I was at FGM Industries Sdn Bhd (before it called OMRY RECORDS) helping my wife's family running the only bumiputera music entrepreneur at that time having their own professional 24 tracks recording studio including of mastering facilities and cassette duplicating machines since 1990 in Jalan Sentul, Kuala Lumpur.
Looking after the marketing and distribution department, I felt unhappy with the product list of FGM nevertheless they had their own studio (like own farm of music!) but all of the product was 'market shy' and away from the market trend.
I still remember that our studio almost fully booked and fully used by local records companies. Almost all of them also was recording rock bands album, but FGM was never feel the same and their only rock band released at that time was URGENT (1st album was in 1988 and 2nd was early 1990).
Frustrated with the sales performance, I decided to go downstream and looking after the production by myself. I saw the competition also was very tough! At that time almost every rock bands wanted M.Nasir to produced their album or wanted his song track to be 'killer song'. This resulted poor schedule of release because almost all M.Nasir's product took nearly one year to complete!
I know that FGM will never got energy to compete with all the tauke2 local record companies or giants international companies and we have to continue producing product and the product must speak 'louder' than all the rock bands. I know that Malaysian Underground Music scene just started 5 years back and still not having good impact from the followers (I went to few underground gigs in KL and Ipoh and saw only hundred over pack the gig ground!) but at least I can put a try!
One day my friend Rahim Zubir told me that he knows one band who always did jamming at Helion Studio Medan Mara (Rahim's shop just beside this legend's studio!) and want to introduce them to me. I ask him to wait until I visited Rahim's Shop and almost a week of hearing sessions from Rahim's Shop, then I decided to ask Rahim to do me a favor by introducing them (later I know the group band has a name called FTG).
But the critics been flying to and by management that my idea was crazy and by signing FTG with FGM, the named of FGM will be tarnish and collapse. Then I created Karun Seni to be a sub label to FGM to solve that problem probably created by well known rock composer who don't want to accept that 'rock kapak' malaysian era will ended soon!
Later Karun Seni signed with Mie, Jac, Nizam and Bart (Allahyarham) at the FGM office for 2 years or 2 album contract. It took only one week to complete this mini album (by tracks, actually it's an full album if calculated by length!) because all of them had been jamming for almost a year hoping to get proper records deal (not a demo deal)!
That's my story how we started 20 years ago. And I can say that we created the history and the true claimed that FTG was the first Underground band recorded professionally in Malaysia. Cromox came 3 weeks later but their released was a Demo release which recorded in Australia where they studied there.
But it's just about music, just about new market opportunity!
By hjrozman
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