Mike Schulman at Slumberland Records

Owner: Mike Schulman

Founded: 1989

Headquarters: West Berkeley

Creation story: Inspired by mid-80's Lower East Side noise rock artists like Swans and Sonic Youth, Schulman formed Big Jesus Trash Can without any prior musical experience in Washington, D.C., where he was attending school. Although interested in the burgeoning hardcore scene based around Dischord Records, Schulman and his peers considered their artistic endeavors to be woven of a different thread. "We had this idea of a renegade art uprising. We were going to make films, make books, and infiltrate what was happening. That stuff was mostly drunk talk, but we did a little recording."

Name: Flenser

Headquarters: San Francisco

Owner: Jonathan Flenser

Founded: 2010

Origin of label name: A flenser is a person who cuts blubber from a whale carcass. There is a tradition of using words that evoke gore and violence to describe extreme music, and Jonathan was clever enough to find a thoroughly antiquated, archaic one to name his label after. The word "flense" is etymologically rooted in Danish, a language spoken in Nordic countries where black metal originated. Jonathan could have simply named his label after a song, so its impressive that he found such an evocative term appropriate on so many levels.

Musical focus: In short, Flenser releases black metal and doom, although there are artists on the roster that don't fit neatly within those subgenres of metal. Jonathan is specifically interested in bands that deliberately cultivate a bleak and dark aesthetic, especially if those bands somehow rebel against the common trappings of their particular variety of metal. Flenser's 20 releases since 2010 have been characterized by bands that are ostensibly metal, but have strains of minimalism, ambient, goth, and atmospheric experimentalism as well.

Name: Alternative Tentacles

Headquarters: Emeryville

Owner: Jello Biafra

Motto(s): "Giving art a bad name since 1979" or "Keeping the homeland insecure since 1979."

Creation story: Alternative Tentacles was originally founded in 1979 by Jello Biafra and East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedys to release their single, "California Über Alles." The label has since established itself as one of the longest-running independent record labels in the world. Enduring far too many changes since its inception to cover in this piece alone, it is now headquartered in Emeryville, where I spoke to general manager Jesse Townley about the label's ethos and inner-workings.

Musical focus: "Jello Biafra is the only human on the planet that likes every single band on Alternative Tentacles," says Townley. AT is often pigeon-holed as a punk label, and its ethics are certainly aligned with many tenants of that subculture's philosophy, but the music diverges wildly from punk rock. There is the hoarse twang of Slim Cessna, Blowfly's profane rap, and Zolar X's cosmic glam rock, in addition to hardcore, crust, and straight-ahead punk.

Filippo Salvadori of 4 Men With Beards

Name: 4 Men With Beards

Owner: Filippo Salvadori

Founded: 2001

Headquarters: San Rafael

Creation story: 4 Men With Beards is a vinyl-only reissue imprint under the banner of Runt Distribution, which Salvadori founded in Italy in the mid-90's. Runt -- named not for its size nor Salvadori's ambitions, but rather the Todd Rundgren LP of the same title -- is the parent company of DBK Works and Water and Plain Recordings, amongst others. But we chose to focus on 4 Men With Beards, which Salvadori established in 2001 with the sole intent of reissuing of favorite LPs that were often stagnating intolerably in the archives of major labels.

Jon Shade

Eric Butterworth and Jess Scott

Name: Make-A-Mess Records

Headquarters: Outer Sunset, San Francisco

Owner/Operators(s): Eric Butterworth and Jess Scott.

Musical focus: Jess Scott is quick to describe the label's genre orientation as "punk, or pop made by punks." A strong sense of community is present throughout our interview, as Jess and Eric discuss the label's role within San Francisco's punk scene and their personal group of friends, both of which seem to be intrinsically intertwined. So the musical disparity between Nodzzz's straight-ahead pop, the oblique post-punk of Rank/Xerox, and Culture Kids' effervescent hardcore makes sense, considering the overlapping personal relationships between Jess, Eric, and the band members. Eric even claims that nearly every record Make-A-Mess has released has been by friends of his.

Southpaw's Rob Fales

Headquarters: Downtown Oakland

Owners: Rob Fales and Amanda Niesslein.

Founded: 2009

Musical focus: The majority of Southpaw's releases fall within the categories of punk and garage, but Fales says he's willing to venture into hardcore if he was smitten enough with a particular band. Of course, Southpaw's roster can't fairly be described quite so summarily, considering The Sandwitches' warped folk-rock and the unabashed psychedelia of Snake Flower 2.

Creation story: Fales and Niesslein moved from Baltimore to the Bay Area in 2009, and they recall arriving at an ideal time for local music, as well as forging some important relationships right away. According to them, "The summer after we arrived, Ty Segall got really big, Thee Oh Sees got bigger, and things just seemed to go boom. I don't know what it is about this area, but it produces an unbelievable amount of talented people." As Fales remembers, "I met Matthew Melton, Jon Dwyer, and Ty Segall in the same night at Amnesia in the summer of 2009." They saw Snake Flower 2 shortly after arriving in Oakland, and Rob approached frontman Matthew Melton right away about releasing his music. Since beginning that relationship, Southpaw has released Melton's solo material as well records by his two principle groups, Bare Wires and Snake Flower 2.

Jon Rivera

Dark Entries founder Josh Cheon

Headquarters: San Francisco

Owner: Josh Cheon

Founded: 2009

Musical focus: Similar to many local label owners, Josh Cheon is reluctant to pigeonhole the types of music that Dark Entries releases. In the few years since its founding, Dark Entries has focused on reissues of unreleased or long out-of-print material from obscure '80s synthesizer groups. The presence of synths unifies most releases, but from there, Dark Entries splinters into divergent genres such as post-punk, pop, goth, dance, and dark wave. His most specific offering is the description "'80s underground," which isn't even entirely accurate: Dark Entries' second release in 2009 was a new recording from Death Domain, and the group has at least two more records planned for the year that aren't reissues.

Sean Garrison

Zum co-founder George Chen, with kitty cat.

Name: Zum Record Company

Headquarters: Oakland

Owner: George Chen

Founded: 1997

Creation story: Similar to independent labels like Sub Pop and Touch & Go, Zum began as a fanzine. In 1997, George Chen and his sister, Yvonne, released a compilation as a companion disc to an issue of their zine, and their label was born. The musical climate of the late '90s was naturally much different than it is now, and Chen reminisces fondly over his memories as a wide-eyed, young label founder. "We never thought that we should split the magazine and the label into two things, because we thought that we would do all of these things forever. At that time, the distribution model was very different. You would see these lemonade-stand distros at shows where people were selling their friends' records or things that they had picked up maybe five copies of. It was very entrepreneurial in that sense, but that world has shrunk a lot.

Name: Superior Viaduct

Headquarters: North Beach, San Francisco

Owner: Steve Viaduct

Founded: 2011

Musical Focus: Superior Viaduct specializes in archival releases and reissues of Bay Area bands from the 1970s and 1980s. During our interview, Steve was reluctant to pigeonhole the genre focus of his label, but reluctantly characterized his releases as punk and new wave, although he plans to venture into avant-garde, free jazz and piano music in the future.