interview part three

October 3, 2010

First couple of questions from Phil South who runs Golf Channel

Does the label turn a profit, and how can you afford to run it full time?

The label turns a small profit, but at worst breaks even when the releases are expensive. But that links back to the point of making sure the package that the public receives is enticing enough which is my main job.

So the label does pretty well financially because I’m pretty careful.

As for wages, I couldn’t make a full-time living if it was my only endeavour. But I’m very lucky that I had a period in my life where I did a lot of film and TV music and I still earn pretty good royalties from that.

I don’t think you can run a label today (unless you’re perhaps DFA and you have Sony’s backing) and make a full time income from it. I think that would be pretty hard and pretty unrealistic. Unless you’re very active and have extremely good connections in the music sync market of films and TV and stuff like that. Or unless you have one track that really takes off in that market and you get and advert for £70,000 or £80,000.

So basically I earn a living from music, but not solely from the label.

Where did the major labels go wrong in the music business, have they screwed themselves over by missing the boat on mp3s?

There’s no doubt, if you cast about for opinions across the business world, and you asked ‘What’s the worst business of the last ten years?’ the answer would be ‘Major record labels’.

I have never seen such levels of ineptitude, stupidity, wastefulness, ridiculous behaviour, lack of discipline, and –on a pure business level- the inability to a) look to the future and invest in it and b) reinvest in the business in general terms.

There is no doubt that they deserve everything they are now getting. They’ve missed so many boats they are in a land-locked country.

Would I ever liaise or affiliate International Feel with a major label? I would say ‘never say never’, but it would have to be a fucking fantastic deal.

The label is very financially secure in its own little niche at the moment and each release goes and awareness about the label grows that can only get better as long as I don’t make any stupid mistakes. Somebody once said ‘We’re all human, we all make mistakes, the secret in life is not to make the one mistake that brings you down’.

Major labels: a few clever people, predominantly idiots. Stupid idiots.

I’m not going to catalogue their errors but can you imagine Tubular Bells getting signed today? It just would not happen. Industry people are fucking idiotic sheep that may as well be counting suppositories going into a pharmaceutical packet, because that’s all they’re good for.

And having said that if someone from a major label is reading this I’ll never get offered a major deal anyway which would mean that I wouldn’t have to make a difficult decision.

Well, if they are reading it then they might be turning a corner, but I doubt they will be…

The very nature of the way these businesses are now structured, I have a whole philosophy on the Western business approach, which is perhaps not for here, but briefly, it’s wrong.

The Western business ethos of grow every year, make more profit, make sure the shareholders are happy…it’s wrong.

It’s flawed and it has got us into the sub-prime, derivative, sovereign debt mess that we are in. I would say the three things I know about are music, money and geo-politics, and in a way you could use a major record label as an intrinsic example of certainly two of those three things coming together in the most disharmonious disingenuous way.

The reality is really crystal cut to me.

You build a community; take care of the people around you so it is proper Socialism, not champagne Nu-Labour Socialism. I’m talking about community based, caring, practically impacting in a positive way Socialism. And a label is just a microcosm of that community, another bubble.

And so, at the end of the day, I think it is absolutely important not to think about growth.

I’ve had a number of businesses and always gone into it with a positive attitude, always tried to be the best I can be everyday in terms of myself, my professionalism, and the finances around it, and the business side is the instinct and the logic.

And I genuinely believe if you go into things with that state of mind, good things will happen and good things will come if you put the work in and you have ongoing work ethic married to good future proofed ideas and therefore at the end of the day, that’s what you have to do, and not worry too much about whether you are growing or what your profit is.

I’m not saying do it just for the love, but if you go into it with an open heart and a positive attitude – good things will happen.

Profits with a bit of hippyism!

On a basic level you’ve got to say do I live my life in fear or do I live my life in love?

And on a very basic level it will always be one of those two. And if you relate that back to major record labels A&R policy is fear. Am I missing out on something? I don’t want to stick my neck out. So they are fucked. They continue to be fucked, and they will continue to look to the underground and the independents to trail blaze and pioneer because we are the ones without fear.

For us a very important record this year was Maxxi and Zeus because it was ambient record and it didn’t fit what the label profile was becoming but I was so keen to release it for that reason alone – aside from the fact that it is a great track.

I want to get to the point where people say, ‘You know what, we’re just going to follow International Feel because we trust their ears, we like what they’re doing, we love the packaging, and they are trying to do something differently and that is good enough for us’. Rather than saying ‘They should have released a record that sounded like the latest Golf Channel or Eric Duncan edit’.

I don’t want that.

I want to do things for the right reasons and inject some humanity and organic growth back in to an industry that was founded on those principles and has drifted so far from its roots in the major labels it’s unrecognisable.

On that point, do you make deals in the traditional sense with contracts and advances, where an artist might want an over-dub and you put up the money to make their creative vision come true? Do you believe a label should wholly support an artist financially, or do you believe that in the modern age that it is expected that most artists will be holding down a day job and the music is a hobby?

It’s a bit of both, we have contracts –that are all profit share deals – split down the middle in a transparent way. They can have advances, or they may decide to forgo an advance and use that for a remix fee instead so that they get a better package. If we speak together and that’s what the outcome of what we all agree to do was.

Everybody is supported but different artists need different things at different times in their career. And I try and build that into the contracts and into my relationships and ongoing relationships with each individual act dependent on what they need. I’m hopeful that I am opening doors that may lead to a full time career in music, but I’m not about to say here’s a living wage and I expect a number of tracks every month and just quit your job.

I don’t think that’s realistic in the current marketplace. But if they want to make an album and need living money for a chunk of time to focus on that – then that should form part of the advance. And because it is just me I can gear every contract to the artist’s requirements while remembering what the label needs to do to make that release work.

So your contracts are set up similar to Factory records where the artists are free to go?

Well what happened with Factory was when they needed a cash injection and London Records would have given them a cash injection, London came up to Manchester and found out that all the contracts were worthless because the label didn’t own any of the masters.

And that’s exactly the same with us, so there’s another reason why we’ll probably never do a major label deal – because I think it is unfair, I don’t want to offer slave practices I don’t want to offer restriction of trade practice.

We do a contract that’s a 50/50 profit share, and we lease the masters off people for a period of time; a small number of years, not an excessive, ridiculous period of time. And after that it reverts back to them and they can do with it as they will. During the time it is with us we can utilise it as best we can in as many different avenues as we can. And we share in the proceeds from those gains. And I think having been an artist that is the fairest approach.

Any more heavy-handed approach is unfair and is in the label’s favour.

As a label that is run with the focus on growing artists in a positive way, what do you make of labels that only license tracks and don’t really develop artists? And in addition, what do you think of bootleg labels?

For the first question, every artist needs a different thing.

So you’ve got to be there to support them, whether it is a new act like Hungry Ghost where you want to see these guys do well because they are great people, they’re passionate, they’re eloquent, they’re personable, they’re great communicators, and you want to be able to help them and aid them on their own journey.

If you have the power in any walk of life to empower somebody and you don’t take it you’re a pretty fucking horrible person it is one of the most valued things an individual can do for another individual.

And I think that what we do is work with people. On Logic programming, sonics, artwork, the arrangement or finding a DJ agent. Which is why I have to be so very careful who we sign because the time commitment is pretty full on (aside from running the label) with each artist.

And I want to be able to make sure that I can give added value to that person – on a personal level and if I can’t I don’t want to. Whilst I’m not going to criticise the licensing approach it’s not for me. I want to make sure that I’m giving something to these guys that they couldn’t get elsewhere, and that it’s positively impacting their music and their

You realise your Soundcloud dropbox and email inbox is going to double now…

Fine! I get through a lot of demos, a lot of them are not for my taste or not of a quality at that point in that artist’s career that I would want to pursue a relationship, but I’m very happy to listen. I am very lucky I earn a very good living from music and have been able to do that for ten years, I have enough spare time that I can listen to demos and I think it is absolutely disrespectful to not listen and to not reply. Even if that reply is negative.

Would it not be easier to just do 12”s with artists?

Well albums are a bigger commitment; a bigger planning commitment and it’s a bigger promotional commitment so again it depends on the artist. I could quite easily just keep doing 12”s and if that is successful for the artist and allows the artist to go on elsewhere and do an album then that equally would be great. I’m doing albums next year because I believe it’s the next step up.

To do a Locussolus album is going to be a very exciting journey for me.

And to do a Gatto Frito album will give Ben a chance to get his music out in a really well executed manner and therefore hopefully really aid his career. So I’m open to both. I’m happy to follow where the path leads depending on what comes through the door and what I decide is the label’s strategy month by month or year by year.

Labels that put out only 12”s that are doing it well – great.

And as for bootleg labels – they are certainly filling a niche, but it’s not for me. We have the EFEEL series where we do release a series of limited edition edits, and they are great fun. But I want originality as a brand I would not want to be just a re-edit label. And I think re-edit labels have an obligation to appraise people of where the original has come from. You can’t just put out an edit of Circus of Death by the Human League and not let people know where that has come from so that they get a chance to check out the Human League’s back catalogue before ‘Dare’ for example.

I think we are passed the era now of secret knowledge.

Knowledge is free and it should be free and that’s the great thing about the Internet. Passing on knowledge is vital. That’s why DJHistory.com is vital, that’s why record shops are vital and we should do everything we can to help them stay in business. I think we should all remember we are all providing a service and we all have knowledge to share and we should serve that knowledge out to the community. Whether it’s an online forum or record shop as a DJ or whatever.

My contribution is running a label for very little profit or financial gain and putting music out there, though some would say that I should contribute more on online forums, I believe that is my contribution. Other people contribute by working in shops or doing small gigs, radio shows, putting the music out there, what you’re doing with your blog, what the forums are doing and it all contributes to the sense of community, and that is very important and shouldn’t be waylaid.

And some bits about yourself- how did you start out?

I’m originally from Sheffield, I’ve not lived in England for twelve years now, I lived in Berlin, then the north of Italy, then Berlin again, and then Uruguay.

The reason for Uruguay is that I’m lucky enough to run my life, business wise, from anywhere as long as I’ve got an Internet connection and a phone. And I wanted somewhere where there wasn’t a big brother society and this culture of celebrity. No massively overt consumerism and very few governmental intrusions into your life.

With no particularly nasty weather shocks waiting to happen and great weather at least half the year…Uruguay ticked all those boxes.

The best and worst aspects of Uruguay: culture here is very far behind Western culture. And that is partly its geographical location and partly the number of people here, it’s the size of England with three million people and half of them live in Montevideo.

There are a lot more open spaces.

Consumerism is a lot more under developed than it is elsewhere in the world, which can be frustrating, but it also means it is liberating – and you can still import things. It also means there are a set of values and morals that you might say are old fashioned but that are endearing that you don’t see in a lot of other places.

So Uruguay was just a combination of factors that would enhance my quality of life, I mean I can see the sea every morning and the cost of living is manageable. I’d like to travel a bit more on the continent and see some of the other sites. Harvey and I are talking about a trip together out to Easter Island, which will be interesting…

As for the name International Feel, it literally popped into my head. There was no great design behind it, I was thinking of a name for the label and it popped in. And I thought this is a great name for the label.

And finally…how big is the “scene” or the underground for this kind of music?

I know that if we’re not stupid we can sell a thousand minimum of every vinyl we do and for now that’s enough. Add on third party licences and digital sales and we can make the label function on that basis.

What is underground?

What is a scene?

How will it progress?

Who knows?

Yet Harvey can go to Japan and was seriously asked whether he wanted to do any pillowcases as a merchandise item…

I was having this discussion with Greg Wilson recently and he’s of the opinion that if one track breaks through that people will revisit a lot of this scene retrospectively. And I value his word greatly, he has been around a long time and he is a well-considered, thoughtful individual. And I think there is a lot of truth in what he says – will that one tune come? Who can say? Will Madonna be getting these kinds of remixes in two years for her next album because one tune did break through? Very possibly. And I think it would be interesting to see how it develops if it did do that.

Equally it seems very self-sustaining and it could stay as it is. Much like the drum and bass community. Will this scene have its Goldie or Reprazent moments? Peak for a time and then go back into itself but in an expanded manner. I don’t know. All I know is I release great music, with great quality vinyl and great art and can sell enough to fund the label and if the market changes I hope I am savvy enough to adapt.

Do you believe in keeping underground for underground’s sake or would you like to have a sort of ‘Blue Monday’ moment?

I am open to both. Absolutely I’d love to have the success of a Blue Monday – wouldn’t that be fantastic.

But if I don’t, I don’t, if I do, I do.

It’s like Harvey said recently, there’s probably scenes springing up all the time but by the time we even hear of them they have been and gone. And that’s great. That in a way is the underground for the underground’s sake. What is good is that people get to express themselves creatively in these little communities.

And in a homogenised hermetically sealed world that can only be good.

What do you think of the habit within music for people to be so hyper-critical and disown a musical style once it becomes popular or those that spend their time being negative about who is doing what in music and what they should be doing, or knocking people off their pedestals?

It’s a very human condition to follow that path and it’s a very negative one. I think it says a lot about how these people lead their lives and how, more importantly, they feel about themselves. That’s really what this boils down to. I think a lot of the anti-Harvey sentiment, purely as an example, is that people loved it when Harvey was stuck in the US with no Green Card and he was “their” Harvey. He was “theirs”. And now he has gone a little bit more global and people don’t like it, so they say Harvey was last year, you know?

The reality is very simple. Be in love with everything you do, do it to the best of your ability with an open heart, and be amazed second by second at the wonderment of life.

And if you can carry that attitude forward in everything that you do, you’ll lead a very fulfilled life.

Finally how often do you get to go out to Berlin or the UK or Japan and hear your records played in a club?

Never! I’ve not had a chance at all.

It’s great to get an email that might say ‘I was in a club last night and Weatherall played Hungry Ghost and 800 people went mental’ that means that the music is connecting with people on its purest level and that gives me satisfaction.

And it’s great to hear that, but have been personally in that situation? No.

And I’m not particularly bothered about being in it because I would not want it to influence what we are doing. I know we make good records, I know they sound good, I know DJs support them and I know we are communicating with people and that’s enough.

How did you get into dance music, you mentioned you had a band, was there a moment when you turned onto house? Was there an eureka moment?

Why do I do electronic music?

It is because I am from Sheffield?

Well, being from Sheffield electronic music was always around, whether it was Cabaret Voltaire and Human League (before the girls) and Clock DVA and this very vibrant scene, that I was a little young to be a part of but could watch from the sidelines. I got a synthesiser when I was 13 which was very lucky thing to get. And for me it was kind of electronic music or die. I went to see Kraftwerk on the Computer World tour in 19….81? at the City Hall in Sheffield and it was just a case of ‘This is what I want to do’.

These fascinating things called synthesisers, and then they were very expensive – Fairlights were the price as a house…it was just so far out of reach. The biggest leap forward for me after that initial love of playing with synths and the whole history of electronic music in my hometown of Sheffield, the next leap was to the early dance explosion which for me would have been ’87/’88 and Graeme Park at the Leadmill.

Hearing all these records and then thinking ‘Records are being made in bedrooms…I don’t need to go to studios anymore…technology is a lot more affordable…”

Being 17/18 and all of a sudden knowing there were contemporaries making music in their bedrooms was extremely liberating, it was like a monster of synergy pointing in one direction : Make electronic music!