June 1, 2010

Netlabel – Dystopiaq James Osborne

by Denise • Interview • Tags: artist, brave new world, compilation albums, crazy twist, dystopia, electronic duo, electronic music, Featured, film adaptation, internet label, Interview, james osborne, netlabel

image by je.vi

Established in 2008, Dystopiaq is a netlabel that releases groundbreaking experimental and electronic music from artists around the world. Along with their own releases, this group of artists is currently working on the third installment of the labels signature compilation albums - Dystopiaq 3.

James Osborne elaborated; If I approach an artist to be part of a compilation, or to put out a release, it is out of the respect I have for their work, and my hopes that I can somehow translate my appreciation into exposure for them.

I talked to artist and head of the label Dystopiaq James Osborne, about the label’s beginnings and artists involved.

Please introduce yourself.
My name is James Osborne and I’m the leader of the internet label Dystopiaq. I also record electronic music under the artist name Incentive, and I’m a member of the electronic duo Flaccid Redux and a member of the experimental duo The Tossintons.

Can you tell us when Dystopiaq was founded, and more specifically what led to its foundation?
James Osborne: I came up with the idea in 2008, but Dystopiaq was established officially during a meeting at the home of one of the O.B.B.B.M:\/ [file:///M://] members around the end of 2009.

What does Dystopiaq stand for?
James Osborne: In 2008, I put together a compilation just for my friends. It was of music I had recorded over the last five years up to that point. There was a piece titled Dystopiaq. The piece reflected my interest, or maybe obsession, in dystopia literature, art and film. The members of O.B.B.B.M:\/ [file:///M://] are also into the same sort of things, so we decided that Dystopiaq would be a cool name for a net label. In a way, I think a lot of the artists involved with Dystopiaq would do a pretty good job at recording a soundtrack to a film adaptation of something like Brave New World, or even some crazy twist on Plato’s Cave.

Tell me about the process of finding and selecting artists and music for a release. Do you receive a lot of inquiries, or is it more a personal network process?
James Osborne: Since we are a new label, we have only been approached once by another artist to request us to do a release, and that is Nick R 61 from Shakhty, Russia. Most of the other artists, such as the members of O.B.B.B.M:\/ [file:///M://] , Euphobic, Zombie Ninja Schmoe and Concrete Swords, are personal friends of mine. I simply ask and I receive. How I came across the Scandinavian group Amish 82 was pretty interesting. They released an amazing EP on Sutemos (a net label from Lithuania) and I fell in love with it. I was scrobbling their music on Last.FM, and posted on the artist page saying that I can’t wait to hear more. One of the members messaged me after that, and they ended up wanting to be on Dystopiaq 2 when I told them I ran a net label and was planning a compilation. I was pretty blown away by the quality of their music, too.

Does the label specialize in any particular kind of music?
James Osborne: After listening to the first two compilations we have released, it becomes pretty clear that most of our music is strictly some kind of electronic music. However, we have a few rock bands in the mix, but usually with some element of electronic music. While artists that approach us do not have to be strictly electronic if they want us to release music for them, it sure does help if you are doing something that is not typical, like the incredible Scissor Shock from Columbus, Indiana. I feel that popular rock music has reached its potential in what it can deliver. The problem now is that every new rock act is basically doing a style of music that has already been mastered by the likes of Big Black, Killing Joke, Public Image Ltd, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, etc., There seems to be this strange revival of post-punk music, only without the intensity and artistic integrity of the bands previously mentioned. I stopped reading music press a few years ago, so I could be behind. Am I?

To summarize, one does not need to be strictly any label of music to join with us, other than to be original and someone who creates their art from deep inside the brain.

To what extent do you guide or coach artists and releases from beginning to end?
James Osborne: Little to none. Why do I need to be involved with the art of other individuals? I’m only responsible for approving the final product, releasing it and doing some advertising for them. It would be disingenuous to my moral code to interfere with their work, as I expect no one to interfere with mine. If I approach an artist to be part of a compilation, or to put out a release, it is out of the respect I have for their work, and my hopes that I can somehow translate my appreciation into exposure for them.

Some record labels don’t embrace digital downloads; how does your label look to the future of MP3 and download opportunities? Are CDs still important?
James Osborne: Whether labels like it or not, they are going to have to face reality and accept that people like to download their music. In a way, I’m glad that music on the internet has exploded. A source told me recently that the major record labels are in a place right now where they honestly don’t know what the hell to do.

The ideals of punk rock in the late 1970s, that whole “Can’t play guitar? Fuck it, just jam and shout!” attitude now can potentially reach millions of people around the world. The result is that you get a whole mess of crap and a few gems, but at least people are expressing themselves. I find it to be very exciting.

As for labels being nervous about making money on their music, just look at the crap that the mainstream has put out recently, it is worse than any of the “bad pop” of the 90s. No one wants to buy this junk when you can just download it, play it on your iPod in your car for a few weeks, until the next junk hit comes out. You know, even though I’m not a fan of most pop music, you think about the 90s and there were artists like Madonna (before she became unbearable), who was doing some pretty edgy stuff. And you also had pop stars that could sing! Those were the days, eh? But now with autotune, you just need to maintain an unrealistic body image and you are set in the pop world.

Back in the 1990s, Todd Rundgren came up with an idea for a music network in which you pay a monthly fee to listen to all of the music ever recorded. I know there are some services like that today, but I can sit at a friends house with a subscription service, give them a list of ten artists, and I will guarantee you that only one or two of them show up in search results. Rundgren is a smart man, and saw that people were going to begin downloading music “illegally” once the technology became available, and that a monthly fee (similar to cable TV) would prevent people from needing to download music. I believe he presented the idea to all the major labels and was shot down by every single one of them, telling him it would never work. They should have listened to him, because labels have screwed themselves by getting involved with digital downloads so late in the game. It’s their own fault for not being good futurists about the internet. And in a strange way, Ryuichi Sakamoto is right when he says that copyrights, in the digital age, are pointless. There are going to be some uncomfortable realities that labels are going to have to deal with.

As for CDs, I hate them. I have no need for CDs other than the stack of blank discs sitting in my bedroom that I use for my computer. I myself buy vinyl, and see no need to purchase a format so limited in terms of sound quality, when I can put up a few extra bucks for something much better, unless it is something amazing like The Six String Sonics and I can’t find it on vinyl. I’m not expecting everyone to buy vinyl, but CDs are unnecessary. Why travel with a booklet of CDs when I can bring my iPod and keep it in my pocket when I’m not in my vehicle? Why have them at parties anymore when I can just hook my PC up to a system and open a playlist on Winamp? They get in the way and they scratch easily. At least when vinyl gets a scratch or has dust, it seems to create a type of ambiance to the music. CDs just scratch and sound like Max Headroom on overdrive. This is reality, and like I said, they need to deal with it.

The key for Dystopiaq and digital downloads is that it remains free. At no point do we plan to profit from the music released on Dystopiaq, as it is all released via the Creative Commons License. As I’ve said before, I believe the digital format is limited and it seems strange to charge for it. Our philosophy is original music at zero cost. I think it says something when labels spend millions on artists that end up sounding like complete shit, and net labels like Sutemos release incredible music by simply doing everything online for free, and they get hundreds of thousands of downloads.

On a side note, I would like to mention that the best music I’ve heard in the last there years has been from net labels that put out free music, not major or indie labels that charge for CDs or MP3s. With great artists, you can really hear when someone is truly free and when someone is restricted by the shackles of a label that runs on profit.

And on the same note as above, why should artists go through a label when they can essentially produce, release and market their music from their home, with all the global and affordable tools that exist now?
James Osborne: I know of a few artists that stick it out on their own. They engineer and attempt to master their own music, record their guitars linked to an interface, and do all the advertising on their own online. It’s very possible, but highly unlikely that you well get the same kind of exposure a label or a net label can give you.

For example, Amish 82, I would have never heard their music if it were not for them having a Creative Commons release on the Lithuanian net label, Sutemos. I would never have heard great artists like Sleepy Town Manufacture, Ulrich Schnauss, etc., if I never downloaded their compilations.

Another net label named FatureNet, which has some downright amazing artists like Robert Lamont, Fature, and Hellscion, allows artists to submit music on their website, and pending artists wait for admin approval to see if their song or album is picked for a net release. FatureNet averages one to two-thousand downloads per release, and that is huge for someone who normally would get five or ten stream and zero downloads on MySpace Music.

How many albums have you released on the label until now, and do you have any favorites?
James Osborne: We are still new, so there are not too many. There are currently five releases available, and four currently being prepared for release. My favorite would have to be Dystopiaq 2, because it has so many excellent pieces by O.B.B.B.M:\/ [file:///M://] , je.vi, Euphobic, Scissor Shock, Concrete Swords, Tucker the Circuit, catchers of mad wreck, etc., It’s varied in style and never gets boring. I was pretty proud of everyone who contributed.

As for the best release that is not a compilation, it would have to be Nick R 61′s PNCYR MNP. It’s an experimental broken-beat album, and never fails to interest me upon every listen. I am planning my second and third releases as Incentive, UMASA and SONNENFINSTERNIS, for later this year. Concrete Swords is working on an EP and ShakySuperfly has an EP that is getting ready for release, and O.B.B.B.M:\/ [file:///M://] is planning something, too. Dystopiaq 3 is also going to be out hopefully by the end of the summer.

Do you have any special future plans for the label, apart from releasing more great music?
James Osborne: My dream is to have a live Dystopiaq event in Tokyo, but that’s just a fantasy of mine and I doubt it will ever happen. It would take a lot to get everyone together, locate a club, and plan accordingly so we perform in front of more than a few people.

In all seriousness, the only plans we have is to continue releasing music. Since we are not a group of individuals driven by profit, but by sharing, it limits us quite a bit. I think it would be neat to make the Dystopiaq website more interactive, and get listeners and artists involved in a sort of community, but none of that will happen until after the move to Tokyo.

There has been talk of doing vinyl releases, which would be a dream. But there would have to be something else established separate from Dystopiaq, as it would require us to charge money, so none of the music would be available in MP3. Isn’t that what makes vinyl great? Not only does it sound better, but you can find some pretty exclusive stuff on vinyl that you’ll never find on a CD.

You are also an artist, and the label has released two compilation albums. Tell me how that project came together and what was the biggest challenge you faced?
James Osborne: I’ll try not to repeat myself too much about the compilations. I approached my friends and acquaintances that I respect, and simply ask them if they would be interested in providing music for a compilation. For some of these artists, like ShakySuperFly and Concrete Swords, it will translate into a commitment to release an EP or full-length. After I receive the masters, I attempt to do the normalization process on my own. That was the biggest challenge. The mastering process ended up being less than adequate in my opinion, and I screwed up the encoding on a few of the pieces. But it was a good lesson, and now I know how to prevent those same mistakes for Dystopiaq 3.

Tell me about your project Incentive and who is involved?
James Osborne: Incentive is my recording name for my music. It is pretty much just me involved,. Incentive is a name I have been using since 2003, but I haven’t really officially released material until the last few years. Originally, I was heavily influenced by digital hardcore and noise acts like Alec Empire, Shizuo, Wolf Eyes, Merzbow, Masonna, Hanatarashi, Whitehouse, etc.,, and my early material reflects that. I think there is a lot of beauty to be found in noise that I think a lot of others miss. I tend to always want to have some element of noise in my music, but with rhythm and elements of ambiance to try to appeal to more people. I like a lot of old Acid House like Phuture and Fast Eddie, and Progressive House quite a bit, and there are times when I think to myself, “Boy, some noise would really work here.” I also did this because, maybe as a result of my lack in ability to find these kinds of artists, I thought that no one was pushing noise any further, or rather, it was reached its potential. It can still be around and work, but it needed to evolve into something else to stay interesting. Later, I found out that there are other artists doing this same sort of thing, and a whole genre of music has been coined “Technoid.” I never knew of this until one day I checked my artist tags on Last.FM and saw someone tagged Incentive as “technoid.” I myself do not know much about these artists yet, as there are not many of them, but it does seem a lot of them tend to focus on drum n’ bass elements a little too much.

My first release on Dystopiaq, no justice, no peace, has quite a bit of material that I had done from 2003-2005, using some basic software. Around 2008, I was hitting a wall in terms of producing electronic music. I couldn’t do anything that I found acceptable, and I think the drinking during those years had something to do with it. My mind just was not in the right place, and I was also relying too heavily on samples during that period. I was out of ideas. I was also listening to too much krautrock and progressive rock,. You can’t be inspired when you spend most of your day listening to other people’s music. I finally dug up the old mixdowns of these old pieces, reworked them, added to them using some equipment I had bought at the time, etc. After about a year, I released the set of old material with a few new cuts. The intro, the title track, Change you can’t believe in and sorry, no conclusion were the only new pieces, all of the others were reworked and retitled material from before. I think it turned out to be okay. It didn’t get as many downloads as our Dystopiaq 2 compilation, that’s for sure. But, from what response I’ve received, it seemed to do okay with those listeners. In fact, it was this release that got me noticed by the guys at FatureNet, and they’ve since become fans of us at Dystopiaq and we of them. There are a lot of great people at that label.

With my upcoming release, UMASA, I’m going to be focusing more on minimalism, very long pieces with slight variations. Just because I say minimal, however, doesn’t mean you should not still expect it to be just as loud and abrasive as no justice, no peace. UMASA will also be my first released mastered by Robert Lamont from FatureNet. It is also going to be the first release which uses a lot of my new tech gear and software, so I’m pretty excited to see how people will respond. There is one song from there, “Semiotecs,” that has already been released on Dystopiaq 2 (but will be remastered for UMASA), and it just recently got 100 scrobbles and 15 “loves” on Last.FM over the last week. I’m pretty excited.

There is another release planned that is already finished, called Sonnenfinsternis, and it’s going to still have some noise elements, but a bit more relaxed than anything I’ve done before. “Junk Tracks,” which will be on Sonnenfinsternis, will be available for stream-only on Anusaya soon, if anyone is curious to see what route it will be going.

So while all my material can be described as heavy, loud, or distorted, I never want to see myself doing the exact same release that I’ve done before. This might change in the future if I run out of ideas, but I believe it is very important to try to be original, and not put out something that people expect of you.

This is your chance to promote your CDs, bands, tours, websites & gear?
James Osborne: Be sure to visit us on Dystopiaq.com and visit all of our accounts on social networking sites. Fan us on Facebook, stream us on Last.FM, vote for us on Discogs, etc., All of those links are in the sidebar of the Dystopaiq website. It helps us more than you can imagine. And if you ever want to be considered for a Dystopiaq release, do not ever hesitate to e-mail us at info@dystopiaq.com

I would like to thank James Osborne of Dystopiaq, for his participation in this interview.
~Denise Smith (interview 2010.05.15)