Mike Schulman
Boss of Slumberland Records
In our newsletter interviews, we hope to feature people who make the indie/pop/punk world go round. For our June 2025 Newsletter, we interviewed Mike Slumberland, who is definitely one of those people.
Mike, thanks for answering our questions....
Can we start at the beginning? What was your favourite music before you started Slumberland?
Growing up I heard a lot of music in the house, mostly my father’s collection of doo-wop and early rock ’n’ roll 45s, and my mother’s 60s and 70s soul and funk, and I loved all of that. I didn’t really “get” rock music until I heard punk, and since I was a little late (this was 1979) my punk education included the expected Clash, Jam, Buzzcocks, etc but also post-punk, early Rough Trade, C81 DIY, Postcard, No Wave, 99 Records and so on.​​
By the time I went to university and met the folks that I started Slumberland with we were super into The Birthday Party, Sonic Youth, Swans, but then also The Jesus & Mary Chain, Flying Nun, Creation some American bands like The Feelies and Galaxie 500, and the bands that would wind up on C86. So… to make a short story long it was a mix of horrible noise and great pop.
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What made you want to start running a record label?
The morning after seeing The Jesus & Mary Chain play DC in November 1985 my mate Rob and I decided that we would start making music, even though neither of us had ever touched an instrument. We eventually roped in more of our friends, and then other friends who we knew from the radio station and local record shops. We had a few different bands (Velocity Girl, Black Tambourine, Whorl, Powderburns) made up of different groupings drawn from our crew, and by mid 1989 we agreed that we should start recording and document what we were doing.
Velocity Girl
Black Tambourine
We were all mostly noise bands at this point but… different, and it didn’t seem like trying to find someone else to release our crude racket would be very successful. Since a few of us worked in record shops we vaguely knew how things worked with distribution, so we figured we ought to just do it ourselves and Slumberland was born.
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What are your favourite other record labels, and what is it you like about them?
The labels that inspired me when we started were folks like Postcard, Creation, Sarah, K, Narodnik. Labels that had an aesthetic and a discernible point-of-view, and seemed to be based around a scene or a specific community. Simultaneously I dig labels that are broad-ranging (Soul Jazz, Rough Trade) or more tightly-focused (Analog Africa), and I’ve always been especially in awe of genuinely forward-thinking labels like Warp, Reinforced, Axis, Basic Channel/Chain Reaction, etc.
Why do we do this? It’s hard work, there’s a lot of paperwork involved, things go wrong quite often: orders get lost in the post, records get warped…. We clearly aren’t in it for the money. What is wrong with us?
I wish I knew! I still love to hear new bands and new songs and I’m always tickled by how talented folks can create something new out of something as familiar as pop music. As frustrating as it can be (and I do feel like it gets harder every year) there’s nothing quite like the feeling of seeing a band you’ve helped get some much-deserved attention. I suppose I still have this naive belief in the power of a great pop tune and as long as I feel like I can be helpful to bands I’ll keep at it.
Everyone wants a hit, but do you think there are downsides when a release shows signs of breaking through and becoming really big?
I don’t have any experience with records getting *really big* but there are definitely some logistical challenges when a record gets a bit more attention. It can be quite difficult getting shops to bring in records on smaller labels, and I’ve had many cases where there was definitely demand but stores weren’t really on the same page. Mail order and band merch sales can help, but there’s no replacement for having records in the racks to catch the eye of people who might have heard about a band or record but don’t or haven’t yet made the effort to mail order.
And as always limited finances can be a problem — selling more records means making more records which is always risky. Just because it *seems* like there’s demand for a record today doesn’t mean that same demand will be around in 4 or 6 (or 8 or 10…) weeks when you get more from the pressing plant.
One thing we love about running a label (and being in a band) is the camaraderie that binds other labels, promoters, bands and writers together. Is this something you feel (at home and/or abroad)?
Definitely! Ironically, or maybe just quixotically, I feel that a bit more in the UK when we go over to visit and see bands because I think people just *get* what we do more readily over there. The US indie scene can be pretty weird about pop records! But honestly I’m not sure I’d have been as motivated to carry on for 35 years if it wasn’t for the amazing community that we’re lucky to be a part of. It may be geographically diffuse, but the International Pop Underground is real and thank god for that!
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Do you think it’s surprising that independent labels still exist in the streaming era? Are we going to survive it? Do we maybe offer something that the streamers can’t compete with?
I’m not surprised as I think we’re still in a bit of a transitional phase, but to be honest I’m not outrageously optimistic about the future for small labels. While I feel like my musical life has been charted out by the independent labels that I love, I’m not as certain that that relationship will exist in the same way for the next generations of music fans.
To make myself feel better I sometimes look at the streamers more as glorified radio and less like a soulless algorithm-driven machine that warps listeners’ tastes and actively supplants the physical sales that make doing an indie label possible. I’d be willing to bet that there are plenty of folks who to go out to see Slumberland bands and buy the records who heard the music first through streaming, and I suppose the battle is always going to be how to translate that word of mouth or random discovery into concrete support. A problem that far predates Spotify!
Tell us a little bit about current Slumberland releases - and please explain how we can buy them!
As always I’ve set myself a much more ambitious release schedule than is sensible, but I’ve never been very good at saying no! So far this year we’ve released The Laughing Chimes’ second album and crucial reissues from The Pains of Being Pure At Heart and Lunchbox. Up next at the end of June are new albums from Jeanines and Lightheaded (co-released with a scrappy upstart label named Skep Wax), a brilliant debut album from Manchester’s Autocamper (co-released by Safe Suburban Home) and a wonderful new record from Allo Darlin’ (co-released by Fika Recordings and wow how exciting is that?!).
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There’s loads more coming this fall that we can’t talk about *quite* yet. We always urge folks to pick up their local labels’ versions and to support their local indie record shops whenever possible. But mail order is great too and Bandcamp has made it easier than ever to be able to track down records on small labels like SLR.​
