Label of Love

Q & A | AV8 RECORDS – Eastbourne/London

- By Charles Donovan

Label boss: Nick Graff/Pete Wilkinson

Where are you based, what do you do, and why?

We’re based in Eastbourne on the South Coast of England and in London but have a great team of people spread out across the country. Nick Power from The Coral does all of our press and copywriting, Deano does our Twitter and the amazing Russ The Webmaster does what his name says.

Why the name?

The label was set up by me and Pete Wilkinson originally to release music by his solo band Aviator. Pete had had the name AV8 in his head for years.

When did you launch it and how have things changed since?

The label was launched in 2015 with the sole purpose of releasing one CD: No Friend Of Mind by Aviator. It started with me messaging Pete on Twitter and asking if he had any plans to release new music. After a long conversation in which we discovered we knew a lot of the same people from growing up in Liverpool, we put the idea of AV8 Records together and put the CD out from a website we’d set up.

Getting asked by Paul Hemmings (The La’s) to work on an unreleased Tommy Scott (Space) album changed everything. It made us realise we could work with other artists and not solely release music by Pete’s Aviator.