Random Sample is a London based record label run by Stratton and Kamiokande. They’ve been releasing some high quality dancefloor bangers for nearly a year. I have found the label to be exciting because they’re releasing music that could fit into most DJ sets (multi genre, garage, funky, house, techno, breakbeat, jungle, etc…). It’s a fresh perspective on straight-up underground dance music, so I hit up Stratton (who runs the label with Kamiokande) with a few questions to find out a little bit more. Give this bandcamp playlist a listen while you read:
FPZ: Random Sample started in June 2024, what made you both want to start a label? And where did the name Random Sample come from?
Stratton: We both had a lot of tunes that had been sitting on our hard drives for a long time, some of them from label releases that had fallen through. We wanted people to hear them, so we thought why not release them ourselves?
Our music is mostly very sample-based, so we wanted to reference that in the name, and “random sample” fits with our shared maths/physics background.
FPZ: The artwork for the first 10 releases have some type of symbol on each of them, what’s that about? I also noticed that the latest release has got a different style of artwork, was there a reason for the change?
Stratton: Those are all mathematical/statistical symbols, so a nod to the Random Sample name, and our catalogue numbers are on that theme too. But we started to get a little bored of those designs (and to be honest, we ran out of symbols!) so we decided to change the artwork after ten releases. The new design features a plot of a spectrogram of the A-side, and looks far more exciting.
FPZ: The music you’ve released has been created by yourselves (Stratton and Kamiokande) and Chaitu. Have you got any other artists coming through? And can you give any info about upcoming releases?
Stratton: At the moment we just want to release our own music and that of our close friends, so you may see some new names pop up in the future. We’ve got a few releases in the works – your best bet for hearing them before release is to check out any mix by West Norwood Cassette Library!
FPZ: What artists and/or tracks have you been feeling recently? And why?
Stratton: Two labels we’ve both been listening to a lot recently are Klasse Wrecks (expertly curated output across house, breaks, techno etc., perfectly constructed club tunes, always with a sort of 90s hardware feel) and X-Kalay (hugely underrated Berlin label that’s been on an incredible run the last few years, putting out consistently great tech/prog house dancefloor weapons).
FPZ: What is it about underground dance music culture that speaks to you and why?
Stratton: There’s just nothing like hearing some banging tunes really, really loud, is there?
FPZ: People can pay what they want for the releases – why did you decide to do that?
Stratton: We decided from the beginning to make all the releases name-your-price on Bandcamp, just because we want as many people as possible to hear the tunes, and to make it easy for DJs to grab them too. Some people have been kind enough to pay for the releases, which is amazing – huge thanks to them!
FPZ: Any final words or things to plug?
Stratton: I don’t think so!
And there you go, be sure to check them out:
Bandcamp: https://random-sample.bandcamp.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/randomsample__/
Futurepast Zine 
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