Hello everyone.
We have some very exciting label (SM-LL) news to share about our plans for next year and our thinking around these plans.
For those of you who haven’t heard of us, which is probably almost everyone, here is a link to our releases.
As already mentioned SM-LL. Andrea Taeggi - Batch 0011. tendencyitis - Batch 0013 we are finishing this year with 4 Batch releases, but that’s not all we are finishing. We are also ending all our formats, Default, Batch, SM-LL and Sys, well, more accurately we are combining and evolving the concepts behind these formats into a single format under NULL, a nod to Mika Vaino. We never know how long we have so let’s do the best we can.
The main change for us is a direction we have been discussing throughout this year but are only now confident enough to make the transition. As a label, we are no longer supporting artist names or credits.
We believe strongly that this will better enable a focus on releasing good records with the majority of the other stuff put aside. We have been growing less interested in the idea of supporting or working with the concepts of the artist’s vision in relation to a brand or ego. We have always put the music first and yet often we feel other considerations, even our own creative project names, are steering creative decisions and the danger is a lukewarm soup. We don’t like lukewarm soup.
When removing artist name and credits the role of a label and music artist is blurred and challenged, opening up collaboration across everything, music, promotion, concepts and evolution. The label becomes less a host for the presentation of ideas and more an environment to create them. This has been in our methodology since day one but now we understand a better way to deliver on these ideas through collaboration.
Of course, there is nothing to stop the artist, or anyone for that matter taking credit for a release, whether it is theirs or not. We think that is super interesting and can’t wait to see what happens.
The conditions under which we create is more our focus and working together with people to deliver a good record and nothing more sounds incredibly refreshing to us, especially given today’s climate.
Also, playing live becomes interesting, as anyone can take on that responsibility to perform a release, it doesn’t even have to be theirs.
As many of you already know we are big supporters of creating sounds and structures to be reused, borrowed and taken by others, and yet in practice, this is hard to do, so we hope with our new approach this too can be better explored.
We are super excited about this new direction and would love to hear anyone’s thoughts about this, as we believe we are not alone in this thinking.
The first release for next year will be NULL0000.
Martin