Founder Steve Kado
Mark McLean Country of origin Canada Official website blocksblocksblocks.com | Genre Indie Location Toronto, Ontario Founded 2003 | |
Albums He Poos Clouds, Has a Good Home, Join Us | ||
Blocks Recording Club was a Canadian co-operative of musicians, which served as both a collaborative artist community and a record label for its member artists.
Contents
The label's name may also be cited graphically as □□□□□□ rather than the word "Blocks". Although this is in fact the label's official name, the word "Blocks" is used where it is not typographically possible to use the graphical series of blocks.
History
The □□□□□□ Recording Club was founded by Steve Kado and Mark McLean in 2003 as a tapes and mini-cd only label. Shortly afterward, McLean left for Ottawa. Steve Kado ran □□□□□□ with Liisa K. Graham until 2005 when the club incorporated as a worker's co-operative.
Since then the club has been run by an elected board of directors. The first board of directors was James Anderson, Steve Kado and Matt McDonough. The second board comprised Katarina Gligorijevic, Bob Wiseman, John Caffery & Brian Joseph Davis. Blocks' current board of directors is, Magali Meagher, Matt Smith and Patrick Borjal.
In 2009, NME included the Blocks Recording Club in its annual Future 50 list.
Artist roster
Artists who have released material through Blocks include Final Fantasy, Fucked Up, Bob Wiseman, Katie Stelmanis, Barcelona Pavilion, The Phonemes, Les Mouches, Ninja High School, The Blankket, Hank, PDF Format (the Band), Kids on TV, SS Cardiacs and The Creeping Nobodies.
Final Fantasy's second album on Blocks, He Poos Clouds, was named the winner of the inaugural Polaris Music Prize in 2006. Owen Pallett, the artist behind the Final Fantasy project, announced that he would donate a significant portion of his prize money to the label to help other artists.