Label of the Month: tszr

The city of San Jose, California, is nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley, the world’s tech capital, and boasts a population of almost one million people. But it’s still considered a quiet little town, a bedroom community for tech and service workers who commute to jobs elsewhere throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s certainly not the type of place one would expect to see a giant rave exploding outside City Hall, drawing tens of thousands of frenzied revelers. Yet that’s exactly what happened this past February, when stratospherically popular Australian artist Dom Dolla took the decks and made sleepy San Jose the center of the party-verse.  

The blowout gig was a testament to the resurgence of electronic music events after the pandemic, even in the most unexpected places, and also to the growing popularity of globally successful acts like Dom in a US market hungry for more headliners. Now 13 years into his career, Grammy-nominated Dom has been releasing music on Three Six Zero Recordings (tszr) since 2022, recently teaming up for bangers with big names like Nelly Furtado (“Eat Your Man”), Tove Lo (“Cave”), and Kid Cudi (“Forever”). The label sees bringing Dom’s sound to the expanding US market – and that of other artists it’s released from overseas, from bigger names like Eats Everything, 1010Benja, KH aka Four Tet, horsegiirL, and Josh Baker, to dozens of developing artists – as one of its priorities. 

“Our main focus this year is taking our talent and bringing it to America, which is obviously such a big market, and something completely different from the landscape overseas” says tszr General Manager Nick Dearmun from the label’s Los Angeles office. “But we see the growth here, with big festivals like Coachella picking up UK talent, places like Vegas coming around to it. We’re setting our artists up for big things, and we love this challenge.” Last month’s wild WMC pool party collab with Jamie Jones’ Hot Creations label in Miami and a 2025 ADE opening night pop-up with Lab54 showed that tszr can certainly make its own waves.

Dearmun has no small experience in big-time dance music. Previously marketing manager at Columbia Records, he worked with Calvin Harris, Martin Garrix, MK, and Rag'n'Bone Man. But he speaks passionately about the label’s releases from up-and-comers, which include Dutch producer Julian Fijma, young UK house maven Riordan, and SCRIPT, who was the first American electronic musician to play Las Vegas’ epic Sphere. “I think one of the primary functions of a label is to amplify artists who have already developed their own boundary-pushing sound,” he says. “Right now, that means getting their tracks into the right DJ sets and playlists, on the right apps, expanding their footprint with radio and festivals, working on the right collaborations. But ultimately this is still dance music: Everything has to start in the club space.” 

Speaking from tszr’s UK office, head of A&R Sam Hutt – who came from producing Annie Mac's legendary Friday Night Radio 1 show on BBC at the tender age of 24 – says the particular sound that the label has developed has helped it gain a foothold for its newer artists in an era of so many genres and options. “Whether we’re talking about dance music fans or artists themselves, there’s so much choice out there, so much competition, so in order for us to cut through the noise and stand for something we honed our sound, we now know our pocket is contemporary house music ranging from deep-tech to the big room sound. It happened quite organically, and we still release a broad spectrum of music. But the focus has helped define us, people know what to send us. In the end, though, it’s all about quality, we want our artwork to be a badge of honour for artists, a cosign of quality, so we have to be precious about that.”

Three Six Zero Recordings is an offshoot of Three Six Zero, the international management and entertainment company founded by Mark Gillespie, who got his start in the rough-and-tumble club world of Birmingham in the 2000s. As a teenager working at fabled supper club Godskitchen, he developed sharp skills for booking talent. When Godskitchen began releasing compilation albums through Sony Music in the 2000s, Gillespie got a crash course in the big music biz. That inspired him to start scouting for music to release on his own. He scanned Myspace “for hours and hours most days, just trying to find new music played by interesting people,” he said in an interview. That's how he happened upon a young artist named Calvin Harris and tore up to Glasgow to meet him. Immediately impressed, Gillespie made a life-changing pivot: “I decided I didn’t want to be Calvin’s label–I wanted to be his manager.” He handed a CD of Harris’ music to his friend, the madly influential DJ Pete Tong, who played “The Girls” on his Radio 1 show, and the rest is history. 

Gillespie grew Three Six Zero into a global operation that now works in film TV, sports, and digital content, and has represented talent like Frank Ocean, Kid Cudi, Swedish House Mafia, and Muse, as well as Harris. It’s even produced movies like The Brutalist and Vox Lux. Yet despite this now-starry pedigree, the Three Six Zero Recordings label retains Gillespie’s original scrappy spirit, staying fiercely independent and constantly scanning the clubs and web for new artists. Its steady stream of “Full Circle Mix” series, showcasing its roster, helps it keep one foot on the dance floor, and it still considers itself an underdog when it comes to competing with bigger corporate labels.  

“We’re not a label that's fronted by an artist like Cloonee’s Hellbent Records or Chris Lake’s Black Book, etc., or part of a major label infrastructure, so in order to compete and sign the best, we have to think outside the box,” says Hutt. “What is best for the artist and best for the label. I think we have hit our stride and the results are starting to speak for themselves - helping launch the careers of artists like Julian Fijma, Marsolo, and Cam Stockman.”

The label just announced its milestone 100th release: “HOTS 4 U” by longtime collaborator Chris Lorenzo and aMo (Um). “This is such a special moment for us,” says Dearmun. “Growing into a position where we can sign and work over time with someone like Dom, who’s one of the biggest artists in dance music at the moment, whilst having those one-off club hits with the likes of Chris, hitting the top of Beatport charts several times, and becoming the top-selling label in the minimal deep-tech genre last year. Our reward is seeing our artists blow up, getting played and supported by their DJ peers and industry tastemakers, dominating festivals, and building out global touring businesses. We can look back and be proud of what we’ve accomplished, and excited about what’s ahead. There’s still a lot of work to do to get to where we want to be, but we’re going to have a lot of fun getting there.”