Glasgow's Electric Honey, 'the most successful student-run label in the world,' celebrates 25 years

As student-run label Electric Honey celebrates 25 years, alumni from Belle and Sebastian, Biffy Clyro and Snow Patrol share memories of recording at Kelvin College, while a new generation of bands hope to follow in their footsteps.

Pronto Mama

In the high-ceilinged classroom of a former school in the west end of Glasgow, a group of students are learning the practicalities of how to place a music track across a wide variety of online streaming platforms, while the band whose music they are selling look on. Welcome to first year on Glasgow Kelvin College’s music business course. The hopeful band are a local funk outfit called DopeSickFly, and proceedings are being ably steered by course tutor Ken McCluskey, better known to lovers of Scottish pop music as the former frontman of The Bluebells.

The students here run their own record label, Electric Honey, as part of the course, picking a band (or several) to work with each year on every aspect of their release, be it recording, gigging, artwork or marketing.

“It’s all very well talking about publishing and recording copyrights but it’s pie in the sky unless they can see it happening,” says McCluskey. “The label is a good vehicle, you can hang a lot on it.”

This year, Electric Honey celebrates its 25th birthday. It’s been described by Uncut magazine as “the most successful student-run label in the world” and with good reason, as the Electric Honey catalogue includes Belle & Sebastian’s debut album, Tigermilk, now a coveted collector’s item, and the debut singles by Snow Patrol and Biffy Clyro, two of the most successful bands to emerge from Scotland in the last two decades.

Electric Honey was founded by another musician, Alan Rankine of The Associates, described by no less an alumnus than Belle & Sebastian drummer Richard Colburn as “the heart and soul of the course”. Colburn was enrolled on the then Stow College course back in the mid-90s (Stow College merged with two other colleges in 2013 to form Glasgow Kelvin College) when the students were about to make their most fateful A&R decision in the label’s history.

“At that point, all it was was a big classroom with two phone lines, and that was the office,” he recalls. “Probably most DIY record labels just kind of blag it and you learn by your experience, and it was a bit like that. We had a lot of field trips to [local rock hostelry] Nice’n’Sleazy. Alan would say ‘let’s talk about things there’ and he would just tell you how it is.”

Indeed. “Richard spent most of that course in Nice’n’Sleazy playing pool,” laughs Rankine. “He was a hustler, still is!”

Rankine still cherishes the “uncanny ambience” of the Belle & Sebastian demo tape which persuaded him to green light the label’s first and, to date, most celebrated (and valuable) album release.

“It had this universal appeal, especially that song The State I Am In, it’s just a killer song. Tigermilk was our biggest success in that that was immediate. Snow Patrol was much more of a slowburn, but eventually when they had their biggest hits, the kudos rubbed off on the college.”

Snow Patrol had not long relocated from Dundee and were still trading under their original name, Polar Bear, when they were selected as the 1997 class project and released the single Starfighter Pilot. Twenty years and millions of global album sales later, frontman Gary Lightbody still beams with gratitude.

“We were bloody clueless at that time and I remember being in awe of nearly everything that happened back then,” he says. “Electric Honey gave us a lot of firsts: our first time in a proper studio, our first single, the first piece of music that you could hold in your hand with our name on it that we hadn’t made ourselves. We are very thankful for all those experiences. Alan Rankine had already looked inside the Pulp Fiction briefcase that is the music industry and knew things we didn’t yet, so he was a great guy to learn from.”

Lightbody is not the only misty-eyed alumnus queuing up to pay tribute to the modest wee label which gave him his first decent exposure. Like Colburn, the members of Biffy Clyro were also students on the course when their nascent power trio were selected to record the snappily titled Thekidswhopoptodaywillrock tomorrow EP en route to becoming the unassailable, festival-headlining rock beasts they are now.

“Thinking back to our time with Electric Honey brings back some great memories,” says guitarist James Johnston. “It was such an exciting time for the band to be chosen to work with a label with such great pedigree. The students were very enthusiastic and took a hands-on approach to working with the band, so much so that a decade later I found myself married to one of them!”

Today’s crop of students, hailing from all over Scotland, Europe and as far afield as Angola, are mindful of the label’s enviable heritage. “I was attracted by the history of the label,” says second year student Kevin Creamer. “Biffy Clyro are one of my favourite bands – not many people get the chance to work on the label where they released their first EP. The support here is amazing. It’s proper experience – picking the bands, writing up contracts, promoting, making flyers, designing posters – you’re not just playing a kids’ game.”

Long gone are the days of two phones in a classroom – and of relatively generous budgets. This year’s main class project is the debut album by Glasgow band Pronto Mama, who came with a readymade crowdfunded recording for the students to promote. Everything else can be handled in-house in collaboration with the college’s art and audio departments.

“The more self-contained you are the better,” says McCluskey, touching on the essence of the DIY indie approach. “Who can design a poster? Who can drive? Who’s got a flat we can rehearse in? There’s not many courses you have that kind of organic atmosphere. We make things up from scratch.”

Who knows what awaits Pronto Mama in these straitened showbiz times but Colburn is in no doubt about the boost which Electric Honey gave Belle & Sebastian at a time when no one else was prepared to take a chance. “Without that label I don’t know where we would be because it allowed us so much freedom. The good thing about having a record in your hand is that you have all the bargaining power and without Electric Honey we would not have had that.” ■

Any Joy by Pronto Mama is released by Electric Honey on 5 May. The annual Electric Honey showcase gig is at Oran Mor, Glasgow on 9 June, the same day as DopeSickFly support Kool and the Gang at Kelvingrove Bandstand