Label of the Month: Balmat

Like all the best ideas, the germ of Balmat sprouted one day over a boozy lunch. Label bosses Philip Sherburne and Albert Salinas had initially met in Barcelona some seven years before; the former occasionally appeared as a guest on the latter’s Lapsus radio show for Radio 3 (Spanish national radio). Later, around the time of Sherburne’s move to Menorca in 2018, he joined Lapsus as a co-host, with the idea of flying back into Barcelona every month to record a backlog of episodes for what was now an online broadcast. Then the pandemic happened, and everything went remote. 

As the pair continued to develop their radio show over the next few years, they set about plugging the Lapsus airwaves with a steady stream of ambient music; nebulous, headphone-friendly voyages that massage the mind and nourish the soul. Salinas, who already had his work cut out running several other labels, was keen to turn the duo’s shared passion for quiet sounds into a record label. “I have to say that I don't have this kind of ambient passion link with any other guy besides Philip,” he enthuses over a video call from his home in the town of Cardedeu, about 40 minutes from Barcelona. However, Sherburne was hesitant, voicing his concerns about a potential conflict of interest with his work as a music journalist (he has been writing about music since the mid-to-late ‘90s and is currently a contributing editor at Pitchfork). 

For Sherburne, the dream of steering a label had long been tucked away at the back of his mind, but he admits he had no idea how to pull it off. “I wanted to run a label the same way that maybe a kid wants to be Lionel Messi or something,” he laughs, also over a home video call. “You know what I mean? Like, yeah, that would be cool.” Eventually, Salinas won him over, and Balmat leapt into action, operating from a place of ‘smooth transparency’ that upheld Sherburne’s journalistic integrity. “Honestly, if we at some point of the label see this as being an issue, then maybe we have to recalculate our rules. But for now, I don't think it's a problem,” offers Salinas.

Languid Gongue, the imprint’s first release, arrived in August 2021; a 14-track study in noodly electro-acoustica from UK-based artist Luke Sanger, which set out Balmat’s home listening stall at a time when everyone was stuck indoors. Music for Six Rooms by Russian electronic musician Hoavi appeared a few months later, cutting 10 birdsong-peppered cloudscapes from the drifting cloth of ambient drone and the faint echo of dub techno.

Fast forward to 2025, and Balmat can now claim 16 albums to its name, each one occupying a space in the spectrum of electronic or exploratory sound. From the mossy new age diorama of See-Through by Patricia Wolf to the beatless luminescence of Projections of a Coral City from Coral Morphologic & Nick León, and glitchier curveballs like the mind-bending smarts of 1977 from Planet Mu savant Mike Paradinas (aka µ-Ziq) or the lite rhythmic workout on Diagrams of Thought, Balmat is a love letter to texture, and an incubator for horizon-spanning experimentation.

“To me, it's such an open-ended thing,” offers Sherburne on the definitive ambient essence driving the Balmat aesthetic. “Because it can be minimalist and droney, and stark and cold. It can be warm and cuddly and reassuring. It can be something like early ‘90s Spacetime Continuum,  kind of cosmic and psychedelic. It can be acoustic and jazzy.” Meanwhile, Salinas points to the adventurous spirit of the canon. “In my case, sometimes it's a place where the artists try to be shameless or… like try to be themselves without being shy about being sensitive, and about showing something that goes beyond making drums and rhythms and music for the club.” 

What does glue all the disparate Balmat pieces together, however, is the sublime “visual universe” of its artwork, masterminded by Spanish illustrator José Quintanar, with Josep Basora of the design studio Basora designing the cloud logo and overall aesthetic. “Obviously, we love the illustrations, but it was a really hard idea to push all the artists to release using the same illustration for the covers,” notes Salinas. “And at the end, it ended up like a super, super consistent idea. People are into it.”

“Finding time to listen to demos” is one of the hardest things about running a label, according to Sherburne. In addition, the unpredictability of turnaround times from vinyl pressing plants makes it “harder to be nimble and agile,” he says. In spite of this, there was absolutely no question that Balmat would function as a vinyl label. “Well, we are nostalgic people, or at least I'm a nostalgic one,” laughs Salinas. “ ... Maybe Balmat is the best case, or the best example out of all the labels I have … It's the one that I would say that has to be on physical too, because it's really the sound that we are trying to put out and we are trying to share … It's kind of like a ritual. You are choosing the best moment, like a really nice moment of the week, to listen to the record.” 

These ‘moments’ can take on a variety of forms or situations. And while the terms ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ often get thrown around in ambient music discourse, for Balmat, they are spot on. Not only has the label evolved organically, without any kind of rigid, clearly defined goal or vision, but the sonic organisms it cultivates often lend themselves to the bounty and noise of planet Earth, like the “ecological sources” sewn into See-Through or the field recordings of everyday life that percolate through Odd Numbers / Số Lẻ by Le Motel. What’s more, both Sherburne and Salinas — keen runners — highlight the versatility of the Balmat listening environment, which they say extends to cooking, gardening, and a myriad other pursuits. For instance, Sherburne remembers “working in the garden” with the DOVS record on his earbuds. “It was such perfect music for being outdoors, in the sun, and down on your knees in the dirt,” he recalls.

In sticking with their original pledge, Balmat are currently migrating the label to a 100% transparent royalty platform called Infinite Catalog. “For us, it's good for that to be a public thing, because we really think that all the labels have to be 100% transparent with the artists, and for us it's been a long road, because we've been moving all the data from the very beginning … And for us, it's a good moment to see the numbers and see what we are, and next steps,” offers Salinas. 

The label’s latest single, "Last Minute Guitar" — an improv-speckled masterstroke from the trio of Stephen Vitiello, Hugo Largo’s Hahn Rowe and Brendan Canty (a legendary drummer known for his work with DC hardcore trailblazers Rites of Spring and Fugazi) — marks a full-circle moment for Sherburne. “I mean, I grew up on DC hardcore. That's like an essential part of my being,” he gushes.

The forthcoming LP from the trio, titled Second, also nicely ‘opens the boundaries’ of the Balmat sound. “Maybe it's a good moment for us to think in a different way, and to think about the future releases in a really different way,” offers Salinas. 

“I also think it will make our next ambient release stand out more,” adds Sherburne. “Because if all you put out is quiet, contemplative, soft things, then maybe eventually they all start to blur together, and I think it makes the next ambient release more special.”