Delerium Records - The Freak Emporium

The Freak Emporium

Allen and Trueman also ran The Freak Emporium, which had grown out of Freakbeat Magazine as a source of hard to find new psychedelic music. Starting out as a photocopied insert in the magazine it went on to become one of the earliest UK music mail order operations on the internet. The success of The Freak Emporium funded the development of Delerium Records, particularly the early tours and recordings of Porcupine Tree, and by the late 1990s The Freak Emporium website and printed mail order catalogue were not just a platform for Delerium Records direct mail order, but were primarily an outlet for 30,000 specialist and hard to find items. The website featured a search engine covering over 120 genres of music as specialist as "Apocalyptic", "Experimental/Outsider Music" and "Sludge", along with many others that broke down pop and rock music from all over the world into genres named by decade and geographical location, as well as style. The Freak Emporium was and reviewed and featured on BBC Radio 6 (The Freakzone), and in magazines and newspapers including The Guardian, Bizarre and Record Collector.

The Freak Emporium ceased trading in late November 2007, citing the problem of VAT free imports from the Channel Islands as the principal reason. Although no longer trading, the site remains online today as an archive and information resource for collectable and underground music. After giving evidence to the All Parliamentary Shops Committee in 2005 Allen has become a campaigner against retailers that are using the Channel Island VAT free import fulfilment industry which he claims has devastated UK music retail and other UK retail sectors. In 2010, along with a number of retailers from various industries, Allen formed Retailers Against Vat Avoidance Schemes (RAVAS) who run the website www.vatloophole.co.uk. In 2004, Allen sold the Porcupine Tree catalogue to Snapper Records, and recently Cherry Red acquired the remainder of the Delerium and Molten catalogues, which will be reissued with the assistance of Allen. The first release in March 2011, was a three CD boxed set retrospective featuring for the first time the full history of the label entitled "Last Daze of The Underground" (ECLEC32245).