ABOUT

After years spent making records and developing artists in Los Angeles, Chris Blood built Commissary around a broader idea of what a recording studio could be.

A producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Blood has worked across nearly every stage of the release cycle—from the first idea and arrangement through recording, packaging, sync, distribution and marketing. His approach was shaped in part by time spent recording in rooms like Sound City, Capitol and Blackbird, and by a career that has rarely separated making a record from figuring out what happens to it next.

Blood founded Lepel Records in Los Angeles, where he signed and developed projects including Billy Uomo, Mirrorball and indie supergroup KARIO, featuring members of The War on Drugs, Vampire Weekend, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Beck, Father John Misty and Daft Punk.

Through a partnership with Virgin Music Group / UMG, Lepel has developed projects from their earliest stages alongside the major-label system, while keeping the actual making of the music decidedly independent.

“Records often start with something undeniable—a hook, a rhythm, some harmonic tension between melancholy and euphoria. Then a lyric finds a pocket, or two sounds collide that weren’t supposed to, and suddenly everyone knows what they’re chasing. That spontaneity—the happy accidents—is what makes making records so much fun. Rooms are instrumental in that chemistry. Artists who aren’t using a proper lab may never reach the depths of their creative well.”

That work eventually expanded into Natural Objects, Blood’s creative and marketing practice, extending the same thinking into positioning, partnerships and how creative work finds its audience.

Now back in his hometown, Calgary, Blood is putting that experience to work with Canadian artists looking to make ambitious records and build audiences beyond their own borders.