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Aug 10, 2011 By Laura Studarus

A few days ago, the PIAS warehouse was burnt down during the London riots—taking with it the majority of stock from several major indie labels, including: XL/Beggars, Warp, Rough Trade, Domino, 4AD, Sub Pop, Secretly Canadian, Jagjaguwar, Drag City, Thrill Jockey, FatCat, Kompakt, Mute, Ninja Tune, Vice, and Soul Jazz.

A campaign called Label Love has been put into place to assist those affected. Currently, just a placeholder, the page (located at Cognitive Dissonance Records) offers an email address (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) for those looking to donate directly to the cause. Said orginizer Dan Salter to The Guardian, ““We’ve been amazingly inundated with offers of help and support on this idea, and we are going to concentrate on trying to organize a series of live events to help this cause. Based on the offers we’ve had already, this is looking likely.”

Wanna stay updated? There’s a twitter for that: @_label_love_

Got nimble data-entry fingers? Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams is putting together a list of all the labels and artists affected by the fire. Check out how you can get involved here.

In the meanwhile, many labels have released statements on the fire, with Angular (home to Crystal Stilts and Klaxons among others) taking the most tongue-in-cheek approach. “I just hope the rioters orchestrated this as a KLF-esque commentary on art and the value of commodity. Or maybe they’d seen The Wicker Man and decided to sort us all out with a good old sacrifice to ensure a good harvest next year,” they wrote in a press release. They went on to add, “Either way, we and 164 other labels have lost EVERYTHING. All of our cds and records, all of our stock is gone. Entire back catalogues will never be the same again. Everything on Angular is now very very rare…”

Secretly Canadian said the following:

As many of you have read in the press or via social media, a large part of the independent music community took a serious hit very early Tuesday morning, when the Sony DADC / PIAS warehouse in the Enfield neighborhood of London burnt to the ground amidst continuing riots and unrest across England. A good summary of what occurred and which labels were affected can be read here: http://pitchfork.com/news/43478-labels-react-to-sonypias-warehouse-fire/

Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian, as well as our SC Distribution label brethren Asthmatic Kitty, Lovepump United, No Quarter, Suicide Squeeze Records, Post Present Medium and We Are Free, all lost significant amounts of stock in this fire. This being said, our primary thoughts and concern are with the Sony warehouse staff and PIAS sales staff whose lives were all massively disrupted by the tragic event, as well as our independent label peers who had a more significant portion of their worldwide stock committed to the Sony DADC / PIAS warehouse. We extend our support to them, and we are committed to doing all that we can to help them with the recovery.

With regards to how this affects us and our releases, Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian are in the fortunate position of having significant stock holdings dispersed around the world. We’re working very quickly now to shift some of that existing stock to make our records available in the UK and Ireland as soon as possible. Also, we have the utmost confidence that the emergency plan that PIAS and Sony are currently implementing will result in a new fulfillment system being up-and-running very quickly. Currently no release dates outside of the UK and Ireland will be delayed, and it is looking more and more like release dates within the UK and Ireland will be delayed by no more than a few weeks.

Although the lost sales and the amount of extra work will be significant, Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian are healthy enough to be able to weather this unfortunate storm. So it is that our more primary concern, again, is with those outside of our camp – the peer labels that we madly respect who have more of their stock more centrally committed to the Sony DADC / PIAS system – as well as the overall health of the independent music sector in the UK, especially at a time when over the past few years, physical retail and music sales in general had already been taking such a significant hit. Above all, we hope that the violence and vandalism in the UK gives way to peaceful demonstration and a thoughtful dialogue. Particularly to our friends in London, we wish you safety and a return to normalcy soon.

(Via: P4K)