It’s official: after 21 years of events and 17 years of releases, WONK#AY has put an end to its Various Artists (VA) compilations.
Their last one Forever Contagious landed last Friday on Halloween and it marked the end of a really interesting and hugely fertile era of championing blisteringly new talent and exasperatingly fresh ideas.
Following I’m Contagious in 2012, You’re Contagious in 2013, We’re Contagious in 2014, It’s Contagious in 2015, Do The Contagious in 2016, Feed The Contagious in 2017, Keep It Contagious in 2019 and Still Contagious in 2021, Forever Contagious wraps up the series with its biggest collection so far.
27 tracks deep, each one being revealed daily over the last four weeks, the album is ablaze with strange, forward-thinking, uncategorisable sounds and fusions from a wide range of cutting edge craftsfolks including Ankou, Joro Dudovski, Kevala & Inertia, DROMEK, Audio Gutter, Brixx, Wolf’d, Denizen, label bosses Seppa and Bunkle and indeed Hurtdeer who we premiered from this album last month…
We could have picked a whole number of tracks to premiere but Hurtdeer’s rampant 4×4 techno rave stomper was apt in many ways.
Not only was this particular track being revealed by the label on the same week we released Deerhill’s album Spore Prints (catching us with a deer vibe that was too canny for us to ignore) but also it fits the 1 More Thing don’t-stop spirit perfectly and Hurtdeer is one of a few artists who appeared on the first ever Contagious chapter in 2012 (I’m Contagious) and has appeared on almost of all of volumes so far. Consistently pushing genuinely original ideas and sounds, Hurtdeer’s output reveals more and more on every inspection, so both a big up to, and a heads up on, the far out and explosive sounds of Hurtdeer is most definitely in order.
But the biggest of ups should arguably be sent to the label founder Bunkle and heads Seppa and Aytch. They’ve been pushing cutting edge sounds for a long, long time. In fact in a previous interview with us, Bunkle explained how his role in late 90s London squat raves inspired his entire career. And you can feel that in the label’s open-armed and warm-hearted curation on everything they’ve put out into the universe.
An early stomping ground for the likes of Kursa, Samurai Breaks, VCTRE, Chee, Vowel and Transforma, all WONK#AY releases fit the open-minded and open-hearted descriptions we’ve already applied to the Contagious concept. The label is clearly unafraid to champion artists who’ve yet to have time to develop a profile and is unapologetic in its pursuit of progress for the culture. But times change, and after years of VA releases (as well as the Contagious volumes, the label has also released VA concepts such as HATARI, Summer Toasters, Shaken, Contortionist, Telepathic Nonsense, Wonkout and GnomeOfWar) the label has decided to focus purely on its single releases either as one track missives (Singularity) and two track dispatches (Dualism)
“It’s been a hell of a ride!” exclaims Bunkle, one of the label founders. “We’re forever grateful at what we’ve achieved, how many genres we’ve explored and the amount of support we’ve had. But times change, all of us are a little older now and we have other projects and things we want to achieve. WONK#AY is still very much focused on supporting and pushing the best underground music and experimental bass we can and we’ll be doing that via our Singularity and Dualism releases. We’ve got some amazing things planned so please continue to keep it WONK#AY and huge appreciation to everyone who’s been part of the journey so far.”
There you have it. Contagious volumes are over but WONK#AY records are still guaranteed to infect you with originality and freshness. Long may this continue.
We’d like to take this opportunity to salute the WONK#AY crew and indeed any label who has made it their mission to push, promote and persist with new names. This is the lifeblood of the scene and how literally any headliner starts, no matter how conventional or mainstream they are or have become since they blew up.
Even when all the self-release and self-promo tools are available to new artists, platforms like WONK#AY (and yes, us here too at 1 More Thing!!) are essential for giving artists with smaller profiles and less experience a strong foundation to blast off from, and a community to be part of and share ideas. This has been a hugely important facet of underground culture and is even more so at a time when absolutely everything seems boiled down to risk averse economics, large scale commercialism and headliner hype.
We can’t wait to hear what WONK#AY sends us next. Make sure you cop Forever Contagious as you’re not just grabbing a piece of history in the process, you’re securing a piece of future too…
