Almighty Records

Almighty Records Ltd

Company type	Record Label
Industry	Music entertainment
Founded	1989
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Key people	Martyn Norris: CEO and Head Producer Graham Willcocks Jon Dixon Jon Musgrave
Subsidiaries	Blast Records Daisy Chain East Side Records Euphoric Unit 4 Productions Limited
Website	Almighty SolarSite

Almighty Records Ltd. is a British recording label and remix production team founded in 1989, releasing their first single in the same year. Producing mainly Dance-Pop and Hi-NRG music, the label is best known for releasing remakes and remixes of mainstream pop songs.
Many people have been involved with Almighty in the production of music over the years, often credited as Almighty Associates, which can refer to anything from one to 50 people.

Development of a fanbase

Since their first UK release in 1989, Almighty Records has covered popular chart songs that had no dance mix, or those that had officially commissioned dance mixes which did not fit the Dance-Pop genre. Starting its life as a record stall just off the dance floor of Bromptons in Earls Court, one of London's historic night clubs, its mission has always been devoted to DJs, dancers and dance music. Launched and staffed by disc jockeys and club enthusiasts for twenty years, the first 12-inch release on the Almighty label was a cover of a Limahl single called Never Ending Story, which was the title song to the 1984 film of the same name. Chosen because the artist's original label, EMI, had allowed the extended version of that song go right out of print, while club-goers still wanted to dance to it and buy it.

Almighty feature various artist names, which are in fact projects rather than actual singers or groups, with many different vocalists and session singers behind artists names, numerous of them already famous as recording artists and even hit songwriters. Almighty's policy of not identifying its singers birth names is down to the belief that faces and names aren't important, the music speaks for them.

By 1992 Almighty had enjoyed notable success thanks in part to their cover versions of ABBA tracks under the guise Abbacadabra. It was at this point that label boss Martyn Norris decided to give up his job and concentrate on Almighty full time. Pop producer Pete Waterman played some of these tracks on his UK television show The Hitman and Her which boosted interest in the songs and the label, so much so that Waterman picked up some tracks, including Dancing Queen for his own label PWL.

Almighty achieved their first UK Singles Chart top 20 hit in 1993 with I Will Always Love You, a cover of the song by Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston and others, which was performed by Sarah Washington and reached position 12 in the UK chart.

Almighty Records has been successful with various projects over the years, remaking almost all ABBA songs, including a track recorded, but unreleased by ABBA called Just Like That. To date Almighty have produced 5 albums and over 10 singles under The Abbacadabra project name, which has sold more than 250,000 units for the label. However, the project which has been the most successful internationally for Almighty is the Queer as Folk CD soundtrack which went gold within one month of going on sale in March 1999 in the UK. The release of this CD followed a request from the makers of the TV series, Red Productions, after another major record company turned down the opportunity due to poor rating of previous music-led television shows on Channel 4. Given a list of tracks, Almighty had one month to compile the music; however, some tracks could not be cleared in time for the release mainly due to time scales, including one by the group Steps who initially said that the show would be too "low profile" for them to be associated with. It was the success of this album which prompted Channel 4 to launch their own music division when the second series of Queer As Folk was made – an international franchise which is still around today.

By the end of 1999, at the labels ten year anniversary, Almighty were still making 12" vinyl and manufactured CD singles; now the 12" vinyl single and CD single are considered obsolete formats and Almighty were still mailing out hard copies of their new product catalogues to mail order customers. To celebrate their ten year success Almighty released an album called A Decade Of Dance. Now the Internet has replaced many of what the industry took for granted as part of everyday life. Customers tend to no longer to buy music in shops. In fact 90% of the music shops Almighty dealt with all over the world have now closed. Customers choose now to buy their CD’s on line or as a digital download or from an on-line store such as Almighty's very own shop or from Amazon. Physical product sales still counts for two thirds of the label's business from their own on-line store.

In 2009, the label celebrated its 20th anniversary and in early 2010 released 'Almighty: Two Decades of Dance' to mark the anniversary. This Ultimate collection spans two decades, and includes all the tracks that in 2010 still remain Almighty's very best sellers over the full twenty years. The manufactured album is megamixed with 20 tracks on each disc – Disc One from 2000 – 2010. Disc Two from 1990 – 1999.

Recent Strategy and Activity

During the latter half of the 1990s Almighty concentrated efforts on producing remixes for record companies for the global club and dance scene and became de rigueur, and the most in-demand name in the pop-dance world, producing up to 5 mixes a week at their peak. During this period the Almighty remix team was managed by Andy Wetson, a resident DJ at Royal Vauxhall Tavern, a gay nightclub in London. Jon Dixon was the lead producer, and to until 2010 headed up many Almighty remixes and in-house productions. They both played a major role in making Almighty one of the world’s most successful commercial remix teams ever. It wasn't until 2004 when, in a change of direction for the label, Almighty stopped actively soliciting their remix services to record companies citing reasons of financial viability and industry competitiveness.

However, following on from the success of four Cilla Black remixes in 2009 for record label EMI, including one of Something Tells Me which was released as Cilla's 37th UK single, Almighty once again sought to produce official remixes. Almighty enlisted the help of representation by management company MWR (Matt Waterhouse Represents) which boasts many popular producers, remixers & artists as clients including Cahill, Digital Dog, Jason Nevins, Moto Blanco, Soul Seekerz, StoneBridge, Wideboys and more.

Today Almighty are popular around the world, especially among gay communities and often market themselves as a gay label; advertising in gay press and releasing various albums specifically targeted at a gay audience.

With unwavering support through the years from the gay community, Almighty has become synonymous with the joyous, hands-in-the-air sound of summer dance music.

— Dean Ferguson, New York,

In recent years Almighty have made their productions available to a wider customer base after making a deal with Universal Music which allowed Almighty to sell on digital platforms such as iTunes and Amazon.com, however products are not available in all terratories on some platforms. 2010 is the first year that Almighty products have been made available in the US and Canada. Not all of Almighty's productions are available on general release, however, The Almighty Club is available for anyone to join in which members will receive everything that Almighty ever produce including promotional material on a physical CDR.
Almighty have a policy of remixing anything they have been asked to do despite how "difficult" it may appear to be to them. In Almighty's own words;

[...]things like Diana Ross' - Ain't No Mountain High Enough, which were never recorded in a computer [are difficult] so every beat has to be re-aligned and the timing worked out again as naturally real people do not play like a computer does. E.g. some disco tracks can vary in time from 129 - 139 BPM which would not happen on today's computerised programs.

— The Almighty Crew,

It takes Almighty from one to three people to produce a track and single releases are usually a fashion item, especially if there are no remixes of the song in question in the Hi-NRG genre, of which Almighty produce. Albums on the other hand are planned months in advance.

Occasionally Almighty feature mixes from other Dance/Pop producers, including Matt Pop, Bimbo Jones, Stonebridge, Love To Infinity and others.

Many of the Almighty remixes and in-house productions have been produced by Martyn Norris and Graham Wilcox over the years and until 2010, Jon Dixon, who left to concentrate on his joint venture remix team '7th Heaven' along with Andy Wetson. Almighty also enlist the talents of other producers to ensure that the productions stay within current trends. Two young producers have mixes under the guise 'Almighty Boys'.

Studios

In July 2010 Almighty updated their studios to include Mac Pro's, plus a plethora of new soft synths to join the existing keyboards. These include vintage Juno’s, a Prophet-5 (previously owned by disco and Hi-NRG dance music composer and recording artist Patrick Cowley, which has been on loan to the label for a number of years) and an MKS-80 Super Jupiter. The studio also boasts hard synths such as a Nord Lead, a Roland JV-2080, and a Korg M1. Previously Almighty had used software such as Cubase to produce mixes, but with the recent upgrades to the studio Almighty have opted to use Apple's Logic 9 in the production of new music in addition to their outboard equipment. Almighty are also converting many of their old Cubase files from many years ago, and backing them up in Logic. Rather than rebuild a mix using the new software Almighty have stated that they would prefer to update a track, or remix it. Ten to 12 years ago all of the effects came from outboard equipment, now many of these similar effects are produced on a computer and whilst they are similar they are not the same. The Vocals, or A cappellas are stored separately from the music on DAT's of which there are approximately 1000 to 1500. Almighty will not copy and back them all up on disc, citing reasons including time constraints. It is just not realistic to copy them all and back them up. Almighty's main priority is to back-up the remaining vocals from the four TASCAM 88 machines to DVD.

Release Highlights

• Almighty Presents: We Love Stock Aitken Waterman 1 and 2 (2 CD set each, with issue 2 containing a megamix)
• Almighty Presents: We Love The Pet Shop Boys (2 CD Set)
• Almighty Presents: We Love The Noughties (2 CD Set)
• Almighty: 2 Decades Of Dance (2 megamixed CD Set or a 4 CD Set including 2 bonus discs featuring 12" mixes)
• Almighty Presents: We Love Diana Ross (Digital download)
• Almighty Essentials Volume 1 & 2 (2 CD Set or a 3 CD Set including a bonus third CD featuring a megamix
• Almighty Presents Handbag Heaven: Let This Feeling... by Belle Lawrence (2 CD Set or a 3 CD Set including a bonus third CD featuring 12" mixes)
• Almighty Presents NRG Anthems by various artists (2 CD Set or a 3 CD Set including a bonus third CD featuring 12" mixes)
• Almighty Anthems 1 & 2 by various artists
• Jackie 'O' Handbag Heaven - Back To Bitch (2 CD Set)
• Belle Lawrence Handbag Heaven - Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
• Deja Vu feat. Tasmin Handbag Heaven - Against All Odds (2 CD Set)
• Almighty Presents NRG Anthems (2 CD Set)
• Almighty Gay Anthems 1,2,3 (2 CD Set Each)
• Almighty Definitive Collection 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 & 8 (2 CD Set Each)

See also

• Gay anthems
• Cruz 101
• Natalie Browne

External links

• Official website Almighty SolarSite
• Almighty Remixography A list of official remixes produced by Almighty Records