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Dagger Forest lore and history thread ↓

1/ Although I had been daydreaming about running a small label for years, the actual push to do it came from the amazing community at the witch-house.com forum, which I founded in May 2010.

2/ In 2011, with massive help from Antoni Maiovvi (@maiovvi.bsky.social), we began curating and releasing themed community compilations on Bandcamp under the Witch-House name, showcasing the talent of the forum's users.

3/ This digital-only publishing experience, combined with invaluable tips from Carl of Clan Destine Records, led me to re-release the first witch-house.com compilation “Communion” on tape in March of 2013. That milestone gave me confidence to start something independent on my own.

4/ Originally, Dagger Forest was meant to be a CDR label (inspired by Disaro and Phantasma Disques), but I eventually changed my mind and settled on cassettes.

5/ I came up with the name Dagger Forest sometime in 2013. At the time, I made a Facebook post (paraphrasing): 'If I ever start producing music, my alias will be DɅGGER FOREST.' So, when I needed to name the label, the choice was an obvious one.

6/ As a graphic designer, the visual side of the label has always been incredibly important to me — from the cover artwork and website presence to the final product presentation. I can spend hours perfecting artwork details that no one will probably ever notice.

7/ If you own one of our cassettes, you might notice a date in a rectangular box on the back or inside cover. This detail, inspired by the design on Japanese CDs, marks the official release date of that tape.

8/ The first artist I signed to Dagger Forest was Ukrainian producer PVNDV. For various reasons, his album “Haunted” (beautifully mastered by @solvevlos.bsky.social) sat on my hard drive for almost a decade. I finally released it in the summer of 2022, and I couldn't be prouder of it.

9/ Other early signees to the label included the French duo The Creepy Moon, London-based band Eyeshadows, enigmatic Austrian project Trip Cult, and American singer/songwriter TUUTH. In the end, only Eyeshadows released a tape with me.

11/ The label was (un)officially launched at the Independent Label Market event on July 12, 2014, in London's Spitalfields. I compiled ten demos from our artists, burned about 20 CDRs, each hand-stamped with the catalog number DF000, and gave them away to strangers attending the event.

12/ The first tape, with catalog number DF001, came from Dutch producer Daan Mol, whom I discovered while cruising SoundCloud. His take on future garage hypnotised me from the get-go, and I was super proud to put it out. The collage artwork on the front cover was done by me.