ASV Records

ASV Records is a London-based record label set up by Harley Usill, founder of Argo Records, Decca producer and former Argo General Manager, Kevin Daly, and producer Jack Boyce, after Argo's parent company Decca was bought by Polygram in 1980. ASV stands for "Academy Sound and Vision". The label was bought by the Sanctuary Group in May 1999 for £1.27m.

They have issued records by conductors such as:

  • Enrique Batiz, Mexico
  • Francesco D'Avalos, Italy
  • David Allinson, United States
  • Ross Pople
  • Jane Glover, United Kingdom
  • Loris Tjeknavorian, Iran, Austria

Performers:

  • London Festival Orchestra
  • Nikolai Demidenko
  • Robert Gibbs
  • John Lill
  • Julian Lloyd Webber
  • The Lindsay String Quartet
  • Ensemble 360
  • Gordon Fergus-Thompson
  • Emma Johnson

Latterly much of ASV's classical back catalogue was reissued on Sanctuary's Resonance budget label.

Starting in 1989, they also had an imprint called Living Era, created by Kevin Daly which specialized in reissuing recordings (particularly American jazz recordings) that are in the public domain in the UK, which are all at least 50 years old. It also showcased American pop, American country and Western music, British dance bands, and British nostalgia.

Sanctuary's UK recorded music business was shut down shortly after Universal Music Group bought the firm in 2007. This also included the ASV and ASV/Living Era imprints.

Famous quotes containing the word records:

    What a wonderful faculty is memory!—the most mysterious and inexplicable in the great riddle of life; that plastic tablet on which the Almighty registers with unerring fidelity the records of being, making it the depository of all our words, thoughts and deeds—this faithful witness against us for good or evil.
    Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)