BEST LOCAL RECORD LABEL

Deep within the sprawling suburbia of Miami Gardens lies the home base of Merck, a record label run by 23-year-old wunderkind Gabe Koch. It caters to the computer nerd, the anomalous electronic music geek who knows the difference between Proem and Proswell and fills hard drives with obscure IDM MP3s. It generates rafts of twelve-inch singles and albums that sell in the hundreds, yet has made enough of an impact to rate a spot on XLR8Rmagazine's list of the top record labels in the nation. And its releases are consistently good, carefully walking the line between the tastefully melodic ambience of Adam Johnson and the jackhammer glitch-hop of Machine Drum.