“Dub For The Dancefloor” EST. 2000
The Voltage Music label was formed in 2000 by Tomas Palermo and XLR8R Magazine publisher Andrew Smith. Smith and Palermo had been producing music together at the time as Live & Direkt. They released a track on a Ubiquity Records comp called No Categories Volume 1 and did a few remixes for other labels.
Voltage launched with physical (vinyl) distribution via Groove in Chicago. Smith and Palermo came up with the motto “Dub For The Dancefloor,” meaning the label would release dancefloor oriented records with a dub element, but not tied to any particular genre. Hence, over the years Voltage Music has released dubby electro, techno, broken beat and dubstep.
The first release “Eastern Voice” [Voltage 001] was a 10″ vinyl single with two tracks Tomas produced under the alias Double Identity. Voltage 002 was Andrew “Professor” Smith’s electro-dub hybrid “Be There,” also on 10” vinyl. From 2000-2005 Voltage released ten vinyl 10″ and 12″ singles by Double Identity, Professor Smith, Jackie’s Army (Smith and Ron “Shockman” Nachmann), Douglas Pagan and Deep Alpha. Voltage singles number 3 through number 10 each contained a remix, and those were collected on our 2009 digital comp “Dub For The Dancefloor: Voltage Remixed and Unreleased“. In 2009 Voltage released our first digital EP by Toronto, Canada’s Earlyworm. The EP features dubstep remixes by SF’s Roommate and Kush Arora.
In 2011 Shockman (whose excellent “Oh Mi Natty” was an exclusive on the Dub For The Dancefloor comp) released his debut “Shock The Sound” EP in July with remixes from Bakir, Dubmatix, Earlyworm and Subatomic Sound System. We also have released 2 EPs from the self-described Afrocubist producer Douglas Pagan: “Compressed Funk” EP (Remixes by Altered Natives and Aybee) in 2012 and “Afrikromatic Instrumentals” EP in 2014. The label was rebooted yet again in 2021 with the latest EP from Double Identity “Have To Feel It”. Check the Voltage Music Soundcloud page to hear some of our tunes.
