Creation Records Office — Hackney, London

Creation Records, founded by Alan McGee in 1983, was the most important British independent label of its era — home to Oasis, My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, Teenage Fanclub, Ride, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Super Furry Animals, and Mazzy Star. McGee founded the label after moving from Glasgow to London and established its early offices in various parts of north and east London, including Hackney, before the label's commercial success with Oasis in the mid-1990s brought greater resources. The Creation story — from the Jesus and Mary Chain's violent debut shows and My Bloody Valentine's shoegaze masterpiece Loveless through to Oasis's (What's the Story) Morning Glory? — spans one of the most productive decades in British independent music.

McGee's approach to signing artists was legendarily instinctive: he signed Oasis after seeing them play for the first time at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow in 1993 and offered them a deal on the spot. My Bloody Valentine's Loveless (1991) — a record that consumed approximately £250,000 to make and nearly bankrupted the label — is widely considered one of the greatest albums ever made. Primal Scream's Screamadelica (1991), created with Andrew Weatherall during the acid house revolution, won the first Mercury Prize and remains a touchstone of the era.

Creation Records ceased operations in 1999, partly due to McGee's exhaustion and partly because the commercial plateau of Britpop made the label's maverick identity harder to sustain. McGee has run subsequent labels and remains an active figure in British music. A 2019 film, Creation Stories, dramatised the label's history. The various London addresses associated with Creation — including the early Hackney offices — are in residential neighbourhoods with no formal marking, but the label's cultural legacy is one of the most significant in British popular music.