Virtually famous: Everything is Recorded

It’s a new name but very much not a newcomer in this slot this week: Everything is Recorded is the latest alias of Richard Russell, best known as the head of XL Recordings and therefore the man who signed Adele.

With the spot on the Sunday Times Rich List that resulted, he can do what he likes these days, and that means signing uncompromising experimentalists such as Arca to his label and building his own recording studio, The Copper House, near XL’s west London offices.

Russell first entered the rave scene as one of Kicks Like a Mule, whose novelty single The Bouncer (“You’re name’s not down, you’re not coming in”) hit the top 10 in 1992. In recent years he’s been a producer again, working on remarkable late period albums by Gil Scott-Heron and Bobby Womack.

At his studio he invited all manner of contacts round to try their hands at “jam sessions for people who wouldn’t normally participate in jam sessions”.

The result is a newly released five song EP, Close But Not Quite, that features everyone from his label’s current stars Sampha and Giggs to the sampled voices of Scott-Heron and Curtis Mayfield. The sound falls somewhere between the guest-heavy grooves of Gorillaz and the more menacing hip hop of Young Fathers. It shows there’s no reason for him to stick to the day job.