| Sonic Unyon | |
| Founder: | Sandy McIntosh Mark Milne |
| Distributor: | Universal Music (Canada) The Orchard (ROW) |
| Genre: | Alternative Indie |
| Location: | Hamilton, Ontario |
| Url: | sonicunyon.com |
Sonic Unyon is an independent record label based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The label has put out releases by bands including Tristan Psionic, Sianspheric, Shallow North Dakota, Eric's Trip, Hayden, Chore, Frank Black and the Catholics, A Northern Chorus, Raising the Fawn, Teenage Head, Simply Saucer, and Voivod. The label’s current artist roster includes Big Wreck, Danko Jones, Terra Lightfoot, and Basement Revolver.
Sonic Unyon was founded in Burlington, Ontario in 1993 by Mark Milne and Sandy McIntosh, guitarists of the band Tristan Psionic.[1] [2] (The label’s name was inspired by the title of a Guitar Player magazine interview with My Bloody Valentine guitarist Kevin Shields.[3]) Sonic Unyon's ownership expanded six months later with the addition of partner Tim Potocic, the band’s drummer. Each put up $2,000 and the company took its first steps.[4]
At first, Sonic Unyon exclusively released Tristan Psionic's music, but the label soon began releasing and promoting music by other local bands.[5] [6] Sonic Unyon's first eight releases were issued on individually dubbed, hand-packaged cassettes. The label's first vinyl pressing was a 7" sampler released in 1994. A compilation, the label's tenth release, followed later that year on compact disc.
Sonic Unyon regularly organized concerts in traditional and non-traditional spaces featuring artists on the label's roster, but became increasingly ambitious as momentum behind the young label grew. The label’s first large-scale event, Woolsock,[7] was a one-day festival held in a farm field south of Campbellville, Ontario on August 20, 1994. The lineup included Change of Heart, Gorp, Shallow, Smoother, Spool, Treble Charger, 13 Engines, and Tristan Psionic. Woolsock ’95 was staged a year after the initial Woolsock, this time at a rural property in Pelham, Ontario. Following logistical hurdles, the festival ultimately relocated to Hamilton’s X-Club.[8] The event featured Another White Male, Choke To Start, Gorp, Hayden, hHead, Hip Club Groove, Kittens, Kottmeier, The Mercury Men, Monster Voodoo Machine, The New Grand, Poledo, Project 9, Rheostatics, Shallow, Sianspheric, Smoother, Sparkmarker, Treble Charger, and Tristan Psionic.
In honour of the label’s second anniversary, Sonic Unyon rented the 44-meter yacht Captain Matthew Flinders for a floating party tour of Toronto’s waters on September 17, 1995. Bands playing that party included Change of Heart, Die Cheerleader, and Huevos Rancheros.
By 1995, Sonic Unyon had grown to be one of the largest independent labels in Canada.[9] In 1996, Sonic Unyon’s partners purchased a three-storey commercial building at 22 Wilson Street near James Street North in downtown Hamilton thanks in part to a friendly relationship with then-owner Sam Manson, whose namesake sporting goods store had just closed at the same address.[10] The label, which had been operating out of a warehouse in Hamilton’s Corktown neighbourhood, moved in the following year. The basement of their headquarters often held shows, and many local musicians got jobs working for the record label and some would go on to operate their own record labels out of the building.[11]
On October 3, 1998, Sonic Unyon marked the label’s fifth anniversary with a celebration that included the release of the Now We Are 5 compilation, the grand opening of the Sonic Unyon Record Store (located on the main level of 22 Wilson Street), an all-ages show at its headquarters, and a licensed concert in an upstairs hall of the nearby Fortune Village restaurant. The latter concert featured sets from Blonde Redhead, Danko Jones, The Mooney Suzuki, The New Grand, Bill Priddle, Julie Doiron, Thrush Hermit, and Tristan Psionic. The concert’s lineup had initially included The Flaming Lips’ Boombox Experiment, but the band ended that series five nights earlier in Boston, Massachusetts and did not appear in the final lineup.
Following the collapse and eventual bankruptcy of Cargo Records, Sonic Unyon Distribution was founded in 1998 to distribute Sonic Unyon and other labels in Canada, amassing a roster that included dozens of domestic imprints as well as exclusively representing over 250 international independent labels within Canada. The company distributed releases in Canada from independent labels from around the world and issued select co-releases with other independent labels, including Amphetamine Reptile, Dischord Records, Epitaph Records, Fat Wreck Chords, Fearless, Jagjaguwar, Matador Records, Merge Records, Metalheadz, Nuclear Blast, Plexifilm, Secretly Canadian, Southern Records, Thrill Jockey, and Warp.[12] Sonic Unyon Distribution was ultimately sold to MapleCore in 2008.[13]
Sonic Unyon also ran hardcore label Goodfellow Records (active 1997-2009), as well as the more mainstream imprint Labwork Music (a joint effort with EMI Canada[14]), which released Wintersleep's Welcome to the Night Sky, the album that earned them a JUNO Award for New Group of the Year.[15]
Operating out of a retail space on the main floor of Sonic Unyon’s headquarters, the Sonic Unyon Record Store showcased the thousands of independent titles stocked in the label’s distribution warehouse, located in the same building. The shop opened in October 1998 and remained in business for almost a decade, closing in spring of 2008.[16] The label continues to operate an online storefront.[17]
Complementing the building's basement hardcore shows and in-store pop-ups, between 2002 and 2007 the label’s third floor space hosted concerts from dozens of bands including Alexisonfire, Frank Black and the Catholics, Converge, Cursed, The Evens, and Voivod.
In 2009, Sonic Unyon returned to event production at scale by organizing Supercrawl,[18] a free annual multi-arts festival dedicated to showcasing the arts scene in the James North region of Hamilton. The three-day event has featured hundreds of national and international touring artists in a range of artistic disciplines. In 2015, the festival received an Ontario Tourism Award of Excellence for Tourism Event of the Year.[19] It was also a finalist for Event of the Year at the 2017 Canadian Tourism Awards.[20]
Sonic Unyon has since broadened its events-based business to include the annual Because Beer Craft Beer Festival, and the opening of multi-use cultural events spaces Mills Hardware and Bridgeworks in 2014 and 2020 respectively.[21] The label left its Wilson Street offices in 2017 and is now headquartered within the Bridgeworks venue.
Sonic Unyon has produced JUNOfest 2015 and 2022, JUNO Songwriters’ Circle in 2019, and Hamilton's 2015 Pan Am Games closing celebrations. Sonic Unyon also produced the 2021 and 2023 Grey Cup Festivals, the 2023 Polaris Music Prize Gala and the 2023 edition of CBC Toronto's Sounds of the Season.
In 2011, roughly two decades after the term “metal” was stripped from the JUNO Awards (following the retirement of the Best Hard Rock / Metal Album category after the 1991 awards), a new category was created: Metal/Hard Music Album of the Year, the result of a two-year CARAS lobbying campaign by Sonic Unyon.[22] [23]
In 2019, the label released a triple-LP vinyl retrospective, Now We Are 25, as well as a documentary of the same name that featured appearances from artists Joel Plaskett of Thrush Hermit, Hayden, Chris Murphy and Jay Ferguson of Sloan, Terra Lightfoot, music media personalities George Stromboulopoulos and Alan Cross, and others.[24]
The Sonic Unyon building also housed the recording studio of Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan[25] prior to relocating to his own Barton Building Studios in 2019.
Sonic Unyon’s roster makes up three of CBC's 50 best Canadian songs of the '90s[26] and eight placements on Noisey’s 2016 ranking of the 60 Best CanRock Songs Ever.[27] [28] Singles from Sonic Unyon artists represent three of CBC Music’s 50 Best Canadian Songs of the '90s[29] and three of Indie 88’s Top 150 Canadian Songs of All Time.[30]
Two Sonic Unyon releases ranked on Chart Magazine’s Top 100 Greatest Canadian Albums of All Time. Thrush Hermit’s Clayton Park has been named as one of CBC Music’s 100 Greatest Canadian Albums Ever[31] while Sianspheric’s Somnium was named as one of Chart Attack’s Top 50 Canadian Albums of All Time.[32]
Hayden’s Everything I Long For has been certified Gold by Music Canada.[33]
The following artists have made at least one release through Sonic Unyon.