Mountain Records
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Mountain Records is a record label started in Cape Town, South Africa in 1980 by Patrick Lee-Thorp.
The record label produces mostly South African music and is known as the home of Cape Jazz recordings, having issued a number of albums by such names as Basil Coetzee, Robbie Jansen, Jonathan Butler, Tony Schilder and others.
In the early years of the label's existence a certain amount of commercial success was garnered from releases by such artists and David Kramer, Robin Auld and later the neo-traditional African band, Amampondo. This success was partly due to the labels involvement in the live presentation of these artists.
From the outset through to the end of the 1990s the state owned radio and TV media, SABC, restricted their stations from playing certain music by Kramer, Edi Niederlander, Coenie de Villiers and others because of the critical text in the songs by these performers released by Mountain Records.
From 1996 the label set up a European base, with an office in Hamburg, Germany. The label continued to market their own artists but also fascilitated the release or distribution of non-label South African acts such as Brenda Fassie, Philip Tabane and the Soul Brothers.
The label still maintains an office in Cape Town. Their latest releases include a DVD of Amampondo and the re-issue of a classic Morris Goldberg live recording and the third part in the label's Cape Jazz series. These are distributed by EMI in southern Africa and New Music Distribution in Europe.
It should not be confused with a British record label of the same name, which was distributed successively by EMI, Phonogram and RCA, and released material between 1975 and 1980 by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Nazareth and Voyager.
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