Talking to: PHAT Bristol Recordings

PHAT Recordings is a new Bristol based record label with a difference. Dreamt up by Ola Poroslo and Oli Rushen and launched in September 2020, PHAT Bristol is an artist run initiative composed by managers, producers and media practitioners with politics at it’s heart. Born of a Generation Z initiative to breed cultural diversity and awareness in order to nurture progressive change, it melds music and political activism, giving a voice to the under-represented; aiming to spark conversation and understanding around global politics and human rights issues, and just as importantly, raise money for the causes it champions.

April sees the release of their first album, Poland has a Task, a compilation album which melds genres seamlessly; featuring new voices and established artists from the queer and fem music scenes both in the UK and Poland. 100% of the proceeds will go to charities in Poland championing the rights of women and the LGBT community, who are doing important work in the face of an ultra-right government there, which has seen abortion banned, women’s rights eroded, and being queer criminalised.

Ola talks to us more about the ideas and drive behind PHAT, how Poland has a Task was created, political activism in music, and where PHAT are going next.

If we start from the very beginning, tell us about how PHAT was born.

PHAT was started by me and Oli; he has years of music experience, so he deals with more of the music side of stuff and I deal with all the crazy ideas, the adminny bits and the activism. I told him about my idea of starting up a record label centred around activism through music, especially for the LGBT and Trans community.

I really connected with that because I came out as gay in 2017 and I really wanted to find a platform for self expression. I tried to do it through politics, researching and educating myself, but I found that the best platform for me was through music to reach people and talk to people. I needed someone with a bit of music experience to guide me through that, so we decided to start the music label together. Our main aim isn't so much to specifically work for LGBT communities only, but to give Generation Z, our generation, a voice; to give everyone a voice, not just gay people, not just women, but everyone.

I think with social media and cancel culture being such a big thing at the moment it is so easy to say one wrong thing and you just get cancelled, but we want to have conversations with people, not necessarily people you always agree with, and try to work something out and find that connection through music. I wanted to work with the LGBT and fem communities and connect with the people who don’t necessarily actively support those communities and try to spread the love that way and engage people through the music. People who don’t know much about those communities can listen to this album that we have created and see that it is just music; we are all just human and are just trying to find a voice.

So PHAT stands for Poland Has a Task?

PHAT is the name of our label in general, but it is a great acronym that we can use for our projects, so the pattern people will be able to see in the future is that all of our projects in the future will spell out PHAT.

For this project, the main problems in Poland are around women and gay people and have been for many years. It is getting worse at the moment because of their current government. The governing party at the moment is called PiS and they are extremely homophobic, racist and sexist, so I think we just wanted to do something that sends a bigger message rather than targeting one audience specifically. So urging people when they see that title (Poland Has a Task) to think ‘What is going on? What task does Poland have?’ and then when they listen to the album they realise that there is so much hatred and so many problems in Poland that there needs to be some kind of change there.

Moving on to the album, you’ve got a really wide range of different artists and genres there, how did you choose them?

Mainly I chose them because I feel like they are the musicians I listened to through my coming out journey. Like Lynks Afrikka, they go by the name of just Lynks now, they played at my first ever event in support of the queer community. Then there’s Hector Boogieman and Bendy Wendy, who are both members of Try Me, they are on the album separately, but I also wanted to include some artists from Poland. There is an artist on there called Sylvia Baudelaire, and she is a trans woman living in Poland in a LGBT-free zone, which I think is just incredible, what she is doing. I can’t even imagine holding my girlfriend’s hand walking down the street in Poland, let alone being so openly queer and making such incredible music.

So I really just wanted to represent a wide range of music, and promote new upcoming artists rather than just established artists like Lynks and Jessica Winter, as well as Polish artists. So we have got Sylvia, weve got Arek Kłusowski who won the Polish Voice quite a while back; he is an incredible artist and he is queer, then there is another artist called Dunyaev, he is also queer and living in Poland. I just wanted to unite the two communities into one and make some music from it.

I think why I wanted to do this is because we are quite liberated here, especially in Bristol. We have got the Pride flag flying outside the council building, and all these gay clubs and all of these events; we feel quite liberated and safe here and it is easy to forget it’s not that far away that people don’t feel like that. There is also a huge Polish community in Bristol, and I want to raise awareness amongst the gay community that, yes, we may have these great, fun Pride events that celebrate life and celebrate being gay, but its just really not the case in Poland.

As well as raising awareness, what else do you hope the album will achieve for gay rights and women’s rights in Poland?

100% of the proceeds will go towards three charities. There is a charity called Aborcyjny Dream Team who provide funding for safe abortions for Polish women abroad; abortion has been made completely illegal there since October. Then there is Stop Buzdurom, who are LGBT activists. The leader is called Margo and they are just amazing, they have been arrested multiple times, had their home raided, all of those activists have had a really tough time and they are just not giving up. And the last charity is Strajk Kobiet, which is the feminist movement in Poland, they organise all the massive protests you would have seen on the tv.

We have a crowdfunder going at the moment which is raising money and closes on 9th April. We have raised enough already for the mixing and mastering costs and the distribution costs. But I think the main income from this album will come from vinyl sales, and we are doing some merch, which will all be available via our website or from record shops around the UK. We are currently doing the final push on the crowdfunder to raise money to press the vinyl.

I want to talk to you about the idea around politics and music, and why you feel music is such a great platform to put across the importance of political ideas?

I think it's when you are on stage performing or organising an event, or when you are at a gig and listening to music; that moment is so free and liberating and I think connecting with people through sound, and connecting with their emotions, is completely different from blind promises from a government or just reading something.

Whatever music you are putting out, they are connecting their own feelings to that; it’s like having a conversation with someone and giving them hope and inspiration without actually talking to each individual directly. It creates such a beautiful sense of community and freedom and liberation, especially for the queer and fem communities; that is often the only time when you can just feel free and say what you want, or sing what you want, or dance how you want. I think the message you can send out through combining music and politics is so powerful.

Social media is giving us such a platform nowadays that you can push activism alongside the music, so I think this is the best time for it.

My main inspiration is George the Poet, for his 30th birthday he released a video talking about how he wanted to be an MP, that is why he went to university, he wanted to change politics, but he realised with time that the way politics is run at the moment, it is so corrupt in a sense, it just doesn’t reach people in the same way as it should. Whilst with music you can stand in front of thousands of people and connect with them in a much better way.

George the Poet is a Black man from a impoverished background who went to Cambridge, who managed to achieve so much and gain such a large white audience, he has given me so much inspiration, being a Polish gay woman in England who wants to change stuff as well.

You hear so many voices saying that celebrities, artists, creatives, they should get back in their box, they shouldn’t comment, but to me that sounds completely counterproductive.

You know what? When people say that people should get back in their box, it's out of fear. I think it is people realising that we can have a voice through music, that we can change stuff and you can’t control it so much with police or laws.

I would be really interested in hearing your thoughts about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill; you were talking earlier about how we don’t always have a great awareness here of how tough things are in other countries like Poland, do you think that is changing at the moment? Do you think things are going to get rougher for us here in the UK?

I think it's really easy to forget how lucky we are here, even though there have been a lot of problems recently with policing, especially around Sarah Everard’s death. Having said that I am obviously fuming about this bill being passed. I am organising the fem and queer protest here in Bristol to go alongside the album, I have been working with a constable who has been super supportive and has been really helpful around organising the protest for April, so it is hard to connect the dots between that experience and the bill, giving the police so many powers and making protest illegal.

I think people will just protest anyway and be punished for it, I know I will, I just hope it doesn’t come to that, because it is such a backwards step for England. England is seen by people in some parts of Europe, especially in Poland, as being a great place to be, that is why people escape here, especially gay people and women and families. The UK is seen as a place of refuge; many of us are refugees running away from a country where we aren’t allowed to do stuff, so it would be really horrible to see England deteriorating in that way. I think there are so many voices and so much drive around our fight for our human rights here, I have high hopes it won’t come to that.

What other projects are coming up for PHAT?

Along with Poland Has a Task there is going to be a march sometime in April. Next, with my girlfriend Bendy Wendy, we want to make an album led by primarily female producers. There’s a very low percentage of women in the industry, especially in production, the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are Grimes and SOPHIE, and obviously SOPHIE passed away, so we want to give women a platform to show their music.

We are also going to be running a queer music night at Mr Wolfs every Monday night, there will be queer DJs playing incredible music, for people to socialise and meet other musicians. I found out recently that where Mr Wolfs is was the first gay bar in Bristol. You had to go through the bar through a hidden door and there was a space where gay people could socialise and there were rooms upstairs where they could speak as well. That felt perfect, like fate, when I found that out. Our aim is to open our own gay venue in Bristol eventually, but that will take a lot of work and time.

If you are a queer or fem musician or industry hopeful wanting a platform or even just a chat, Ola and Oli would love to hear from you.

PHAT’s regular Monday night at Mr Wolf’s in Bristol starts on 28th June.

PHAT are hosting an end-of-lockdown party celebrating the return of live music at The Exchange, Bristol on Wednesday 23rd June.

Follow PHAT, find out more about their projects and how you can support them via their Linktree.

Poland has a Task is out now on all major digital streaming platforms. Keep your ear to the ground for the vinyl release date, and pre order a copy here.