New CCM company DML launched in Britain in April 1998

WHAT PROMISES to be the most significant launch of a new Christian music company in Britain for a decade takes place in April. The Merseyside-based DML company commences business on April 1st 1998 with an initial batch of four album releases. These albums take in contemporary Christian music, prophetic praise and golden oldie evergreens.

Managing director for the new DML company is Norman Barratt who Cross Rhythms magazine recently described as "a rock gospel legend who made a gigantic contribution to the growth of CCM in the early '80s."

With major financial backing, and its own fully operational recording studio. DML will be distributed in Britain via mail order (with full colour advertising in Cross Rhythms). Details of Christian bookshop distribution will be announced in due course.

The initial batch of high quality DML releases are "Work Of Art' by Liverpool worship leader Pete Caulfield (who previously recorded for Alliance Music); "Binding Up The Broken Hearted', a various artists concept album on the theme of abortion compiled in association with CARE; 'Look Down On Us' by new singer/songwriter Andy Thomson and a reissue of the CCM classic 'Playin' In The City' by the Barratt Band, never before available on CD, which in 1981 was voted Best Christian Rock Album For 1981. In the coming months albums will be released by respected American singer/songwriter Andy Pratt and folk roots Celtic team Nuffsed.

Said Norman Barratt about DML, "When I entered Christian music in the '70s, it was considered a youth culture diversion from the main activities of the Church. Today both the prophetic resonance of contemporary worship and the potential of modern music to engage a whole generation with a radical spiritual message has convinced many believers that CCM is one of God's major strategies for this time. It is essential however that the creative and business structures put in place to record and market this music be fully accountable to the local church and run on Kingdom of God principles.

"DML has the financial backing and creative sensibility to become a major force in the international Christian music scene. But more important than this, it will, I believe, herald a new dawn in the way music ministries are developed and the manner in which a myriad of relationships are conducted. Our Lord is doing something very fresh and exciting in music today and I'm personally very humbled that I, and my colleagues at DML, have a part to play in it."
Norman Barratt will join Pete Caulfield at the Roots & Branches Festival on July 3rd, 4th and 5th, 1998.