Fourth Dimension Records is a British record label, specialising in international underground music. It was founded by Gary Levermore as an offshoot of his Third Mind label before being taken over by Richard Johnson (aka Richo) in 1984. The label became quite successful in the '90s, releasing music by Simon Wickham-Smith & Richard Youngs, KK Null, The Gerogerigegege, Circle, Splintered (band), Thurston Moore, Hijokaidan (band), and Merzbow, side projects by members of Amp and Skullflower and myriad 7" and 10" singles by experimental artists from the UK, US, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Japan. Alongside the label, Johnson also ran a mail order service, stocking rare underground releases from around the world.
Shortly before taking over the label, Johnson began editing a fanzine called Grim Humour, initially covering non-mainstream artists such as Big Black, Swans, Killing Joke, Lydia Lunch, Whitehouse and Sonic Youth. These often came with cassette or vinyl compilations (usually given FD catalogue numbers) with participants including the aforementioned Sonic Youth, Cindytalk, Ausgang, Con Demek and Portion Control. The fanzine ceased in the mid '90s but Johnson has since launched a new title, Adverse Effect, which has been praised by Record Collector and Ptolemaic Terrascope, lasted four editions and now can be found as a blogspot and via the Fourth Dimension website.
Although Fourth Dimension was dormant for a short while in the late '90s, it has since relaunched with further releases from Merzbow and Circle, as well as albums by Johnson's own project Theme, The Fields of Hay and British sound artist Andrew Liles. He has also begun a second label, Lumberton Trading Company, a joint venture initially started with Hassni Malik The Vitamin B12. It has issued a number of albums by artists including Experimental Audio Research, Theme, Thighpaulsandra, Human Greed and Michael Gira. More releases are also planned.
Besides the fact Fourth Dimension and Lumberton Trading Company continue to this day, Richard Johnson is still writing about music, is involved in Theme (band), plans to oversee a reissue campaign by his last group, Splintered (band) and is working on a book devoted to his Grim Humour fanzine. Another book dedicated to Adverse Effect will then follow.
Famous quotes containing the words fourth, dimension and/or records:
“... men and women are not yet free.... The slavery of greed endures. Little child workers, the hope of the future, are sacrificed to industry. Young men are sent out by the billion to die for profits.... We must destroy industrial slavery and build industrial democracy.... The people everywhere must come into possession of the earth [second, third, and fourth ellipses in source].”
—Sara Bard Field (1882–1974)
“By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels’ wives.”
—Frances Fitzgerald (b. 1940)
“The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)