Relentless plans to keep up the pressure.

Expect plenty of noise from the Relentless camp over the next 12 months. After inking a new three-year deal with EMI, the major's top brass is now looking to firmly cement the Relentless brand within the group's framework, while growing its publishing and live divisions and creating a self-sufficient, rounded music company.

Shabs Jobanputra, who founded the label independently with Paul Franklyn in 1999, believes the success it has achieved with EMI so far, through acts such as Joss Stone and KT Tunstall, is important, but more important still is ensuring that the hits keep coming.

"The past three years were, by anyone's standards, a good start, but they were just that," he says. "We need to build on what we've done and take it forward. Creatively and commercially, the deal with EMI made a lot of sense."

With new albums currently scheduled from Stone and Tunstall for 2007 and campaigns already underway for recently-signed Union Of Knives and 2005 Mercury Prize-nominated artist Seth Lakeman, Jobanputra has the ammunition to make his wish a reality. Lakeman's Freedom Fields album, which was released independently in March, will be reissued by Relentless on August 21, having already sold 10,000 copies. Its lead single Lady Of The Sea (Hear Her Calling) will appear next Monday, spearheading the label's drive to grow his UK audience. Meanwhile, Glaswegian trio Union Of Knives, who were signed to Relentless in early 2005, will be given a soft release on August 14 for their Steve Osborne- produced debut Violence & Birdsong.

Under the new deal with EMI, Jobanputra says technically the relationship is "as is" and the Relentless team will continue to plug into EMI's sales and distribution, A&R co-ordination, regional radio promotions and international, while retaining all creative and marketing decision-making. However, the label will now report directly into chairman and CEO Tony Wadsworth, rather than into Virgin Records, as before.