Aloe City Wrld is a record label/artist collective based in London (UK).
You may have heard about this label if you are a Reddit regular or if you follow new music phenomena and trends.
Mainly focusing on releasing vaporwave and barber beats, it is operated by Chris Hansen, Mira Hansen, Macroblank, Hans Villegas and Alex Hall. Their first cassettes were released in 2015, and their catalogue has had over 120 releases since then.
Compared to other Vaporwave & Future Funk labels (like 100% Electronica, Neoncity Records, Business Casual, PLUS100 Records and Beer On The Rug), the Aloe City Wrld style is unique. Let’s understand why.
THE MUSIC
Always lounge-y, but often blended smoothly with many other elements:
elegant acid jazz, trippy drum N bass beats, chilled-out jazz-y with sax parts, trip-hop quirks, ‘70s synth interruptions, soothing ambience, funky rhythms, and even cold wave aesthetics. Also, add the above to a subtle melancholy with a calibrated use of abstract instrumentals.
However, Aloe City Wrld can also push its music forward outside the outskirts of its music genre or scene. This is thanks to a sensibility to authentic rhythms and beats from glorious pasts of funk and electronic music in general. These composers are structurally working with their samples and arrangements wisely. Even when they use drums, effects and composers, I can listen to solid late 90s/early 00s vibey influences: labels like Ninja Tune and Mo'Wax, brands like Café del Mar and Buddha Bar.
THE AESTHETIC
Aloe City Wrld's records covers are distinctive. Toned-down colours, monochromatic solutions, cut-ups, hardcore DIY vibes, cyberpunk, ufology, medieval & renaissance references, and early Internet art.
As Van Paugam states in his article What are Barber Beats:
It takes the tired tropes of Vaporwave and subtracts the wonky, bloated, disney-esque visual superfluousness of the aesthetic and leaves a bare, stripped-down kind of elegance in sometimes raw and deconstructed ways that don't need to scream at your eyes to get your attention. The Roman busts are back in style, but this time with a more classy edge, a sophisticated 'cut' if you will, that sometimes includes peeled stickers, de-saturated images juxtaposed with solid colours and simple patterns.
Alongside the music, Aloe City Wrld has done impressive work with its visual identity, creating a robust and recognisable collection of artworks that will present the theme of each record.
Given that I like this music label so much, I wanted to dig deeper into them, and I found an incredibly keen Chris Hansen, one of the label founders, who was happy to answer my questions extensively:
Who are you?
Aloe City Wrld is a record label releasing mainly cassettes and vinyl, but we also occasionally do CDs, clothing and other merch. We mostly focus on barber beats, but also release other genres here and there.
Where are you based?
We’re based in London, UK.
How many people are working at Aloe City Wrld?
Over the years we’ve put together a great team of people consisting of myself (Chris), my wife and co-founder of Aloe City Wrld Mira, Macroblank, Hans and Alex.
I do this full time so I handle release curation/scheduling, manufacturer communication, customer service, shipping etc. Mira helps out with shipping when she is able and deals with the merch sales at our live events. We hope to have her go full time with the label at some point too. Macroblank, along with being one of our artists also helps out with various work in the background and manages all the sound stuff at our live events. Hans handles our website design and Alex curates our demo submissions on the rare occasion that we take them.
How does Aloe City Wrld select the artists you work with?
We used to regularly take demo submissions and I met most of the current Aloe City Wrld lineup this way. We don’t really take demos anymore. At this point I just prefer to work with my close friends, so any new artists we bring on will need to be someone I know well and vibe with, but also makes music that fits the vision of the label.
What are your inspirations for the label and its music? What is the goal of it?
The goal of Aloe City Wrld is pretty simple, to release music we love on cassette and vinyl in order to share it with others who love it too.
Are you or someone from your team also playing live or DJ sets?
Almost all of our artists have done DJ sets at live events. We had our first ACW live event Barber Night Delight! with Macroblank, ROMBREAKER and OSCOB in February this year.
We’re planning to make Barber Night 2 happen in the UK sometime soon. We’d like to do events in the US as well, but this is proving to be a bit harder to arrange than expected.
Are you using social media platforms?
Yes, Instagram and Twitter @aloecitywrld.
Are you associated with a Vaporwave scene?
Yeah, barber beats is a sub-genre of vaporwave and when we release other types of music it’s usually slushwave, dreampunk or other vaporwave adjacent music. Outside of the label’s following, I really only interact with a small group of friends in the scene though. The unfortunate reality is that I have found the vaporwave scene to be pretty toxic, so I just prefer to do what I do and stay out of the way for the most part.