Over the last four years, Richter Collective brought exceptional records from Ireland to the world. And So I Watch You From Afar’s Gangs, Adebisi Shank’s first two albums and debut EP, Not Squares’ Yeah OK, Squarehead’s Yeah Nothing, The Redneck Manifesto’s Friendship, Bats’ Red In Tooth & Claw, The Vinny Club’s Rocky IV Reckyrd, Enemies’ We’ve Been Talking and Hands Up Who Wants To Die’s Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo to name a handful of favourites.

All of these releases and bands have enriched the landscape of Irish music significantly. Today the label announced they will be closing down at the end of the year. To Mick, Barry and Lewis, congrats on your great run and influence as a label. All things must end but there’s still a bright future ahead. Full statement from Richter after the jump. Go get some of those records if you haven’t already, I recommend the vinyl…

It is with mixed emotion that we are announcing The Richter Collective will be coming to a close at the end of this year, December 2012. We are regretful that we will be losing the label but also very optimistic and excited about the future. The reasons for this are numerous and to go into in great detail would take far too long. In a nutshell it’s a decision that’s part based on money and part based on not wanting to compromise on the vision we had for the label when we started. It’s become increasingly difficult to apply new ideas within the constructs of a “traditional label” model and our label still falls within that remit. Instead of being doom and gloom about this decision we would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped us along our journey, especially the amazing bands and artists we have had the pleasure to work with. We started this label a mere four years ago and have had the pleasure of releasing over twenty seven amazing pieces of work. The support that we have had in terms of coverage has been far beyond any expectation we ever had when we set the label up. We managed to get our releases into stores all around Europe, the US and Asia and (hopefully) helped the acts we worked with reach new audiences around the world. We came from a hobby label background and tried to build a new label to rival the larger Independents in term of reach and scale and we are so proud of what we’ve achieved in the last few years on a relatively small budget. Now, it’s time to move on for both of us, we started the label at a time when there weren’t many other options for Irish acts in terms of independent labels but now there are many amazing new independents in this country and it’s such a great time for new music. We will continue to be involved in independent music in Ireland and hope to work on some exciting new projects in the future. For now we will continue to operate “as normal” and sell off all remaining stock we hold. We are planning a big Xmas bash for the end of year and have a few more bits and pieces up our sleeves. If you have been thinking of buying any of our music in the past we’re still open for business at www.richtercollective.com and http://richtercollective.bandcamp.com
We hope you continue to support all of the acts we have worked with in future projects.
Thanks!
RC

Why are you telling us now?
Mainly because we have had to tell bands and other companies we work with. Information like this tends to spread quite quickly so we want to assure everyone we will be remaining in business until the end of the year to tie up all loose ends.

Friends of Richter
We made a promise to the friends of Richter to deliver a subscription based package for one year and we aim to keep that promise , we will deliver all that was promised in this package for the remainder of the year.

Debtors
Any outstanding debts will be honoured by the company. We would never walk away from responsibilities to other companies especially as all the companies we deal with are in the independent music sector and even small changes can affect their business in a massive way. Our debts are relatively small but it will take us until the end of the calendar year to pay these off.

The Releases
We are in talks with all our bands at the minute but we intend to try to make all scheduled releases work and help our bands get these releases out with as little disruption as possible.