Ouzel Records was born in 1998 as a tape label. It was August 17th, 1998, when the first Morose work was ready - and everything corresponded to the band's DIY ideals: a home recorded EP, photocopied covers, hand-coloured artworks, each one stuck to the front.

After releasing a few cassettes during the first year of activity, in summer 1999 I bought a PC with a CD-recorder, therefore since then Ouzel's releases were issued on CDr with improved audio quality.

In early 2000 I discovered internet, and uploaded some provisional pages on-line, and the contacts throughout the world increased rapidly: the following releases (such as "The 2nd Anniversary Compilation" and the works by Deleted, ONQ and Morose) were spread in hundreds in Europe, North America and Japan through little distributors.

Ouzel Records' first "large scale" release is "You cannot hold DIY - it is an adjective", a 19 track CD compilation starring both Ouzel bands (like The Colours Seen From Behind, Lo-fi Sucks!, and several others) and great artists I admire a lot, such as June of 44 [USA], Milaus [ITA], Ian Simpson [UK], Klimperei [FRA], Luke [GER]... It was the year 2002, and for the first time Ouzel got official distributors (Goodfellas in Italy, 11345.com in USA).

In February 2003 a series of 5 miniCDr was released, in a limited number of copies, starring Bugo, Onq, Valerio Sartori, Derek De Prator, Mouse and Sequencers, and Lo-fi Sucks!.

The latest printed CD releases by Ouzel Records are Morose's "La Mia Ragazza Mi Ha Lasciato", and Kech's "Are You Safe?", both distributed by Audioglobe.

The compilation "Ouzel Collage 2004" was the first Ouzel album that was released on-line, and made available for free download through this website: I was very satisfied of that first experiment, and now I am convinced that the free download of mp3s is the best medium to spread the work of all the artists and bands that collaborate with Ouzel.

In late August 2004, I decided to move to Japan, and since then I had not enough time to take care of new productions. I mostly concentrated on my own music project "The Colours Seen From Behind", and limited my activity with Ouzel to keeping this website updated, and trying to create an on-line library of valuable Ouzel releases. So, please stay tuned, and explore these pages, and download as many MP3s as you want!!!

Byebye!

Mauro