Dancing Astronaut’s 2023 Label of the 12 months: This By no means Occurred – Dancing Astronaut
by: Dancing Astronaut Workers
Dec 27, 2023
Phrases by Zach Salafia and Ross Goldenberg.
“At This By no means Occurred, we invite you into an area the place the one factor that issues are the individuals in that room, the music, and the magic that occurs when these issues work together,” Daniel Goldstein, higher generally known as Lane 8, stated in a 2016 Fb submit saying the inception of his label.
Since its origin, This By no means Occurred has unfailingly fostered a bond between its music and people experiencing it. And 2023 may need been the purest instance of that but.
Various labels warranted a seat in our dialogue of which label offered essentially the most compelling resume this 12 months, however finally, we felt that there was just one that stood above the remainder, based mostly not solely on consistency, but in addition high quality from January during December. That imprint is This By no means Occurred, Dancing Astronaut’s 2023 Label of the 12 months.
Lane 8 has confirmed This By no means Occurred to be a label whose means to flourish isn’t inherently anchored by what he is or isn’t doing. As he defined in a December 2022 Instagram submit, he needed to shift his consideration in 2023 from touring to a extra relaxed schedule the place he might take a “psychological well being reset” and refocus on his true ardour: making music. In that point, Dancing Astronaut’s 2020 Artist of the 12 months nonetheless put out six authentic productions—together with “Girl,” “I Will Depart a Mild On,” “The Little Mushroom That Bought Away,” and lots extra—on high of his seasonal mixtapes, a quarterly showcase of nothing however one of the best that his label has to supply. The sequence notably celebrated its tenth anniversary this 12 months.
A key driver of This By no means Occurred’s distinction as Label of the 12 months was its flurry of long-form releases, all 4 of which can quickly discover their means onto Dancing Astronaut’s checklist of the Prime Dance Albums of 2023 later this week. Sultan + Shepard ignited the label’s album launch calendar with Ceaselessly, Now in February; EMBRZ’s In Our Personal Manner and Massane’s By The River adopted swimsuit in August, as did Le Youth’s About Us on the finish of September. Every album stems from artists who can solely be pinned as This By no means Occurred all-stars, with all 4 our bodies of labor affirming This By no means Occurred as an esteemed—if not the premier—purveyor of melodic home.
Past the album entrance, This By no means Occurred persistently put out music nearly each week, tallying near 200 tracks throughout LPs, remixes, singles, and even an official mashup launch. The prolific launch tempo noticed Lane 8’s label supply new music no less than a few times weekly from a large set of tastemakers. The label performed host to everybody from longtime veterans like Sultan + Shepard, Dancing Astronaut Artist to Watch in 2023 Grigoré, OCULA, and Jerro, to an abundance of newcomers that added to the label’s already deep, numerous roster, like Dancing Astronaut Artist to Watch in 2024 Otherwish, nimino, Huminal, VONDA7, and Olga Berg. And, we’d be remiss to not point out that This By no means Occurred additionally featured a handful of soon-to-be found acts on its ninth iteration of Root To Department in October.
However as everyone knows, Dancing Astronaut’s 2023 Label of the 12 months {qualifications} don’t start and finish with simply the label’s music. This By no means Occurred’s story started as a phoneless occasion idea, and Lane 8 furthered this foundational want (to permit individuals to totally expertise a second in music) this 12 months. This summer time, the label revisited its Summer season Gatherings sequence for the primary time since 2019 with three star-studded lineups throughout three areas, together with New York Metropolis, San Francisco, and—in fact—Lane 8’s residence of Denver. In at the moment’s day and age, the place telephones have more and more change into an extension of oneself, This By no means Occurred’s initiative feels much more impactful than it did when Lane 8 launched the idea seven years in the past. And having attended the Forest Hills cease in June, which Lane 8 himself described as certainly one of his “all-time favourite” label occasions, we are able to attest that this phoneless idea sequence is one that every dance music fan ought to expertise no less than as soon as.
With the third full-length label undertaking from Sultan + Shepard—Infinite, Daybreak, due on March 1—already on the books for 2024, in tandem with a 13-city journey round North America that begins on the finish of January and can highlight the label’s rising expertise, This By no means Occurred is already setting itself as much as capitalize on what it achieved in 2023.
Time and time once more, This By no means Occurred has repeatedly set itself aside by means of the authenticity rooted in its message and the bond fostered between it and its viewers, providing high-caliber music at a constant tempo and from an expansive household of artists—one thing that isn’t seen typically in dance music. With the appearance of this 12 months’s Summer season Gatherings, Lane 8 defined that within the years between the sequence’ most up-to-date iterations (2019 to 2023), he got here to the conclusion that This By no means Occurred had lastly change into what he’d all the time hoped it may very well be: a 360-degree label. That declare was verified tenfold all through the previous 12 months alone, prompting us to unequivocally proclaim This By no means Occurred as Dancing Astronaut’s 2023 Label of the 12 months.
Featured picture: Fixation Pictures
Classes: Music