Sitting in his self-described “ghetto chic” office, which is actually his partner’s Allston apartment, Conor Loughman minimizes the dozen or so company files and music websites open on his laptop and begins playing Tetris. Unlike the classic game, this is a new version in which the puzzle pieces arrive not just from the top down but from all sides of the screen.
Loughman maneuvers each shape with ease and precision into its appropriate place while rattling off a list of new projects he is working on: upcoming shows, album releases, artist contracts, record distribution deals. The Tetris blocks come with increasing speed but Loughman remains unfazed. He seems to handle them on a subconscious level, never breaking concentration from the game or the conversation. As the unbroken shapes in the middle of the screen disappear one by one, Loughman thinks back to his sophomore year in 2007 at Boston University, when Base Trip Records was little more than an idea.
That idea materialized while Loughman was scrolling around a music blog and clicked on a Google Ad that read, “How to start your own record label.”
“I realized that it wasn’t as unthinkable of a thing as I thought it might be. I already had a bunch of friends who played music, and I basically just called them up and asked them if they would be down,” he said.
Base Trip Records began in Loughman’s BU dorm room in November 2007. He launched the company with $3,000 he had saved up working two jobs the summer before in his home of Orange County, Calif. The original roster included three artists, all close friends of Loughman’s and fellow sophomores at the time: two folk singer/songwriters.
“It used to be an all lesbian record label. That was part of the appeal,” Loughman said with a smirk.
Loughman never goes long without making a joke. For all of his ambition and work ethic, he has an undying appreciation for the absurd. That quality manifests itself in Loughman’s unique mannerisms, such as his apparent inability to sit in a chair correctly (preferring instead to sit on the chair’s back) or his random outbursts of weird sounds. When it matters most, Loughman is all about business. Through his dozens of connections in the music industry, presence on hip-hop and electronic music blogs, budding promotion deals with Red Bull and Pabst Blue Ribbon and support of the Boston University community, Loughman has managed to make Base Trip Records a common sight on the Boston music scene.
Since starting the label more than three years ago, much about Loughman and his company have changed. He moved Base Trip Records out of the dorm room and into the real world of the Boston music scene.
Loughman also has a team of interns at his side, a feat he managed through Boston University’s internship program.
Last April, in addition to Base Trip Records, Loughman, along with Kyle Langan, a fellow BU graduate who partnered with Loughman after leaving his own event production company, JMP Live, created an event production and artist management company called The Brain Trust. Unlike the record label, their production company finances and organizes independent concerts and events.
“We have an interesting dynamic,” said Langan. “We bounce ideas off each other and that’s important to me. I’m an entrepreneur but I don’t want to work alone. I need that other half.”
In association with Base Trip Records, the Brain Trust manages several other Boston hip-hop and electronic artists, including emcee Moe Pope, a veteran rapper whose recent album, Life After God, was one of iTunes’ Top 10 new hip-hop releases last year.
It’s been a long time coming. Loughman has sacrificed a lot of hours and money to break into the relatively small and exclusive Boston music scene. But with his business partner Kyle Langan and two budding music companies at his disposal, Conor Loughman now has the pieces he needs to make a name for himself and his artists. The only trick is making sure those pieces fit together in the right way. But as he closes his game of Tetris, and wraps up the interview – preparing to sign management contracts with another artist – a look in Loughman’s eye says fitting those pieces together will just come naturally.
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