Initially I suspected that Zip was a custom recording label - the Al Lee EP shown above has a distinctly 'Self-financed Club / Cabaret artist' air to it - but research (!) has shown that it was actually a subsidiary of Billy McBurney's Northern Ireland company Outlet (q.v.). Outlet had mainland distribution in the 1970s, via Lugton and, at least during the early part of the decade, H.R Taylor ('Music Week', 7th Feb 1970); an advert in 'MW' for the 13th of December 1975 says that Zip was one of the Outlet labels available through Lugton at that time. Comparison of the kind of material that can be found on them suggests that Zip may have been a vehicle for the company's Pop / MOR / Country products while Outlet housed its more obviously Irish issues. Visual evidence hints that early '70s pressings were done by Orlake, as was the case for Outlet singles at the time. Catalogue numbers were in a ZIP-00 series; the lowest one that I have found so far is ZIP-24, but that may well be solely because the majority of them don't get mentioned on Google. As can be seen, the 'discography' below has more gaps than it has entries. Help with filling the gaps would be welcome.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.