The Golden Age

Another compilation, this time from those deep vaults of weirdness and beauty called L'Age d'Or or Ladomat2000, LadoMusic, Enduro, the old Hamburg family with friends from all over Germany.

WiR is a truly crossover compilation, extremely difficult to pin down in terms of music styles, artists' locality, or anything actually, and a very good mirror of what Lado is about. If you're looking for a tag, then Pop Music might be the most applicable answer. From vocal indie pop songs to Cologne techno, from disco and punk to dark ambient through electro hybrids too complex too be described, the Popular Art aesthetics collide with the 'indie' experimentalist mindset of the artists. This is pure and simple Music.

For reference reasons, Ladomat2000 is more oriented to danceable music, Enduro thrives on the electro 8bit pop punk side, while the parent label acts like a big umbrella for all kinds of indie pop acts. Actually, L'Age d'Or supported 'guitars 'n' drums' acts long before the French electro-rock hype, even long before DFA records. Anyway, though it might not be obvious at first sight, if you check every group name in the Discogs info link below you''ll find some very well known artist either incognito or in collaboration with members of other bands.

Mostly though the difference between Lado and a typical record label is that it kickstarted and later supported artists that later boomed on, but were considered too weird for beginners (Ascii.Disko comes to mind, Whirlpool Productions much earlier). On the other hand it provides a platform for experimentation to many established names, who are allowed to go a little crazy even if (or just because) the result won't fit in the stylistic definitions of their own labels.

P.S. Egoexpress RULE.

VA - WiR (l'age d'or - Ladomat compilation)
CD1 - Part 1 - Part 2
CD2 - Part 1 - Part 2

Info here