A LEADING East Lancashire recording studio has set up its own record label.

For the past five years, Hilltown Studios in Colne - run by Mat Arnold and Keiron Melling - has gained a growing reputation with bands including The Fall using its state-of-the-art facilities.

And now the studio has released the debut album by Barnoldswick band Suburban Symphony on its own label.

“As a studio you put in an awful lot of work for someone’s album and then when you’ve got it ready you let it go and hand it over to someone else to get out there,” said Mat.

“We’d been thinking about starting a record label for some time and we really believed in what we were doing with Suburban Symphony.”

Mat, who before he set up Hilltown Studios with Keiron in a Grade II listed building, worked at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios. There he worked with artists as diverse as Kanye West and Tom Jones.

“Creating a record label was the next step for us really,” said Mat. “It’s a big commitment but we both felt that the time was right.”

He said that the aim initially is to add one or two more artists to the roster each year.

“We are looking for the cream of the crop of what is going on locally,” said Mat. “There is a lot of talent out there and that is one of the things that spurred us on as far as creating a label was concerned.”

He revealed that discussions are already well underway to signing a second band to the label.

“Both Keiron and I have broad tastes in music,” said Mat. “We don’t want the label to be associated with one particular style of music. If there is something out there that we like then we will consider it.”

Keiron, who is also drummer with The Fall, worked with Mat on the recent release of the Outsiders UK album - the Pendle-based band’s first album in 17 years which reached the top 10 of the Radio Caroline album chart.

Mat said both he and Keiron were delighted with the label’s debut release.

“It was a really intense process in pre-production where we worked with the guys from Suburban Symphony and tightened things up in rehearsal so that when it came to recording tracks everything felt right,” he said.

“The whole idea of having a record label is both fantastic and terrifying at the same time.”