XL Recordings Vinyl, CDs & Cassettes

XL Recordings started in London in 1989 as a dance music specialist, early to rave and breakbeat at a moment when both were reshaping British music from the ground up. The Prodigy's breakthrough in the early Nineties put the label on the map and gave it the resources and credibility to keep expanding. From there, Richard Russell, who took over sole ownership of the label in the mid-Nineties, spent the next three decades following his ear wherever it went, which turned out to be almost everywhere.

The roster XL assembled across that stretch is one of the more quietly remarkable in independent music. Radiohead brought their post-OK Computer catalog here and released some of the most critically significant albums of the 2000s under the XL banner. Adele signed with the label before she had a record deal, was tracked down after Russell heard a demo on her MySpace page, and went on to become one of the best-selling artists in history. The White Stripes. M.I.A. and Dizzee Rascal, whose debut won the Mercury Prize and announced British grime to the world. Vampire Weekend. Tyler, The Creator. Fontaines D.C. The Smile, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood's project outside of Radiohead.

The common thread is Russell's instinct for artists who are genuinely original rather than trend-adjacent, people making something that doesn't sound quite like anything else. XL has never been a genre label, and that's exactly what makes the catalog worth spending time in.