Zorch Factory Records

Our netlabel interview tour continues, this time focusing on France with Zorch Factory Records. A netlabel focusing on alternative / dark / goth / punk music genres.
Madame B – Religious cold
Can you please introduce the people who run Zorch Factory Records? What are their backgrounds and how long have they been involved with promoting music?
Well in fact there is only me, Manu, running the label, for the greater part of our existence since our founding back in 2008. Two months ago I started cooperating with a writer that helps me with record reviews and summaries. He’s American, thus a native English writer, and it gave a new dimension to the label.
About me, I would say that I have been into music since 2003. I played in a couple of bands, including my own project, Camp Z, created in 2006, went on stage a few times, met a lot of other bands and people within the scene (promoters, djs, writers of fanzines and webzines).
I read from your website that you started the label in 2008. Why did you feel the need to start Zorch Factory Records?
I created my own musical band/project in 2006. In 2007/2008 I was signed by a wonderful dark indie label. But soon after it was clear that I would not sell much. After 2005 it began to be hard for traditional labels to sell CDs and I wasn’t doing much gigs with this band… So I decided to release the next records of Camp Z online, as free download so that a maximum number of people could be reached. I was a webmaster, web programmer and designer… That’s how it all started.
Did your motivation or objectives change since then? If so, in what way? If not, hasn’t the music world been changing since then?
No, my motivation or objective are the same. Surely the music world has been changing since, digital music taking over more and more. But the idea of an independent netlabel, a place where people could discover and grab good underground music for free is the same. I just added a little commercial dimension. I signed a partnership with another dark indie netlabel, afmusic that distributes some ZFR releases on all major digital music stores.
Zorch Factory focuses on the so called alternative and goth genres: deathrock, post punk, batcave, industrial. There aren’t that many netlabels focused on these niche genres. Compared to the number of netlabels releasing techno for example. Can you share your opinion on why that might be?
I think the reason is quite simple. These genres are closer to “rock” music attitude rather than electro. So they remained away from the computer longer than the techno or electro musicians. They were still focused on the classic aspects of the genre like, rehearsals, gigs, recording full length albums in studio, and making “discs” whether it was vinyl or CD. At the same time electro people were already very active on the net, sharing music, recording on their laptop, producing music on the net, etc.
Rock musicians became familiar with releasing their music online later, through services like last.fm, jamendo, myspace, etc. And for niche genres, dedicated labels like Zorch Factory was a good way of being visible. That’s why I received so many demos & applications.
Can you tell us a little about the netaudio scene in France? Are you in touch with other netlabels? Are there many active netlabels?
I am not really aware of the netaudio scene in France. Not at all in fact,  except for these niche genres. And in France there are no other netlabels like ZFR. Yet some traditional labels in the scene are starting to release things as digital, like free samplers of their artists. And some other netlabels appear from time to time. And there are some bands which are very active on their own. I mostly cooperate with my big partner afmusic, which is really a leader of the genre in Europe at least.
Your deal with afmusic from Germany enables you to publish CD releases. Do you feel physical releases still carry a certain importance? We all know they reach less people, but do they generate more reviews and specialized attention?
Well the deal with afmusic only covers commercial digital releases. Meaning these releases will appear on iTunes, Amazon, Deezer, Spotify… Still I agree with you regarding physical releases. These are still generating more attention from traditional magazines for example, while reaching far less people…
Do you collaborate with local promoters to organize events for your artists? If so, can you tell us in what form? If not, why not?
No, simply because I do not have the time for this. I’d love too, but I have a job, a family, and not enough time or energy for more than the label!
Why the restriction of no derivatives on your standard creative commons license? Are you against the remix culture? Wouldn’t it make sense to let the people who are inspired from your releases to create and share their work? You don’t lose anything from it, only stand to gain more publicity. Or are you concerned with protecting your image?
Well it’s more something related to the “rock” music culture which is not that familiar with remixes, we expect that the band asks for such remixes and provides the remix kit for it, or if someone does a remix they let the original musician know about it before releasing it. So it was more a choice to have a license model that fits the label band’s culture in general. But each band is free to ask for a more flexible creative commons license model.
Thank you for your time, and good luck with your future efforts.

Drowning

Continuing the tour of netlabel interviews per country in alphabetical order, I dug up a Danish netlabel called Drowning and asked its founder and curator Danny Kreutzfeldt some questions on their state of operations. Drowning focuses on drone and doom sounds, not everyone’s cup of tea, but, as you’ll read, their answers still provide interesting insights on how some labels operate and the parallel with the diy music scene.
Wyrm – Ouroburous Harpegnathos
Can you please introduce to us the people who run Drowning. What are their backgrounds. Is it just you running the whole label Danny?
Drowning is run solely by me. I live in Denmark and work professionally with web stuff, but have been involved with electronic and extreme music since adolescence. My first release was a dubby ambient EP on the pioneering netlabel Thinner in 2002. From 2002 till 2008 I released a lot of music on netlabels and physical format labels. I was a part of the Noisejihad concert/party-organization until we closed in 2008. At some point I also ran a small hateful CDR label called 8K Mob.
Today, I’m involved with the Danish electronic music label Uhrlaut. Back in 2008 it was the first label in the world to have an official collecting society (KODA) backing an LP/CD release, which was also made available as free Creative Commons mp3s. While I’m not really active making new music anymore, I still have a solo music project called Periskop, with which I’m currently working on an LP/free download album on Uhrlaut in 2013.
When did you feel the need to create Drowning? Why the focus on drone/doom? Was there a lack of labels focusing on the genre?
Drowning is a drone & doom netlabel, which means it mainly releases drone doom metal. I’ve been fascinated by this type of music for a long time. The notion of brutal primitive sound taking the form of slow evocative art immediately appealed to me. But Drowning is not a strictly genre-specific label and I’m interested in releasing anything drone-based or doom-like, as long as it fits the overall aesthetic. This is pretty normal for the many labels out there releasing drone doom metal, but I don’t think there are any of them that operate as a netlabel.
I started Drowning in 2009 as a pet project, where I could try out things related to doing music on the web. Because of the monumental overproduction and overpromotion of culture, these are interesting times. One consequence has been that music as a consumer product has become almost completely worthless. The obvious solution to this is to turn every label into a CC-based netlabel. But this raises the question of where the value is in music these days. And despite offering music for free, if the promotion is not done well, people will still feel like you’re trying to steal their time from them. All this fascinates me.
How does Drowning relate to the local scene? Do you organize concerts? Do you have any connections with local promoters? Or do you operate solely on the internet?
A firm grounding in a local scene is very useful for an artist, band or physical format label. This is also somewhat true for a netlabel, but sadly I have plenty of connections and not enough time. So far there has only been one Drowning release event, which was earlier this year in my hometown Aarhus for Moongazing Hare’s “The Sunderland Wreck”. I’ve been meaning to do some showcases for ages, and it’s probably the one thing I need to find better time for, in order to promote Drowning effectively in Denmark.
I noticed on your website you have some videos as well. Do you feel the video component is essential in the process of bringing people to listening to the sounds?
Well, for the moment they are no-budget videos made by the acts themselves – and mainly just an excuse to have a presence on YouTube. YouTube is where most people younger than 60 check out new music, but there’s so much, and the suggestion function is extremely poor. If a good well-subscribed YouTube channel has made the effort of uploading a release, I think it’s a very nice gesture and holds a lot of value. Even though it doesn’t generate a lot of traffic to the netlabel site, it gets the music heard. As a netlabel though, it only really makes sense to make videos for YouTube, if you release an already established name, that people are actively searching for.
If none of this is happening, the long way around would be to build up your own successful YouTube channel, or search for channels you can try to push your stuff to.
I know you personally been involved with several label and music projects under a few different genres. Do you notice a parallel between those niche genre scenes? I’m talking in terms of how they position themselfs in the netaudio / cdr / commercial aspect.
The one thing I would say strikes me the most in all scenes or genres these days is, how big the difference can be between the high quality of some music compared to how few people that are into it.
While this has certainly been emphasized by the cultural overproduction, I really don’t think this is about our culture getting more superficial or uncritical. In fact I think the opposite is happening on many scenes. It’s more about the average musician being naïve about how the work is being perceived among all the other stuff, that’s out there. It’s extremely important to have the whole package make sense: Music, band name, album title, artwork and whatever story, message or impression you can make the whole thing revolve around. Otherwise very few people will know why they should spend time on it.
This also falls back on many labels, which may be good at making quality music products, but are completely clueless about local or online promotion, so they have no idea how to get the releases out once their distribution partners close down.
In this sense, musical talent is less and less just about making good music, and more and more about also getting the whole act to make sense, and about making things happen around you.
Can you tell us a little on the Danish netaudio scene? How many labels are out there? What genres they cover?
I don’t think there is a Danish netaudio scene, and I have no idea how many Danish netlabels there are. I remember Kyoto had a good electronic dub thing going back in 2005-2006, and I know Illphabetik have been releasing random electronic crap for ages. And then there’s Uhrlaut I mentioned earlier, which also deals with electronic music.
However, I’ve been seeing more and more DIY labels putting their stuff up for free download once the physical limited edition product has sold out. This is a wonderfully obvious thing, that I would encourage any DIY label to do. A fine example of this is Golem Tapes from Aarhus, which caters an eclectic style around experimental rock, tape loop drones and surreal jazz.
Thank you for your time! Any last words of advice for people digging through netaudio to discover good music or the folks curating and promoting it?
To the people looking for good netaudio: Good luck.
To the people running netlabels: Don’t waste people’s time; don’t release boring mediocre music just because you can; don’t make confusing websites just because they look cool. People will hate you and leave you.

Monofónicos

I set out to find another netlabel to interview following the alphabetic order of countries, sadly my attempts to contact a Brazilian netlabel didn’t go so well, so I skipped directly to the letter C and googled up Monofónicos from Colombia with half a dozen artists in their roster and double that amount of free releases available for download. Miguel Isaza, co-founder and artist of Monofónicos and also curator of other netlabels and CC projects (such as invisiblevalley.com and ins-out.com) was kind enough to answer a few questions about them.
Qk – Valencia (Booiamrudolf Remix)
Can you tell us a little about who runs the Monofónicos netlabel? Who are you? What’s your background?
The netlabel is run mainly by Miguel Isaza and Douglas Fugazi, but most of the time we like to work collectively, taking decisions between several artists of the netlabel. There are certain roles for each person, but we like to think as a family and work as a family, so at the end, there are around 8 people running the whole project.
Monofónicos started in 2008, please tell us how and why.
We started with the idea of using new technologies to not only create and talk about the music we make, but also to engage new people and create a local community of artists interested in sharing their creative ways, ideas and projects. We started the project as a collective running different projects dedicated to several tasks, including the netlabel, but also events, workshops and a recent activism project which wants to create consciousness for sound, listening and new ways of using noises locally. We think sound and music are keys for humanity and we try to dedicate time to spreading the word about that.
What can you tell us about the Columbian netaudio scene? Are there many netlabels? How do they relate to the local music scene?
Compared to other countries, there are not so many netlabels in Colombia, but in the last decade the scene has been growing with fresh music of many flavours. One thing I’ve noticed in the netlabel scene here is dedication. Not only the work of the artists, but also the graphic aspects, the mastering, the promotion, etc. It’s always present on the releases. Look at the work of a veteran netlabel like Series Media, who have been doing an incredible job with their releases. They’re a big inspiration not only for the local scene, but also for the entire netlabel scene, since their work is at the level of any other label. When you get free music created with that passion and shared with that intention, you feel rewarded. It’s something we share at Monofónicos, since we think a netlabel is not an easy label with free music. We like to work, to dedicate ourselves to the music, and to give it for free no matter how hard could be to take time and money. We just love sounds.
You seem to be focused on releasing only electronic music, is it a conscious decision?
More than electronic music itself, we think about the revolution of the “one-man band”. We’re not attached to any particular genre or style and you can notice that when you listen to releases that feature all kinds of instruments and techniques, but yes, we’re mainly working in the fields of electronic music, not necessarily electronic sounds. Just independent music being created with the help of analog and digital machines, acoustic instruments, recorders, etc. One can say that music this days is electronic, since it depend on machines/electronic devices, but talking about genres, yes, we have several dance releases and also some experimental ones combining all kinds of things, from field recordings to analog synths and programmed sequences. It’s all about diversity!
Anónimo – Mypetitmal
You released a physical CD at some point. Did the CD do well? Are you planning more? Do you feel it’s important to have both physical and non-physical releases? Can you tell us a little more about the advantages and disadvantages of this medium?
Yes, we sold all the copies of that one and there’s a second CD in the works right now. Should be released in the next month or so. Not killing the physical way is important, not only because material things have a different feeling and process, but also because we can reach different people in that way. We don’t put out CD’s for the money, so it’s not expensive and there’s no winning or losing anything. We just like to share our music and that’s a great way to do it. People like to have a unique piece of material in their hands and we just make that possible for them. It’s something refreshing also for the netlabel, and give us the opportunity to make some exclusive works for that line.
You also organize some events on occasion. Do you feel it’s important to have a more local presence? How are your relations with local event promoters?
That is a very important aspect in our work. We have two kinds of events: one is the party, when our DJs play, the artists do some live sets and the family comes to one place to have fun and feel the music with their entire body, a dancing event. The other kind of events are dedicated to workshops, lectures and sharing knowledge. We think is very important to not only share music and play, but also teach, share anything you know, invite new people to do the same thing we do, etc. Doing this is our way to contributing to a change of consciousness and cultivating the spirit of music creation we all have.
How do you measure the success of your label activities?
We don’t think too much about that, really. Success for us is when you listen to the music and feel it with your entire being. At the end, It doesn’t matter how many people download an album, what kind of genre we’re managing or how the attendance is at events. A successful activity for us, is one that is achieved. The response is not measured, just received as it wants to come.
Thanks for your time! Keep up the cool work! Any last words of advice for netaudio artists, labels or people looking to discover new music on the internet?
Thanks to you for the invitation and thanks to the netaudio scene for sharing music in such amazing way. To the artists, thanks for believing in freedom. To the netlabels, thanks for making it possible to believe in freedom. And to the listeners, let’s keep being free and let’s download any sound you like from Monofónicos and any other netlabel. We are all creating a paradise of revolution.

Jungle'n'Wobbles

Last week I found this site called Jungle’n’Wobbles. I’m not sure anymore if it was through facebook or twitter. Maybe it was just through random googling. Anyways, I must have seen a short line mentioning something about creative commons music and the name of the site didn’t seem familiar so I clicked to check it out. I landed on a wordpress page with a questionable multitude of colors and fonts, the kind of stuff that makes graphic designers cringe in pain, but most people seem to ignore. The top bar was what struck my interest.
Their main focus seemed to be their radio program. So, if you are under proper listening conditions, please do take a couple of seconds to initiate the streaming of one of their random radio sessions archived right here before proceeding to read any further. Thanks.
Not only did they operate a radio show, they also seemed to blog about free music, host a DJ sets archive, maintain an index of netlabels and curate their own releases in parallel under their own netlabels. Reading diagonally they seemed to be about all things dub. Ambient dub, reggae dub, techno dub, 2-step, techstep, jungle, drum’n’bass, dubstep. Jah man! Feel da bass! What?! No link to Enough Records Dubstep compilations and releases?! Have to email them about it!! I thought to myself. And since I was already considering emailing them anyway, why not write a small interview for netlabelism at the same time? So I sent them a few questions and Quoob was kind enough to reply.
Can you tell us a little bit about who runs Jungle’n’Wobble? And why it was formed?
Right, where to start?… Behind J’n’W it’s two of us, me [aka quoob aka Fabio] and tre791 [aka Alessandro], both from Rome. We have known each other for over a decade and also lived together in Amsterdam for 3 years. Here in the Dam we developed a maniacal love and interest for underground stuff, for anything that was unknown and dirty but sonically interesting and exciting. Then me and Alessandro lost contact for a while, he went back to Rome and I moved to Scotland, where I’m still living! And once we met again we decided it was time to put our brains together and do what we always dreamed of doing… start a radio show.
Our common ground of interest was electronic music, and in particular dub, which evolves naturally into jungle and drum ‘n bass. Dubstep was the trend of the moment so we decided to add it to the list. I should add that those genres were also the soundtrack of our years spent in the Dam. But the main reason was to create an outlet for all the amazing underground producers that might never get the chance to hear their productions played on air otherwise. Millions of beautiful tracks and projects are out there but nobody knows about it just because MTV doesn’t play them! So… here we are to blast them tunes!
Well, at this point it was just a matter of getting out to the public. Jungle’n’Wobbles Radio was born in September 2010. We thought that we needed to let people know what we were broadcasting, and even more importantly: promote those producers and their work, their links, their websites. So we set up a blog where we would post anything related to those main four genres that we believe deserves attention, our podcasts, events and sometimes art.
We started out very slowly, with playing tracks we downloaded here and there and then contacting those producers and netlabels we were showcasing during the show. Slowly the word spread… People loved our attitude and passion but I think that even more than that, people just loved the attention we gave them.
I noticed on your site you operate several things at once, a blog where you post new audio finds, you run a radio, host a dj set podcast of sorts and operate a netlabel on top of that?
A year on we asked ourselves: what’s next? Well, the answer to that was: “Let’s create our own label.” Allesandro and Mauro started Ephedrina Netlabel, which we consider a kind of lab-label where experiments are proposed to bigger audience, with no limitation of genres. Because we were already running a blog and a radio show, it was pretty easy for us to promote those releases as well. About a year later I started nurturing the newborn DubCombe Records (specialised only in dub, digi dub, dub techno) which is mostly looked after by me, though important decisions are still made by the two of us.
So by now we run two netlabels, and everything is completely no profit. I think we might be crazy. The second release for DubCombe is happening on the 1st of June. The producer is Mildtape from Turin, Italy and the EP is called ‘Coat Rack’. We met Mildtape through J’n’W and we wanted him to release with us and now this is really happening. The podcast and the other shows you see on the radio are an attempt to make Jungle’n’Wobbles more interesting, and always more appealing to more and more people and again, giving the opportunity to other passionate individuals to have their shot and little piece of fame!
Did this connection happen as a natural process of how you guys are used to promote music online?
The connections are born naturally. Like I said before, people love the attention we give to them and they are more than happy to share their material and art and we just have to push it in the audience’s face until they wake up and understand that Skrillex is nothing more than a musical McDonalds.
We wish we could do more, to be honest, do proper ads and good publicity, but we live on zero budget so all the promo has to be done on social networks, blogs etc which are still free to use. The whole is pretty much improvised or at least was in the beginning, now we know were to post things and for who… What we do is basically try to make people interested and they will make others interested and… domino effect! This means we will continue operating in more of an underground scene, but maybe this is what makes J’n’W so real.
Where do you find the motivation to operate all these things at the same time?
Right, join me for a little experiment. Put the best record you have at home on the turntable, or your favorite tune in your iPod. Put the headphones on and press play. Close your eyes and think about what you feel. The memories, the goosebumps, that tickle in your stomach. Then, think of the best live show you’ve ever seen, the best club party you’ve ever been to. Now stop and remember the fun, remember the faces, the vibrations of the bassline in your heart, the happiness, got it? Well, that is exactly what motivates us. Music and all the beautiful things around it.