Rough Trade Records Vinyl, CDs & Cassettes

Geoff Travis opened Rough Trade as a record shop on Kensington Park Road in West London in February 1976, modeled on City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, with the idea that a record store could be as much a community space as a retail one. By 1978, he was putting out records himself, starting with a French punk band called Métal Urbain, who wandered in off the street looking for help getting their music out. That accidental first release set the tone for everything that followed.

The Smiths recorded their entire catalog here, one of the most complete and significant bodies of work in British rock, made in a four-year burst between 1984 and 1987 that still sounds like nothing else. The label also became the home of Scritti Politti, The Raincoats, Robert Wyatt, and the early post-punk scene, reshaping British music from the margins. When Rough Trade went dormant in the Nineties and returned in the early 2000s, it came back with The Strokes and The Libertines, two bands that anchored a whole new wave of guitar music on both sides of the Atlantic.

The current roster carries that same restless instinct forward. Parquet Courts. Sleaford Mods. Lankum. black midi. Amyl and the Sniffers. ANOHNI. The label has never been interested in consolidating what it already has. Travis and co-director Jeannette Lee, who has been a creative force at the label since the Eighties, keep signing artists who are doing something genuinely new, which is exactly what Rough Trade has always been for.

Now part of the Beggars Group alongside 4AD, XL, and Matador, still run by its founder, still based in London.