Oaken Palace Records offers bands the opportunity to release their output in a way that actively supports their vision of a better world for all beings. Being 100% charitable, the label functions as a social enterprise that donates all its profits to environmental organizations of the bands’ choice. In addition, bands dedicate their releases to an endangered animal of their choice, which further increases the arising of environmental awareness by focusing on specific species and their story. Last but not least, customers are left with the feeling of having contributed to a good cause and consuming responsibly. Bands and artists include Merzbow, Phurpa, Louise Landes Levi, Woven Skull, Blown Out, Eternal Tapestry, Vibracathedral Orchestra and more.
Oaken Palace Records trustee Owen Coggins will be in conversation with Robbie Judkins.
Owen Coggins researches intersections of extreme music with mysticism, paganism and ritual. In 2015 he completed a PhD in Music & Religion, an ethnographic study of drone metal focusing on how audiences understood their listening experiences in relation to religion. A book which extended this project, Mysticism Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) won the 2019 Book Prize of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. Other academic chapters and articles have been published on noise, industrial music, gospel blues and drone, with more experimental work on drone music appearing in the edited collection Sustain//Decay (with James Harris). Owen was a Researcher for two years at music therapy charity Nordoff Robbins, and in September 2019 will begin a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Brunel University London, working on a three-year project about politics, ambiguity and paganism in black metal. Owen has
contributed to The Wire and writes regularly for the website Echoes & Dust, and since 2015 has been a trustee of Oaken Palace, an environmental charity and drone record label.
