Before photography, I was an indie-label underachiever. From 2002 until 2019, I owned and managed the Glasgow and Warsaw indie record label, Too Many Fireworks. On January 21st 2027, Too Many Fireworks will turn 25 years old. To celebrate, I am writing about each catalogue number, the club nights, and the other bits and pieces. Speaking to bands, DJs and fans, I am building a small oral history of the label.
2013 was a notable year in the history of Too Many Fireworks. In March of that year, the imprint returned from several years in the net-label wilderness to concentrate again on physical releases. After the success of the Variations of Chopin record released in May, the summer saw our first Polish release from Plug&Play.
Plug&Play
Fronted by founder Kuba Majsiej, the Lublin band had recently made several line-up changes and moved from post-punk to a more polished pop sound. As Kuba told me, the transformation from a raw, dark band into something more danceable and pop-oriented was led by his desire for bright clean sounds and that prior to this they hadn’t necessarily had the technical and financial means to play music that broke free from the shell of raw post-punk. To my ears, the music reminded me of a less frantic incarnation of The Matchsticks (post-Too-Many-Fireworks Flying Matchstick Men), so the e.p., Reisefieber, felt like a suitable first dip of the toes into the Polish music scene for the label.
I must confess that I don’t remember exactly how or where Kuba and I met, but I have to imagine it was through one of the myriad record fairs that I was visiting with Too Many Fireworks at the time. It may even have been through their manager of the time, Monika Mazurek – now a Michelin-recognised chef and co-owner of Peaches Gastro Girls, in Warsaw.
Plug&Play became our first Polish artists and the relationship benefited us both. I was looking for Polish music, specifically, and though I showed interest in several bands at the time, a couple of whom found their way onto our compilation record, in the end we didn’t continue the relationship thereafter, choosing to work with Plug&Play. The band, on the other hand, had recently seen the bankruptcy of their previous label, where, to this day, they never managed a physical release of their debut album, Why So Close? Too Many Fireworks, then, came along just at the right time.
Reisefieber
Beautiful, soft, pastel-coloured artwork wrapped the EP (four tracks and two radio edits) and signalled to the band’s audience that this record might not be quite what they were expecting. The songwriting was, to me, exceptional. The inclusion of Wojtek, a reggae-influenced bass player, and the voices of two women backing Kuba in Luiza Orpik (guitar and percussion) and Agnieszka Ozon (keys) brought out a more mature side to the composition.
Looking for ways to freshen up the band’s sound, they featured a guest saxophone (Sahara Beach and Brand New Day) and added spoken-word passages in German (Like Analog Tapes), something Kuba said they would have considered heresy just a few years earlier. All being said, the record has faint allusions to the bands they were listening to at the time, Foals, Alt-J, and Metronomy, to name a few. On Reisefieber, the band swims in catchy, melodic indie pop, while the darker post-punk/new wave sound remains an undertow ready to pull the listener deeper down toward it.
Bright Moments
I’m far too shy to include the kind things that Kuba wrote in our messages back and forth, reminiscing about the cooperation with the label and me; however, I do remember feeling the excitement shared by the band and me as we prepared for the release of the e.p. – an event that coincided with Kuba’s wedding. All in all, everyone involved shares warm feelings. Searching for a photo of the band to accompany this post reminded me that Plug&Play shared the stage at Palladium in Warsaw with my band, The Frozen North. That was some night. Another memory that sticks out was my trip down to Lublin for a record fair to promote the record and to hang out with the band during rehearsal. Those, more than many of the more official functions of being a record label, are often the most fun.
I’ll leave the penultimate words to Kuba, who, when looking back on the record, sees it as one of those bright moments in the band’s history that gave us the confidence that it was good we existed. For Too Many Fireworks, Reisefieber was a diving board into a deeper pool of Polish music that we may not have waded in were it not for Plug&Play.
Reisefieber was released on CD and digital download on July 15th, 2013, and we gave it the catalogue number 2mf014. You can listen to the single here
