Dim Mak Records
American record label
Dim Mak Records is an independent, Los Angeles–based record label, events company, and lifestyle brand founded by Steve Aoki in 1996. The label has released music under the genres of punk, indie rock, hardcore, hip hop, and electronic dance music.
History
Early years
Steve Aoki started Dim Mak Records in 1996 at the age of 19, out of his college apartment at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The label's first release was a 7-inch record by a hardcore punk band called Stickfigurecarousel. The name "Dim Mak" is a reference to Bruce Lee's Death Touch martial art technique.
Prior to launching Dim Mak, Aoki was involved in the local hardcore punk scene. As a writer for a small zine, Aoki would often receive demos and albums to review. Meanwhile, he began hosting punk and hardcore shows in the living room of his college apartment, which came to be known as The Pickle Patch. Hundreds of acts played in this early space, sometimes in exchange for a place to sleep for the night, including The Rapture, Jimmy Eat World, Atom & His Package, and more. The relationships formed throughout these formative years served as a crucial foundation for what would later become Dim Mak Records.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dim Mak Records” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.