WHY DO YOU MAKE RECORDS?

WHY DO YOU MAKE RECORDS?
Question by Jerome Noetinger for Revue et Corrigee

I think of records as material for thoughts that might inspire somebody to do things.
The most positive aspect that a record can have for me is to opens up possibilities, not only for the musicians but also for the listeners; to make people go I didn't think that that could be possible!

In order to do this I think is necessary to be slightly disrespectful to the making of a record,

not to be so extremely precious about what you are doing-punk attitude is always needed. Personally in order to achieve this “disrespect” I needed to release many records. While there is a nihilistic aspect to this attitude, there is also a liberating feeling in thinking that is not such a big deal to releases a record, and if it shit, oh well another one on the pile of shit! What is there to loose? Reputation? I never had a good one anyway. I am not so interested in affirmative records that are there only to show off musical qualities or some kind of virtuosity, but records that inspire me to do something, even if it is because you hate the record or just because you find it too fucking boring to waste your life listening to it. If you are not able to make the best record in history try to make the worse one!

When you put out a record out, you are in the dark, you do not really know what you have done. Then you start to get some feedback about the record and then you start to understand weather if fits your intentions or not, also the comments of other people might show you new directions that can take you somewhere else, somewhere you can develop in the future. When I think of making a record I do not think of a final statement. After you make a record there are a whole set of mechanisms, such as distribution, critics, magazines and so on, that generate discourse around what you have done. As somebody who release many records and have a couple of labels and a netlabel, I am interested in knowing how they work. I do not think that the record finishes once is recorded, the meaning produced around the record changes the perception of it. Even in which label you release your record would change the reception of the record. I am interested in taking improvisation in different levels of musical production, not only in the playing with my instrument and other people but to use the exploratory way embedded in improvisation to the making of CDs and the way you run a label, not that the way I run the label is so alternative but there are some elements that are quite suicidal in terms of selling, like putting the recordings available online.

But I must say that the aesthetics of certain records (artworks, covers...) can also create certain atmospheres. Through doing records I have tried to explore the possibilities that extra musical aspects such as booklets with text, images and artworks, can add different elements to the work.

Perhaps because I grew up with CDs, vinyls, cassettes and so on I think that as objects they can have very strong influences on us, a super-fetishist direct relationship to its materiality that makes us discover new worlds and find out that there are very interesting people making crazy shit out there.

Records are commodities that can be exchange for money makes you continuously aware that your creativity is part of the economic system that we are living in. Through doing records you have a very direct relationship to the market and the way that tries to shape up your creativity in its favor, but this can also be applied to the digital medium for example through the fallacy of intellectual property.

Of course when you make records there are some production cost that need to be cover, but now thanks to the internet we are able to distribute our music without many productions cost thanks, but what happens to that fetishism of the object? I do not know but what I can say now is that my external hard-drive with 300 gb of music just died and this made me getting back into physical records: we are releasing with Billy Bao an LP and a 7” this month, and I am dying to get them!