Mushroom Records UK
Mushroom Records UK was set up in London in 1993 by Gary Ashley, as an offshoot of the Australian independent label Mushroom Records, which had been formed in 1972 by Michael Gudinski and Ray Evans in Melbourne. Mushroom Records UK was intended mainly to serve the UK with Australian musical imports. Marshall had previously been RCA's head of A&R, and had left the company to establish his own Infectious Records which he aligned under Mushroom Records UK.[1]
The label's first worldwide signing was US rock group Garbage, who became the flagship for the label, achieving multi-million sales with their first album release. Concerned that they were only known in the United Kingdom for the Neighbours theme (composed by Mushroom Music Publishing),[6] to move away from the association, Mushroom founded the Discordant label for the sole purpose of launching Garbage.[7] Although following their debut single, Garbage were reconciled with the main label, a few Australian acts such as Garageland and Deadstar were licensed to Discordant.
Mushroom had early success with Australian singer Peter Andre, while retaining a diverse roster signing UK acts such as the Wildhearts, and importing Australian acts such as Deni Hines, Christian Fry, Ween, Antenna, Sister2Sister, VAST and Yothu Yindi. Several acts were signed to Infectious Records, including Ash, Symposium, My Vitriol, Cable, Seafood, Elevator Suite and Pop Will Eat Itself, while Mushroom licensed local signing Muse from Taste Media. Sub labels Perfecto had successes with Paul Oakenfold and offshoot label 48K artist Timo Maas; sister label Ultimate Dilemma also had Zero 7, Magnet and Roots Manuva on its books.[8] In 1999, Mushroom Records UK was one of only two labels who wanted to sign singer Kylie Minogue (ultimately she chose to sign to Parlophone).[9]
With these acts charting highly brought Mushroom to the front stage of music in the UK, with an initial £5,000 turnover increasing to £23m over its 10 years,[1] however Marshall began to extricate Mushroom UK from the Mushroom family during 2001, after the parent company had been sold in 1999 to Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp, and merged with his Festival Records to form Festival Mushroom Records. Mushroom Records UK was slowly wound down as negotiations crystallised;[1] its last release was the Garbage single "Shut Your Mouth" in September 2002.
Mushroom Records UK discography
Albums
