Glitterhouse Records

It started as a fanzine, in 1981. Deep in the middle of nowhere, in a hick town in Germany, two music lovers Reinhard Holstein and Rembert Stiewe dedicated a lot of their spare time to Sixties-Garage Rock, Psychedelia, Punk, the Paisley-Underground and whatever was leftfield enough to match their taste in music. Soon after, Glitterhouse was a record label, too. And a mailorder. And suddenly, in 1984, GLITTERHOUSE RECORDS became a profession.

1987 saw the start of a license cooperation with the Seattle–based SUB POP label. All of a sudden the Glitterhouse people had acts like MUDHONEY, TAD, THE SCREAMING TREES in their artist roster. Needless to say, the label almost single-handedly brought the grunge phenomenon to the old world. At the same time Glitterhouse took care of the Minneapolis –based AMPHETAMINE REPTILE RECORDS, being responsible for acts such as the infamous HELMET, TAR, COWS and CHOKEBORE. The rest, as they say, is history: The relation to both labels remained intact – but over the years the enthusiasm for licensing product as opposed to signing new talents themselves was shrinking. The business relations to both Sub Pop and Amphetamine Reptile Records came to an end in the mid 90s. GLITTERHOUSE RECORDS decided to concentrate on their own signings again.

Over the years there’s a plethora of shining artists who recorded for Glitterhouse Records. More than 900 releases in 33 years… that alone is quite an impressive number. If one quality should be sufficient enough to describe the company, “enduring” would be a good choice since GLITTERHOUSE RECORDS celebrates its twentyfifth anniversary these days, still going strong. Only few independent labels can exhibit an artist–roster as delicate yet diverse as theirs, being the home of THE WALKABOUTS, SIXTEEN HORSEPOWER, PERE UBU, early MONSTER MAGNET, FRIENDS OF DEAN MARTINEZ, MIDNIGHT CHOIR, STEVE EARLE, BUTCH HANCOCK, WILLARD GRANT CONSPIRACY, HUGO RACE, SAVOY GRAND just to name a few. As if they weren’t busy enough running the label and the mailorder, the company organizes the annual ORANGE BLOSSOM SPECIAL open air festival in their neat hometown Beverungen.

Stagnancy is a foreign word to these cats, so it’s highly likely that you’ll hear from them in the near future, possibly on a tasty record you’ve just purchased!