI think we were quite excited to be offered the chance of doing our first Christmas party at a big London venue, the Powerhaus in Islington; the idea that big London venues might be on the lookout for gullible provincial labels who hadn’t quite grasped that a Sunday evening less than 48 hours before Christmas Day isn’t necessarily a good time to hold a party – especially if people have to get the Northern Line to Angel for it – never occurred to us. That would be the old Angel station, of course, with the really narrow island platform. The Powerhaus is now a branch of Halifax. Angel now has the longest escalators on the Underground. Don’t say we never tell you anything.

Posted in Field Mice, Heavenly, Images Posters, Orchids | Tagged Field Mice, Heavenly, Orchids
Sarah Records Posted on April 8, 2015 by MattApril 8, 2015

Heavenly

Camberwell, 1991
l-r: Rob, Peter, Amelia, Mathew
Photo © Richard Bellia

Posted in Heavenly, Images Heavenly | Tagged Heavenly

Sarah Christmas Party programme

Sarah Records Posted on March 24, 2015 by MattMarch 24, 2015

Sarah Christmas Party programmeThis is the handout that we handed out – that being the thing to do with handouts – at the end of the Thekla’s gangplank before the 1993 Sarah Christmas Party in order to let everyone know what they couldn’t expect. Having gone inside and read it, one person did (genuinely!) ask if he could be allowed back out again as a wet boxer short competition judged by Stewart Boyracer wasn’t really his sort of thing, but we just told him he should count himself lucky, as it wasn’t Stewart’s sort of thing either, and he’d be a lot closer. People are weird.

(NB this image is a bit bigger than most so you can read it – click more than once to bring it to maximum size!)

Posted in Action Painting!, Blueboy, Boyracer, Heavenly, Images Other Artefacts, Orchids, Secret Shine | Tagged Action Painting!, Blueboy, Boyracer, Heavenly, Orchids, Secret Shine

(Second) Greatest Indie Label Of All Time (NME, 7th March, 2015)

Sarah Records Posted on March 8, 2015 by MattMarch 8, 2015

NME's list of greatest indie labelsWell, it only took them 25 years… ahem. Not sure who reads the NME in 2015, or who writes for it, or why either of them do those things, but this still made us smile. In case you’re wondering, 4AD are Number One and XL Number Three. Creation, Rough Trade and Factory are all further down. Postcard and Crass don’t feature anywhere, which seems a bit remiss; I always saw us as a cross between the two. (Obviously this is a screen grab from their website, but I assume it’s in the tree-killing version too.)

Posted in Another Sunny Day, East River Pipe, Field Mice, Heavenly, Press General Label

Heavenly stage plan

Sarah Records Posted on March 5, 2015 by MattMarch 5, 2015

Heavenly, Sarah Records: stage planWith biggish gigs, the people who’d be doing the sound often asked for a “stage plan”. For most bands, this simply meant a list of which guitars they had, how many mikes they’d need and who’d be using them – that sort of thing. For Heavenly… it didn’t. Not sure who drew this, by the way, but Pete’s hair is spot on. (NB the gig was outside the UK, hence all the borrowed stuff: you can’t fit a drum kit in an overhead locker.)

Posted in Heavenly, Images Other Artefacts | Tagged Heavenly

End of Sarah (Peter Paphides, Time Out, August 1995)

Sarah Records Posted on February 20, 2015 by MattFebruary 20, 2015

Sarah Records in Time Out

Posted in Another Sunny Day, Capitalism, East River Pipe, Field Mice, Harvey Williams, Heavenly, Press Another Sunny Day, Press East River Pipe, Press Field Mice, Press General Label, Press Harvey Williams, Press Heavenly, Press Sarah Compilations, Press Sea Urchins, Press Springfields, Press Sugargliders, Press Talulah Gosh, Press Wake, Sarah 100, Sea Urchins, Springfields, Sugargliders, Talulah Gosh, Wake | Tagged Another Sunny Day, East River Pipe, Field Mice, Harvey Williams, Heavenly, Sarah 100, Sea Urchins, Springfields, Sugargliders, Talulah Gosh, Wake

There And Back Again Lane (Victoria Segal, Melody Maker)

Sarah Records Posted on February 13, 2015 by MattFebruary 13, 2015

There And Back Again Lane reviewed in Melody Maker

Posted in Action Painting!, Field Mice, Harvest Ministers, Heavenly, Hit Parade, Northern Picture Library, Orchids, Press Action Painting, Press Field Mice, Press Harvest Ministers, Press Heavenly, Press Hit Parade, Press Northern Picture Library, Press Orchids, Press Sarah Compilations, Press Wake, Sarah 100, Wake | Tagged Action Painting!, Field Mice, Harvest Ministers, Heavenly, Hit Parade, Northern Picture Library, Orchids, Sarah 100, Wake

Blueboy tour poster, July 1992

Sarah Records Posted on February 8, 2015 by MattFebruary 19, 2015

Blueboy Tour poster

A poster designed by the band to advertise a short tour in July ’92 promoting the release of If Wishes Were Horses. In those days, it was generally thought that if you didn’t have time to do a full-length tour, you should at least try to play (a) London, (b) your home town and (c) Harlow.

Posted in Blueboy, Heavenly, Images Posters | Tagged Blueboy, Even As We Speak

Sha-la-la and Kvatch flexidiscs

Sarah Records Posted on January 23, 2015 by MattApril 7, 2015

Sha-la-la flexis and Kvatch Sea Urchins flexiThese were the flexidiscs we released with our fanzines prior to setting up Sarah; the Sea Urchins appeared on two flexis, one with Kvatch (Cling Film), one with Sha-la-la (Summershine). The Orchids, Talulah Gosh and Poppyheads also had Sha-la-la releases (From This Day, I Told You So and the Postcard for Flossy EP respectively). It was important that all the flexis came in proper sleeves; they were throwaway, but weren’t meant to be thrown away. (In case you’re wondering, Sha-la-la was a flexdisc label, with the discs distributed via various fanzines, chiefly Are You Scared To Get Happy?, Simply Thrilled, Baby Honey and Trout Fishing in Leytonstone.)

Posted in Before Sarah, Heavenly, Images Other Artefacts, Orchids, Poppyheads, Sea Urchins, Talulah Gosh | Tagged Kvatch, Sha-la-la

Heavenly, Our Love Is Heavenly (NME)

Sarah Records Posted on January 13, 2015 by MattJanuary 13, 2015

NME review of Our Love Is Heavenly

Posted in Heavenly, Press Heavenly | Tagged Heavenly
Sarah Records Posted on January 12, 2015 by MattApril 8, 2015

Heavenly

back: Amelia, Cathy
front: Peter, Rob, Mathew

Posted in Heavenly, Images Heavenly | Tagged Heavenly

Heavenly & Blueboy @ Fleece & Firkin, Bristol

Sarah Records Posted on January 7, 2015 by MattJanuary 8, 2015

Heavenly & Blueboy at Fleece & Firkin, Bristol (poster)

Poster for a gig in July 1992 at Bristol’s Fleece & Firkin to promote Le Jardin de Heavenly. Blueboy at this point had only released one single for us.

Posted in Blueboy, Heavenly, Images Posters | Tagged Blueboy, Heavenly

Between Hello and Goodbye: the Secret World of Sarah Records

Sarah Records Posted on April 27, 2014 by MattJanuary 13, 2015

Posted on 27th April, 2014

BetweenHelloNext weekend (2nd-5th May), there’s a four-day exhibition at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol presenting various artefacts from our eight years running the label – artwork, posters, tapes, fanzines, records and so forth. It’s free, and runs 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day. The Saturday will also feature a preview screening of My Secret World, Lucy Dawkins’ film about the label, and performances by The Orchids, Secret Shine and Amelia and Rob from Heavenly – tickets for that are £18. There’s also a Q&A with us, and Clare will be leading walking tours of various Sarah landmarks on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday – that’s all free, like the exhibition, and the whole thing is part of the Bristol Art Weekender, and you can find out more details here.

Posted in Between Hello and Goodbye, Heavenly, My Secret World, Orchids, Secret Shine

Sarah Records Christmas Party, 1991

Sarah Records Posted on December 11, 2013 by MattJanuary 8, 2015

Sarah Records Christmas Party poster

Poster for the 1991 Sarah Christmas Party on board the Thekla in Bristol.

Posted in Another Sunny Day, Blueboy, Brighter, Heavenly, Hit Parade, Images Posters, Secret Shine, Tramway | Tagged Another Sunny Day, Blueboy, Brighter, Heavenly, Hit Parade, Secret Shine, Tramway

Sarah was a Bristol-based independent record label, active between November 1987 and August 1995. This site was launched in 2015 to archive photos, press, posters and other artefacts; it’s a work in progress.

May 2025

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Words and Pictures

My Secret World
a film about Sarah

Popkiss
a book about Sarah

Listen

Sarah Records Bandcamp

Contact

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Clare
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