Label Profile
Uhrlaut Records is a Danish recording label specializing in releasing electronic music and video. It was initially known as Urlyd Records, but had it’s name changed to Uhrlaut Records in 2011 to cater to a more international audience.
The musical profile of the label spans the entire electronic spectrum ranging from lush, ambient landscapes and abstract glitch sounds over vocal driven electronica singer-songwriting to more challenging, danceable breaks and beats.
At Uhrlaut we add a visual dimension to all releases in the sense that all releases consist of both music and video that compliment each other, thereby enabling the music artists to explore their audiovisual expressions – often in collaboration with one or more established video artists.
Uhrlaut is a founding member of Labelkollektiv, an informal association of small independent record labels with reference to the city of Aalborg in Denmark.
Creative Commons pioneer label
Uhrlaut Records believes in the strength and sustainable inertia of sharing and openness, and was the first label in the world to use a Creative Commons license on actual, physical records while supported by a collecting society; namely KODA in Denmark.
The pioneering release was Small Arm of Sea on cd/dvd and lp/dvd (by female electronica artist and KODA-member Tone), which was released in Danish stores on January 21, 2008, just a few days after the official announcement by KODA that Creative Commons was now a legit option for its members to choose, thereby ensuring announcing that commercial revenues on tracks released under Creative Commons non-commercial licenses would now be collected by the society, whereas non-commercial sharing was allowed to be given free by members wishing to do so.
The release was a bold move that spawned media attention from all over the world and rewarded the label and Tone for their gamble of having sent the records into print with Creative Commons logos on the cover a month before it was certain whether Creative Commons licencing would be legal for the society’s members.
Read the official Creative Commons International blog entry here and the official announcement of KODA‘s adoption of CC licenses here.
Behind the label
Uhrlaut Recordings were founded by Christian Villum and Sune Petersen in 2007. As of today, the label is run as a music collective headed by Villum as label manager, with Petersen acting as technical coordinator alongside a crew consisting of Mads Weitling (web developer), Yngve Stensaker (graphics designer) and Danny Kreutzfelt (social media manager).
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Christian Villum is engaged in a wide range of projects. He lives and work as an independent and self-employed bootstrapper within media, arts, web, open culture and technology in general.
Alongside Uhrlaut Records, his current projects include co-administering Platform4, an art- and technology venue in Aalborg, Denmark, that also houses a 1000 sq. meter co-working space and maker-/hackerspace FormuLab. Furthermore, he works as agent for the Shareplay cross media project (a collaboration between Filmby Århus, Animation Workshop and Bretteville Hotspot), and function as chairman of music label association Labelkollektiv.
Additionally, since early 2010, he has held the position as Danish public project lead for Creative Commons Denmark, doing lectures, workshops and talks about CC, and is currently working on two book projects (one on business in free culture and another one on on diy ethics as driving force).
He is currently based in Denmark and have previously lived, worked and studied in Berlin, New York and Chicago.
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With a base in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sune Petersen is a multifaceted digital artist with a background in producing live visuals, computer mediated graphics and interactive installations in a wide range of contexts. He is known as one half of the MOTORSAW vj team, specialize in photography – and even produce tracks every now and then. Past credits include being part of visual group Sea of Tranquility, working at the Copenhagen-based science centre Experimentarium, Ars Electronica Future Lab (Linz) and the University of Aalborg.
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Danny Kreutzfeldt is antiauthoritarian composer, artist, event organizer and web activist based in Aarhus, Denmark. While on the side releasing music under monikers such as Periskop, sgnl_fltr, Sectorchestra and more – as well as organizing events as part of the 8K Mob and Noisejad crews – Danny holds the role of social media manager for Uhrlaut and many of the affiliated artists.
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Web designer, music composer, sampling wizard and general tech geek extraordinaire Mads Weitling serves as the web developer of the Uhrlaut team. Spending his time with everything digital, Mads is also known under his artist alias Kiloton, when producing brisk electronic music with high acclaim.
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Yngve Stensaker is Norwegian, yet now based in Aalborg, Denmark, and functions as the Uhrlaut graphic designer. He is a graphics designer by trade but spends time as a visual creative working with a wide range of expressions and formats including video, light painting, sketching, coding and much much more. He is a founding member of the TS Collective, an Danish artistic hacking collective, and is also heavily engaged with cultural web portal Nitusind.nu. Additionally, he produces music and spins records under the moniker Yngvesin.
