R.R. was set up in 1978 by Chris Cutler & Nick Hobbs, originally as a musical intervention - to bring into the UK a whole range of records by groups & musicians whom we thought excellent & yet who were completely unknown here. Then - as now - we were only concerned with the quality of the music; & epiphenomenally with supporting independents - for many of the most interesting groups could only make their work available by pressing & manufacturing themselves. This remains the case. We are not ever concerned with commercial viability, only with distributing the music we feel close to.

The label we founded in 1980. Our aim was to produce records of the highest technical as well as musical quality. Hence all our records are 'classically' pressed & we concentrate on quality rather than price in our packaging. This means that our production costs tend to be about double the average. Also as you can imagine we are very scrupulous about paying all due royalties to musicians, composers & artists for their work, without whom after all there would be no records. If our records are at the higher end of the price bracket, this is why. Still the main way we keep our prices reasonable is by taking less profit.

Factually, Recommended was set up in the spring of 1978 alongside the RIO festival in London. At the start the DISTRIBUTION arm was called Recommended - because I personally 'recommended' all the titles we distributed. At the same time I set up a LABEL - for my own projects. This was 'Re'. Soon after (1979) I set up the RECOMMENDED LABEL for releases other than my own. In 1987 the distribution side became a worker's co-operative and I stepped out, concentrating on running the labels (re, recommended and points east) and writing the mail-order catalogue. That is also when I united Re and Recommended into ReR. Things ran smoothly for a while until, at the end of 1989, owing to enormous unpaid debts from the now independent distribution to the label I was forced to start my own distribution system again, at which time the old 'recommended' DISTRIBUTION became THESE Records. And I became ReR/Recommended.

For the 'ReR' catalogue write to: ReR Megacorp 79 Beulah Road, Thornton, CR7 8JG, UK Phone: +44 (0181) 771 1063 Fax: +44 (0181) 771 3138 Web Site: RéR Records - UK ReR accepts Visa and Mastercard.