A day for preserving things: Activism, technology and the politics of preservation in the Sarah Records archive

Sarah Records was an independent label active in Bristol from 1987 to 1995 famous for its many contributions to the UK indie pop scene from bands like Heavenly, the Field Mice and the Orchids. In 2015, the same year that the New Musical Express named Sarah as the second-best independent label of all time, the founders launched a digital archive to share photographs, press-clippings and other artefacts. While Sarah releases were often dismissed by the popular music press at the time as ‘twee’ – perhaps due to the label’s name and the gender of one of its founders – the archive provides a compelling counterstory (Martinez) of the label as an activist organization advancing political causes through its releases, advertisements and more. This article examines the political legacy of Sarah Records, a label that regularly advocated for feminism and socialism through its releases, by considering how its engagement with the press, its use of technology, and now its archive have worked to enact its political ideals and subvert dominant cultures.