6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Marking 22 years, the Numero Group record label remains a visionary Chicago stalwart pushing the industry forward
History is not just a study of the past, but a conversation between where we've been, where we're at and where we're going. And no record label understands it as intimately as Numero Group.
Founded in Chicago in 2003, the primarily reissue label has grown from a confident upstart to a seasoned veteran. Much of the ethos and initiative that made the label succeed where others may have failed has not diminished in its decades of existence. If anything, the label's founders, Ken Shipley, Rob Sevier and Tom Lunt, have doubled down on what has made Numero Group such a success — dipping their toes in a variety of overlooked or misunderstood genres (such as soul, country, gospel) and technological mediums to share the good word that is their music.
'The thing we used to say at the very beginning of almost every meeting was that Numero lives at the nexus of story and song. And that was something that catapulted us a lot further,' Shipley said.
Now, in the weeks after its unconventional 22nd anniversary celebration, the label is set to launch one of its biggest — and most personal — compilations yet. Titled 'Sequoia,' out June 20, the 25-record box set dives deep into the first decade of emo. It's an ambitious project for a label known for its ambitious projects, but also a coming home of sorts. Shipley's love of music was born through this kind of music. But the label's journey to this moment is a lot more eclectic and expansive than one singular compilation.
Numero began as a direct-to-consumer label. Their first release, 'Camino Del Sol,' was a spacey, jazzy, bossa nova and new wave hybrid album by the French band Antena. Their next releases covered gospel and power pop and private issue folk.
'The narrowing of our tastes never really happened. If anything, it just got wider,' Shipley said. So yes, they began with soul music, but that led to boogie and electro and house and jungle. Pushing further and further into genres is how they approach change.
To that end, there is no singular Numero Group sound so much as there is an institutional directive to find, support and promote the best music of the past for audiences in the present. Groups they've worked with include Blondie, Hüsker Dü, Syl Johnson and Blonde Redhead. Many of them are released through sublabels, focusing on genres such as punk or soul, or time periods such as the '80s and '90s. To do this, the label has a weekly meeting where they just listen to things. And while they can't chase everything, they have a lot more people, so they can chase a lot more things.
Take the group Duster. The slowcore indie rock band from San Jose found a contemporary audience not on the radio, but in the YouTube algorithm. Numero Group set about releasing some of their past work, including a compilation record, 'Capsule Losing Contact.' But as the band regrouped in 2018, the label also handled their new releases, like 2024's 'In Dreams.'
'That moment of digital discovery not only changed my perspective on what digital could be; it also completely altered the way we release music,' Shipley added.
Playlists are a big facet of this business model. Shipley likens them to mixtapes and compilations. They also drop music up to five days per week digitally, using their analytics to better understand their audiences and what they may want in the future. If the modern music release strategy is a game of experimentation, then Numero Group is winning on multiple fronts.
Another realm of success? Their music syncing. Inspired by his time working at Rykodisc and their work with Nick Drake, Shipley adamantly incorporated music syncing into their business structure from the beginning.
'I saw how you could take something kind of cool and small and different and reinsert it into the culture as if it was a forgotten thing that might make people more receptive,' Shipley recalled. The department is now led by Jen Newcomer.
Their efforts have landed songs like Penny and the Quarters' 'You And Me' in the Ryan Gosling-starring film 'Blue Valentine.' Marion Black's 'Who Knows' has more than 60 million streams on Spotify and has appeared in TV shows like 'Severance.' Pastor T.L. Barrett, from the city's South Side, has had songs sampled by artists like T.I. and DJ Khaled. 'Like A Ship,' one of his best-known tracks, can be heard in episodes of 'Hacks,' among many others. These placements have helped the music find second and third lives with younger audiences from around the world, cementing the artist's legacy and confirming Numero Group as a singular tastemaker for the obscure yet profound in music.
'Some of the artists we've worked with have had meaningful changes to their lives because of the revenue that they've gotten,' Sevier explained. 'That's virtually always after spending many, many years building something. It doesn't happen overnight in almost any case.'
Like always, Numero Group has a number of things in the works. Their most ambitious project, 'Sequoia,' has been 30 years in the making. The label considers it a sequel to their compilations 'Eccentric Soul: Omnibus' and 'Eucalyptus,' an examination of the 1995 scene around Tree Records. The collection features 25 7″ records documenting emo's first decade or so, accompanied by a 136-page hardcover book that tells the tale of the genre through stories from across the country, illustrated with photographs, flyers and ads from Numero's vast archive.
'It's just been so fun and rewarding to revisit something that I held really near and dear, but to do it with the perspective of a 47-year-old who actually knows how to make records now,' Shipley said.
Record labels are not dead. It's possible to run something truly great in 2025. But that requires perspective and effort, something Numero has in spades. Champions of underrated, undiscovered musical history, Numero remains a visionary Chicago stalwart pushing the industry forward.
'We believe in our taste enough that we'll stand behind anything that we put out,' added Shipley. 'We know that there's a very, very long tail on this thing.'
