Charlie’s love for music and discovering new music is indisputable and, clearly, a crucial part of his life both when it comes to work and play. “What interests me is new bands and new music - that’s what gets me up in the morning.”
So, how the hell does he manage to keep it so relevant? “It’s an endless fucking nightmare! I see music forums in my sleep. You just do what you can - you’re never 100% on top of it. You always miss stuff, and you kick yourself all the time, but I do what I can; I’m only one person.”
On top of this, Charlie also runs his record label named after the store, working with real old school British heavy metal bands like Heavy Sentence. He hosts radio shows for NTS Radio and does podcasts interviewing people over Instagram. If that wasn’t enough, he also puts on gigs at Helgi’s in Hackney. So it’s not exactly a ‘phase’, this music lark.
“It’s a 50 person capacity, so I’ve been putting on gigs that only 50 people are likely to come to. There’s no money in it - I can just about pay the bands for their travel and all that stuff. I brought Hail Conjurer over from Finland, one of my favourite ongoing projects. He’s only been going for about four years, and he’s done an album every year - that gig was unbelievable, with Sump (UK black metal band) supporting. People came from all over England because it was quite a special thing. You can find 50 people who desperately want to go to that gig, but you couldn’t find 300/400. I like doing stuff on that scale” Charlie has definitely found his niche and seems to be doing a better job of nailing it than anyone else.