interview part two

October 3, 2010

What is your favourite synth?

The mini moog. It said everything that synthesiers need to say in a very clear, sensible way and it’s not been better since in terms of ergonomics, or sound and now I can use a real mini moog or an Arturia mini moog – which is why there is one on the ipad. And that is in effect a polyphonic mini moog which is in effect a memory moog so that for me is the ultimate.

Where does vinyl live in the digital world and what is the sales split between vinyl and the digital sales?

Firstly I think it is nice to have a physical product. It is all to easy in this day and age, if we expand our analogy, that you have your cracked software on your cheap PC with your bunch of samples – and then you get a digital label!

There’s no fucking quality control. I am all for forums, I’m all for everybody having a voice, but a lot of the traditional channels of quality control and filter have vanished.

And that’s not a good thing.

And so for me vinyl is very important.

It is very important to get the best mix, the best master, the best cut, heavyweight vinyl, the best artwork and make this whole thing a luxury package. Because I think if you only aspire to be average in a crowded market, you’re dead in the water, so vinyl is the cornerstone of this label and it always will be.

We’re doing Harvey and the Gatto Fritto albums next year and we’re doing gatefold vinyl – I don’t have to tell you how fucking expensive that is – I’m having heart palpitations just thinking about it – oh my god!

But it is vital that we do that to put our own mark in the sand.

As for sales, we sell a lot more vinyl that we do digital interestingly – although with each digital release we sell more. So Harvey sold more than the first Rocha, Hungry Ghost sold more than the first Harvey record etc.etc.etc.

And I think that’s just general global awareness about the label. We tend, with the digital, to do an exclusive which is currently with Beatport, so we do the vinyl, two weeks later we do the digital only on Beatport, and two weeks after that we do a general digital release.

So at the moment I would say…that we are selling…three times as many vinyl as we are digital (quick calculation) and within digital, probably due to the exclusive deal Beatport is the biggest seller compared with iTunes or Juno Download.

But we are selling very healthy quantities of vinyl on every release. Which is really pleasing, it shows that people have actually bought into my philosophy originally which was ‘Okay, we really, really, really, really want to have physical things in our hands of quality that you can hold and cherish’.

How old is the label?

A year. Give or take.

Ok, so how old is the idea of running a label?

Well I’ve had a label before, but the story behind International Feel is really very simple.

I moved to Uruguay, I met two architecture students in a Mac shop they played me a demo for Hands of Love and I thought it had potential. Once I got my shipping container here and my studio set up, we finished it off, I played the piano parts and handled production from their idea. I thought ‘This is a really interesting piece of music – could not get a deal for it anywhere, anywhere – everybody turned it down, and I thought fuck this, it would be great to start a label. It would be great to start a really high-end luxury boutique-y label and do everything at the Louis Vitton level of quality, really Prada-esque design/branded thing, but with great music behind it so there was substance behind it and I can do it better than all the little fuckers that just turned me down!

So I did.

And that’s really the story.

How did you line up the artist roster on the label? Did the artists come to you or did you go after them?

Well, I knew I needed to make a splash which is why I went after Harvey to remix the Rocha track, and then I just thought I want a mechanism to release good music where if you look at working with established artists and also working with new artists, again we come to the balancing act…it is important to launch the label in a crowded market, so I have to have artists that people have good name recognition with – provided the music their producing is good – now if they are doing that, and I am giving them a creative environment as an established artist that they don’t normally have then everybody wins.

I get great music, the label gets good name awareness because of the artists it is working with, new artists get a better opportunity because the label is opening doors due to its work with established artists and established artists are getting a creative and financial environment that they are perhaps not normally used to in terms of the modern boutique recording industry and therefore they win as well because they know they are being supported on their creative journey.

Do you manage and A&R the label yourself?

Yes, but there are other people involved as well. I have Phantom, who is a very well respected art director who did all the Mylo artwork and he does design for a lot of people. I rely a lot on him. He does all the art directing and design and to my mind he is the best at what he does.

And Yuko Kondo as well?

Yes exactly, the Yuko Kondo connection was through Phantom. So Phantom really really really has in my mind impeccable taste. I trust his art I trust his design I trust the decisions he makes for the label on those fronts, and I also trust his music sensibilities, so I send him stuff and say ‘What do you think to this?’.  I have another guy who’s ears I trust tremendously a guy called Rob Wood who used to be a Jockey Slut editor and now has a company called music concierge, but apart from Phantom being very practically involved and Rob giving me a very valued second opinion the label is run – whether it is filling in a PPL submission for an IRSC code or A&Ring it is run by me.

How did you pull together the roster of established artists that are on the label? Did you have want list and set up meetings in order to talk them in to it, or was it more organic than that?

People’s reaction is ‘Gosh, Harvey – how did you get Harvey?!’ well, I rang him. I emailed his manager, Heidi – his manager – responded to the email, we set up a call, we chatted and that was that. The thing I learned very early on in life is if the worst anybody can ever say to you is ‘No’ ask anyway. And I’m great believer that you just ask.

So for the first Rocha single I wanted Harvey and it is a case of making them an offer that you think will appeal to them in terms of conditions and in terms of the financials and not taking the piss.

And equally not trying to get them at the cost of making the release not work financially for the label.

So again it’s that balance.

I really think I pretty much get everyone I want remix wise but there are people I haven’t got, we very nearly got Four Tet for the Hungry Ghost single and it was purely a scheduling issue, I’d love to get Shep Pettibone and I don’t think that is ever going to happen. Equally I am less enamoured to think about remixers as the artists themselves on the label get more established.

Remixers are less necessary unless a specific record suggests that it should need one, but pretty much in terms of artists and labels I’ve got every one I’ve gone after because hopefully they can see that this label in this current market place in this day and age is very serious, it wants to build a brand it wants to do everything in terms of quality and create these safe creative environments so that people can actually create without the normal pressures that the current market place dictates and I think that works for me as a business model it works for me creatively, it is time intensive – but it’s great fun and there is an empty canvas, with every release, and every demo and every artist and every piece of art and every A&R there is literally a blank canvas and where it will lead it will lead.

And you can only ask, and if you ask and you’re honest and you’re engaging and communicative why should people say no?

You know, could I get Aphex Twin? I don’t know, but if an artist said they’d love Aphex Twin to remix this release and it was fiscally sensible I’d certainly give it a go and certainly go after him.

If he’s got a phone number there’s always a chance he’ll be there…

Yeah well the six degrees of separation really does work, when I went after Daniele Baldelli I’d been emailing him and getting no response, and then I emailed another Italian DJ, DJ Rocca, just cos he’d asked for a copy of a release on WAV and I was saying such a shame you don’t know Daniele and he was like

‘Well of course I know Daniele, I’m seeing him in an hour’, and I’m like ahh…I’m just about to telephone you with a proposition! And they ended up doing the remix together which was great. So, you can also take advantage of serendipity or synchronicity in many situations.

What were your labels of inspiration for starting this current label, was it Whatever We Want, Nuphonic from before them, or even the Factory label?

I would say a combination of Factory, Warp and Whatever We Want.

I like the Whatever We Want hype machine, but it seems to be an unstructured environment, so I wanted to provide that kind of situation but with a level of structure, professionalism and business behind the creativity. And at the same time have that kind of Factory style of joker or wildcard in the pack. So I suppose if there was a model it would be Factory.

But with good sensible financial planning!

You know I’m not sat in a room with a £40,000 table. I’m very clear. I want to have fun doing what I want to do, I want to develop new artists, to take existing artists and help them achieve things perhaps that they’ve not done in the past by allowing them to go on to new creative journeys but at the same time I want to build a brand and I want to make sure that with the business and the financials there’s no funny business and that it is all very straightforward from their point of view as well.

Well that definitely sounds appealing as compared with what I have heard over the years…

Yeah, you hear the horror stories and those horror stories continue to go on, you know, nobody gets paid, even I’m waiting to get paid for some work on a compilation from earlier in the year and now they are not answering emails.

It’s just like we do we always have to be fucking dodgy with the money?

There’s no need for it.

It’s just not necessary.

Situations which shouldn’t become stressful – shouldn’t be stressful. And there’s no reason for royalties, money, advances, remix fees or distribution being stressful it’s just people choose to make it like that. You know you might screw everybody and make an extra £1,000 but big deal, it’s just not worth it. It’s not putting good energy out there.

Explain your thoughts on the importance of having a sound or visual theme for a label in a crowded market, is it more important now than it used to be? If you believe in the sound and art behind a record would you be prepared to support it financially even if it is not selling with the public, and trust that it will end up as kind of a ‘slept on classic’?

There is a school of thought that says you should just get the music out there and not worry about the artwork – but I think that’s bollocks.

We’ve not really had a flop record yet so I can’t answer from personal experience, everything we’ve done as a minimum has sold over 1000 vinyl. And part of my job – if I love a piece of music, and I want to release it because I love it personally and it fits in with the ethos of the label, it’ll contribute to building the brand of the label – is to put together a package that works financially and will entice the buying public (and the DJHistory beards) into purchasing that record. And that is part of my job. So in a way that mitigates the question.

A good example would be the Coyote ‘Moving’ track.

Where I heard it on Bill Brewster’s podcast in January and thought ‘Wow, this is a great record’.  And we made contact but sonically it wasn’t right, so we worked together on the Logic programming and then we got it remixed by Stef in Germany and mastered so it sounds now like a fantastic big record.

So if I’m going to support a record it has got to have certain things beyond the initial spark and if it doesn’t have them if I’m going to release it the record will have it by the time of release.

Whether that is a new mix down to make it sonically better, mastering stuff two or three times to get it right, making sure the test pressings sound fantastic.

But what my major job as a label is – I think – is to put the package together that entices people, whether it’s the remixes, the art work, heavy weight vinyl, normal weight vinyl or whatever it is – that is what a label should be doing so that it does sell.
If then it doesn’t sell – doesn’t matter because the package was still quality when it left this door, and it ticked all of the boxes that I would want to tick as a label.

Interesting you mention test pressings, traditionally labels will put a fair amount out to the market before a release and sell some to warm up the buying public, I notice Golf Channel continue in this tradition these days, but I haven’t seen any IF test pressings for sale before a release comes out…

We do think about doing that, but we do promo releases purely digitally and 90% of DJs, no 95% of DJs are fine with that, but it seems that it is just another link in the chain of the full release and is it necessary?

Maybe, maybe not.

We always order at least 5 TPs because everybody has to approve them before we go in to production but I’m happy with things as they are at the minute, without thinking too much beyond the fact of ‘Ah shit, okay, we’re going to have to get these out to that shop ahead of time and get a TP over to that DJ because he really wants one…’ there are certain practical things that being in Uruguay that are not impossible, but would be difficult, and that’s one of them.

Digital releases that don’t come out on vinyl (Joakim) will they come out eventually on vinyl or do you like to keep them separate?

It’s funny you should say that…with the first Rocha single we had the Mugwump single which was going to be the digital exclusive.

I think it is nice to offer something on the digital side that is exclusive if only, and this sounds crazy, as a market tester to see how well you can do on digital, and that allows you to cash-flow future releases more accurately.

So with that we did it, but we got such a vinyl request we did one-sided vinyl and it did 500 in the blink of an eye – so quick in fact that I didn’t get any copies of it and I just had to buy the last two I could find in Piccadilly!

I was one of those that snapped that up…

So that’s one side of the coin, but for the latest Harvey release coming in September, the instrumental version of the slower track Throw Down will be the digital exclusive. I also want to make sure that we don’t put too many tracks on the vinyl and that effects how the cut is going to go and the quality and the sound of the vinyl.

Then again, we are doing a CD in late October, that is being manufactured now and it will be predominantly for the Japanese market. 1000 copies that have incredible packaging. Phantom insisted in a Peter Saville-esque way that we have black super-jewel cases (that don’t exist!) so we had to have a run of them made – Ouch!

And then we’re having the logo in silver screen printed on the front, so it’s going to look beautiful.

And on there will be a couple of exclusives, but it is kind of like a history of the label so far, but there is the original lost B-side of ‘Hands of Love’ by Rocha that never made it on to the vinyl because there were too many remixes, called ‘Fingers of Sand’ that will be on there and it’s a fucking great alternate version.

And then ‘Don’t Eat the Apricots’ by Hungry Ghost is on there with a special exclusive mix, and if you buy it in Japan as a very limited edition there will be T-shirts with it.

700-800 will be sold to Japan and then 200 or so will be re-imported into Europe with the obi-strips on and sell them in Europe. So it’s going to be a really nice exclusive thing, and I’m thinking that perhaps that will be something we’ll do once a year to kind of showcase the retrospective twelve months that have just gone in the label, and secondly to add a couple of exclusive tracks that we had that we just didn’t have space for anywhere else.

As you work with a lot of quality musicians and not just studio producers, has the idea of a label tour (like the days of Stiff records) ever crossed your mind?

It is possible but not probable.

It’s more likely that we would do something with Rob Da Bank and take a tent at Bestival if that was ever an option and have a Locussolus live show headlining that and have the other artists on the bill as well.

And then if that was a success take it on tour.

Certainly I don’t preclude it from our future planning but at the same time it’s not high on the agenda…in between running the label, writing music, producing people, wanting to have a life outside music, and so on it’s like another thing to think about…and it crops up into my mind, and it’ll probably stay in my mind for a couple of days now you’ve mentioned it, and at some point it may become practically feasible and then I’ll really think about it, but it may never but who can say.

Do you think a label like this could have run 15-20 years ago, given where you are physically situated and where your customer base is. And keeping in mind as you have mentioned that you can release something digitally, get good responses, and then release vinyl on the back of it…

I think it could have run – but not as it runs now. It would have been impossible for me to be in Uruguay and run it on a fax machine as opposed to email. What with Skype and the like and the lack of paper work and need for an office etc. It could have run but it would have been very different – though we probably would have sold more back when there was a record industry!

What is the impact of blogs and music forums, what are some of the other (than the UK) vibrant vinyl scenes in the world that you know about? Do you spread promos across a lot of blogs or forums, do you focus on only the English speaking world or are there some great foreign language blogs out there that we should know about?

I’m a great believer in the freedom of information and everybody having the right to an opinion.

Sometimes I wish they wouldn’t fucking post it!

But there’s nothing wrong with a little totalitarian fascism mixed in with humanitarianism…

I’m happy for blogs to post the stuff depending on the timing of things. We had an incident with the Harvey release recently where a guy audio hijacked a track off Tim Sweeney’s Beats In Space show and then posted it on his blog and that is not on.

That is not on to do that and not ask the label.

If a blog comes to me whether for an interview or to post a track I’m generally pretty open and affirmative dependent on the timing of the release and how that fits in with my promo plan, because with each release I have a very specific way of promoting stuff and I don’t particularly promo a lot to blogs.

I’ll put stuff up on Soundcloud at a certain point, and I might send to certain blogs like 20 JFG providing it is done in a controlled way. I can’t put a lot of investment, both financially and time wise to have it fucked up because all of a sudden somebody is posting it on a blog without having the courtesy to ask. That’s a big no-no for me.

Blogs can do great things and are a great way to advertise music.

On the question of where the label sells, it is Europe and Japan. And that’s pretty much where we are selling, on a 50/50 spread, so Japan is a very big market for us which is why we are doing a special CD for it and at the same time Europe and in particular England is a really healthy market for us.

So I think as the label develops we will do more things that are a little off road, and send out to blogs that are not such obvious targets, because I believe that there should be a degree of planning but also you should just put it out there and see what happens.

And potentially good things can happen.

I like things to be organic. I like the idea of instinct before logic, but I am particular believer in instinct backed by logic.

And I think that’s how I run the label.