Sincro

I started on a quest to interview different netlabels from different countries. My objective is to bring some light on how they operate and relate to their local music scenes. Starting from the letter A, I searched for netlabels in Argentina and ran into Sincro. So I downloaded their latest release VVAA – Menesunda and mailed them a few questions. I can tell you the compilation is focused on microsound and experimental music, which was nice to discover since I love those kind of sounds.
Y:E:T – Lightsloft
Can you tell us a little more about yourself?
We are Darío Pinto (Asolaar) and Miguel Onofri (Mezzo), we are both experimental electronic music producers and we run Sincro Netlabel. We operate from Mendoza, Argentina, a city with a population of less than a million, in the middle of a very arid area, 1000km to the west of Buenos Aires and quite isolated from the rest of the world. We don’t make a living out of music.
When and why did you feel the need to form the Sincro netlabel?
Sincro was born as a local venue in 2001. First we worked as a platform, organizing local events and trying to bring artists from other places to our town. In august 2006 we became a netlabel, with the launching of our first compilation “Artificios”. We intended to release our own music in the first place, and some other artists from Argentina that we liked. Then the project grew and became attractive to other artists, and we started to receive demos from foreign countries.
Can you tell us a little more about the Argentinian netaudio scene? How many active labels are there and how do they relate to the commercial side of the Argentinian music scene?
We can only mention the netlabel and platform “Sudamerica Electronica”, from the city of Córdoba, run by our dear friend, colleague and ally Jorge Castro (Fisternni). There used to be about a dozen netlabels, but during the last couple of years most of them have become inactive (like Natural Media) or have disappeared (like Audio:808). We are talking about our kind of music, we are not really aware of the situation in other music styles. We don’t really have contact with any other national netlabels. Netlabels don’t relate with the commercial side of the Argentinian music scene at all.
I noticed from your site that you don’t have that many artists and only release almost once a year. Is this intentional or just happens to be how you operate?
What we do is not entirely an accident, it is mostly a conscious choice. We release very little material and in brief format. Only our last compilation “Menesunda” is a full length release, because we celebrated our 10th release and 5 years working as a netlabel. We pay attention to sound, mastering, artwork, concept, etc, and we curate the material quite a lot. With only a few exceptions, we are not interested in netlabels that release a lot of stuff.
The only non-Argentinian artist on your roster seems to be the Ukranian .at/on (he has some great music by the way). How did you get in touch?
We have slowly been gathering artists that we like, basically from Argentina and South America, and then going global. We currently have 18 artists in our roster, from Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Spain, Italy, Ukraine and Japan. We contacted .at/on by e-mail a couple of years ago, then we invited him to participate on the last compilation. We like the Ukrainian experimental scene a lot, so we also included the collaboration Y:E:T (Ukraine/Japan).
Because Sincro is a small label, I assume you try to support your artists more. Is this accurate? Do you also organize local promo-events or do you work with people who do? What kind of promotion for you releases do you do?
Organizing local events is an important part of our activities. Many of our artists have performed in our shows, and we have had visits from the rest of the world as well. In April 2009 we brought the German artists Alva Noto + Byetone to our city, and we shared the stage with them.
These events have good coverage from local media. We promote our releases quite a lot, through websites, blogs and online radios.
Thanks for your time and keep up the cool work! Any last words of advice for other people running netlabels, netaudio artists or people looking to discover new music?
For people running netlabels:
Be careful with your material. Promote every single release. Be a real curator.
For netaudio artists:
Look for the more suitable netlabels for your work. Do some good research before sending any demos. Try to perform live.
For people looking to discover new music:
Don’t be overwhelmed by the huge amount of music out there. Investigate a little and you will get to the good stuff.
Greetings from the deep south.