To our loyal supporters and the London music scene,

The last year has been incredibly busy for all here at Scratch Rock Records and our artists. As you may have seen, we’re incredibly proud and excited to be sending some of our lead acts on tour next week.

Regrettably, however, the path to the tour has not been an easy one for those involved. Whilst it would be tasteless to air dirty laundry out for the world to see we feel it our responsibility, to our unwavering supporters, to the rest of the London music scene, and in order to stick up for our fantastic artists, to be completely transparent with all of you about what, unfortunately, turned out to be a very disappointing turn of events.

In November of 2023, the Scratch Rock band BRAIN APE were due to play a show at the fantastic Engine Rooms in London. The show had been organised by Underground Sound, a promoter in the capital. Some of you may remember that Underground Sound attempted to pull the show 24 hours before doors opened for highly unprofessional reasons, unbeknown to the artists and venue. We here at Scratch Rock Records contacted The Engine Rooms, who were just as surprised at the change of plan by Underground Sound as we were as ticket sales had been healthy leading up to the event. After a lengthy discussion, we came to an agreement with The Engine Rooms to go ahead with the show independently that had originally been promised to BRAIN APE’s fanbase and The Engine Rooms’ local clientele by Underground Sound, without Underground Sound’s involvement.

The show ended up being an incredible night for all involved, and on that night we were introduced to a new promoter fresh to the scene: Bambian Bookings.

Self-described as the antithesis of such promoters as Underground Sound, Bambian Bookings claimed to be run by artists for artists, much like how we pride ourselves we run our company here at Scratch Rock Records.

Soon after the Underground Sound event in 2023, Bambian Bookings offered several shows to our artists in the early months of 2024 as they began to cement their new enterprise. These events went very well and relations between Bambian and Scratch Rock began to flourish positively. For this reason, Scratch Rock approached Bambian Bookings with a proposed ‘Scratch Rock Showcase’ night, to be held in July of ’24, as a trial run for future mutually organised events.

The relationship and responsibilities were clearly laid out: Scratch Rock Records would put forward our signed artists guaranteed to put on a good show, and Bambian Bookings would organise the logistics of the given event, source the venue at their cost, and promote the show as the promoter. And we’re proud to say that not only did our artists perform as promised, but they also went to great lengths to advertise the ‘Scratch Rock Showcase’ night heavily to their fanbases.

Whilst the event itself went very well, certain problematic tendencies began to emerge with regards to Bambian Bookings’ business practices and priorities. However, as Bambian were a young company still finding their footing in the industry, benefit of doubt was given and we decided to have faith that as their business grew their efforts would mature.

With the success of the July ‘Scratch Rock Showcase’ event Bambian Bookings and Scratch Rock Records sat down to discuss future plans, and the beginnings of a November 2024 tour began to take shape.

Once again, the relationship and responsibilities were clearly laid out: Scratch Rock Records would put forward our signed artists, and Bambian Bookings would organise the logistics of the tour and promote the shows as the promoter. Further to this, the head of Bambian Bookings put forward their band ‘Bambi’ - the band name no coincidence - as a co-headliner for said tour. On that basis, it was agreed that the tour would see Scratch Rock Records bands BRAIN APE and The Kid and I embark on a 2024 UK tour with Bambi between November 1st and 16th.

We offered the hospitality of Scratch Rock Records’ headquarters as a base for any joint organisation of said tour, which Bambian Bookings took full advantage of. Many a session took place here at Scratch Rock Records during the planning of the tour, and the workload was divided as per the agreed sharing of responsibilities listed above.

Between the July ‘Scratch Rock Showcase’ and the November tour, further Bambian Bookings events were also offered to our artists and The Kid and I took part in shows across England for Bambian. Band performance and crowd reactions proved positive at these shows, but the aforementioned problematic tendencies displayed by Bambian Bookings during the ‘Scratch Rock Showcase’ event only worsened with every new show organised by Bambian, much to our dismay.

Listing all business gripes would doubtless be tedious for you to read through, but two main practices began to become common place and deserve highlighting.

The first: Bambian Bookings began to attempt to off-load several of their responsibilities on to our artists (namely the bulk of show promotion) and subsequently began to harass our artists when they felt that the artists weren’t ‘doing enough’ with regards to Bambian’s said liabilities.

The second: despite organising ticketed events for which Bambian expected our artists’ fanbases to pay for in advance of any given show’s date, they frequently altered policy on the night of the show and made the majority of their events ‘free entry’ last minute. This particular point deeply soured our opinion of their practices. Our artists’ fanbases are incredibly supportive of our acts, and so to ‘reward’ them for their advance ticket purchases by offering other punters free entry to an event does not sit right with our ethics as a company.

Despite all of this, we here at Scratch Rock Records are professionals. We voiced our concerns in an appropriate manner to Bambian Bookings and continued to undertake our responsibilities with regards to the November BRAIN APE/The Kid and I/Bambi tour, as we had committed to doing. Their response was to precipitously drop one of our lead bands from the tour.

Naturally, we were hardly impressed by either their behaviour nor their willingness to drastically alter plans to such an extent without prior warning. However, once again as professionals, we opted to offer a counter proposition to their brash reactionism: our counter offer was agreed by Bambian Bookings in writing. With this, work continued with regards to the altered, but agreed plans. It was also during this time that Scratch Rock agreed for The Kid and I to perform at Bambian Bookings’ ‘HallowScreamFest’ two day festival in London and Brighton in October.

On the 16th of September, a mere 46 days before the tour was meant to begin, Bambian Bookings sent our CEO a WhatsApp message declaring that Bambian Bookings had removed all Scratch Rock Records artists from the tour, supposedly due to having been met with bigger and better contacts and opportunities in the industry. Not only is such behaviour wholly unprofessional, but our opinion is that it is also inconsiderate: our acts had naturally begun rehearsals for the tour, travel plans had already been arranged, accommodation booked, and press had already begun for the tour thanks to our efforts here at Scratch Rock.

As we hope you’d expect from all here at Scratch Rock, we did not leave our artist unsupported. Thanks to a fantastic network of incredible people across the UK and western Europe, who deserve our unwavering gratitude, we have been very hard at work rebooking a tour for our artists.

We’re pleased to say that The Kid and I will be embarking on a tour from November 8th to 16th, with support from BRAIN APE and Chanty Très-vain, and most importantly we feel: the vast majority of the shows on the tour will be free entry, including the London date of the tour. After the aforementioned numerous occasions that our acts’ fanbases have paid to see our artists perform at Bambian events over the last year, only to be met with indifference to that fact by Bambian Bookings, we believe that you all should be given the opportunity to benefit from planned free-entry shows rather than be expected to pay for an event that subsequently becomes free entry after you’ve already spent your hard earned money on it. We hope to see you at a show during the ‘Better Together’ tour in a city near you.

We were strongly advised to take legal action against Bambian Bookings, and whilst financially that may have been the right decision for us to make we were not prepared to further drag our artists into complications whilst they prepare for the ‘Better Together’ tour. Many of our artists have had a challenging twelve months, both personally and professionally, and they deserve to focus on one thing and one thing alone in their professional lives: playing music for you wonderful people.

Meetings took place between Scratch Rock Records and The Kid and I regarding the band’s agreed appearance at Bambian Bookings’ ‘HallowScreamFest’. The consensus was that despite any grievances, professionalism should be given the utmost priority. It is for this reason that The Kid and I carried out their side of their agreement with Bambian Bookings for the event. Needless to say, it will be the last time a Scratch Rock artist performs at a Bambian Bookings event.

Many of you know that a lot of Bambian Bookings events take place at The Engine Rooms. We would just like to take the time at this stage of this statement to make one thing incredibly clear: Scratch Rock and our artists have no bad word to say against The Engine Rooms. They are a fantastic venue and rehearsal space, and have been nothing but supportive of our artists and the wider London music scene. Please continue to support their establishment, whether as artists yourselves or as punters at shows. They deserve nothing but praise.

Similar can be said about Bambian’s recent off-shoot Bambian Productions: they also have been incredibly supportive of our artists. We wish them absolutely no ill, and hope to continue working with them provided it creates no further ties nor conflict between Scratch Rock and Bambian Bookings.

Lastly, please continue to support the fantastic artists in the scene with whom our acts have had the pleasure of sharing the stage over this last year. There are some incredibly talented musicians in this thriving community who create sincere works and carry themselves very professionally, and they should not be held responsible for Bambian Bookings’ dishonest business practices.

From this point on however, Scratch Rock has and will be distancing itself from all associations with Bambian Bookings.

In order to avoid this situation turning into a nasty back and forth over the internet and social media, this will most likely be the only time that we at Scratch Rock will comment on the matter.

As mentioned at the top of this statement, we feel strongly that the rest of the London music scene ought know about Bambian Bookings’ unethical business practices, and we feel it our responsibility to stick up for our fantastic artists when they have been wronged. Lastly, transparency is and will always be a strong ethic at Scratch Rock for as long as the current board works at our company.

Thank you, as ever, to our artists’ fanbase for the unwavering support that you have always shown us and our acts. Without people like you, our organisation could not exist.

Thank you for taking the time to read this statement,

The Scratch Rock Board of Directors.