NYC Label Let's Play House Celebrates a Half Decade of Rabble Rousing

Longevity in a place like New York City is like some rare breed of skittish unicorn: not an easy thing to come across, and even harder to catch if you do. While today, Brooklyn may seem like a bubbling borough for underground sounds, it was a much different beast five years ago when Nik Mercer and Jacques Renault teamed up to throw events all over the city. Last month, Let's Play House, the party turned full-fledged record label, marked their fifth year since inception.

The idea behind LPH started small for Jacques and Nik, who met through mutual friends like Justin Miller and the DFA circle when Nik moved from Los Angeles to Brooklyn. Somehow Nik ended up on Jacques' mailing list and ventured out to one of his Runaway gigs with Marcos Cabral at Blackout Bar in Greenpoint. Jacques recalls the start of a fruitful partnership, "We just bonded over music and we came up with Let's Play House. We started thinking of ideas behind the event and we just started putting the pieces together. The relationship worked really well and our ideals were falling in line with each other."

The thought of trying to relevant in an industry where trends are swaying like a sinking ship might give you sea-sickness, but Nik and Jacques have built a reputation for A&R'ing and brand direction that's been making waves for years now. "There's now an interesting mixture of credibility I hope, building up a decent catalog of 120 or 150 songs," Nik says of the label. "We're not flavor of the month per se anymore, we've been around the block. There are so many labels, so many releases. We're not relying on trend anymore."

Before the label, Let's Play House was a no-holds-barred party hosting talent like Morgan Geist and DJ Kaos at rogue spaces around Brooklyn. The boys had a lot to do with the emerging DIY dance party scene a few years back at spaces like 285 Kent before some of the larger clubs opened up shop in Williamsburg. Once John Barclays moved on from his role over on Kent leading up to his new venue Bossa Nova Civic Club their fixture began to fizzle out. Now LPH can be found producing experiences in more concrete spaces like Verboten and The 303 at Louie and Chan.

The label came quickly after the LPH party became a city fixture when Nik wanted to leave a more impactful footprint in the scene, "my frustration with parties is that the only memento you can leave with is your memories. There's no tactile or tangible object and it's not very informed. It's a more ephemeral experience." New York will always be home base for these guys, even if it's just in their idealism. The first EP release on the label was true to the city, featuring an original track from Runaway supported with remixes by Slow Hands, Beautiful Swimmers, and Soft Rocks. On the second record they had to abandon a constricting attachment to the city because it wasn't sustainable, but New York will always be at the crux of what they're doing.

Mercer shared his thoughts on the label's current state, "It's pretty exciting and really cool to reflect upon, but at the same time it's a little stressful. When it comes to any significant date like this, you think back. We don't want to just do another thirty records – It's about thinking what else we can do with the label." Jacques, who waves the LPH flag as a globe trotting DJ, shares many of his cohorts feelings. "It really is a time for self-reflection and looking back five years, I never thought LPH would become what it is today: the label, merchandise, and events. It's exciting. There's a part of me that asks what's next? Upping the ante and expanding."

Moving into 2015, the label has some big plans. They're launching Room Service, a new label that dissociates itself from LPH, at least in name. Nik also gushes over his latest project for the label that connects his obsessions with certain niches of Japanese pop music. "There's a bunch of producers that I really dig that bridge my interest in house, techno, and disco and pop. One guy is named Sochi Terrada, he's released a few records in the west thanks to Creme. He has a huge trope of stuff that hasn't been put out or distributed outside of Japan. Eight months ago I reached out to the guy and let him know how much I loved the engineering work he did on these 90's pop records and his own work as well. He had some supportive words for LPH and offered up, something like thirty songs. We're now in the process of figuring out which ones we want to put out, how many, that sort of thing, and who will remix them for some modern contextualization."

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