I love this concept!
Same thing, but different… I always wondered what it would be like if, Beatles and Stones gave each other a complete album’s worth of lyrics and chords and let the other one finish the album. Without, the public knowing it was originally the other ones album. And years later, bring out, the original as the other group meant it.
Many times, I think for songs, the original is always better… would it be also in this case?
Good on you for trying something different and challenging. Major records labels have been irrelevant (if not outright harmful) to everyone except a tiny selection of industry-approved popstars for decades. Minor record labels that focus on curating thoughtful artist rosters have always been cool, but face even more of an uphill battle with the carpet pulled out from under them by Spotify and Soundcloud, both of which are basically playlist-factories and data farms that create perverse incentives for musicians whilst reducing music listening to the shallow voyeurism that industry execs always wanted it to be. So yeah the state of things is pretty dismal, but it’s definitely possible for total nobody artists who make cool music to connect to an audience, which for me is one key metric of system health.
When I read your proposal and responses to questions I get the impression of a partially-formed idealistic project that will probably create a very nice little microcosm of creativity, but with almost no appeal or benefit outside that. Your stated goal of reducing the ego and preoccupation with branding in music is admirable, but in effect all you’re doing is changing the scale of the ego-centrism from the individual to the collective. Personally if egoism and branding exists I want it to exist at the smallest level of granularity possible, rather than being forcefully removed from the constituents and transferred to the overarching system. Under your scheme, it’s all about SM-LL and everyone that contributes to it is a sovereignless ghost. Again, from the inside of the microcosm, this sounds sweet because you get to play in a bottomless sandpit with likeminded creatives who are part of this special obscure club. But from the outside looking in - all I see is deliberate obscurantism, de-personification of artists, and a black box of music output I can’t interrogate to any satisfying extent.
Best of luck with your project and I am genuinely curious how it pans out.
It seems SM-LL is best called a band then.
It’s curious what turns of this.
thx
I think it’s a curious point. I often wonder what a record would be like if the consideration isn’t the stye up until this point, or perhaps the pressure to fit in with a artist name or expectation. I wonder how we would organise music and share that creative output when we are not the obvious author, a bit like The Invisible man.
Would it better, that’s always subjective and up to the listener of course, but as a way to create and collaborate, there is always ways that can be explored, and that’s definitely a part of it.
Personally, i’m all for obscuration in the domain of releasing music - there is so much potential here and starts many conversations. So, yeah, I’m fully behind your ideas here! Somehow it reminds me of something @neauoire said in another thread that i appreciated a lot… i hope its okay to quote here:
Ask more than you answer.
In my mind, a label doesn’t need to be any more than something that publishes documents in some form - it does not have to be a source of information. It’s up to the artists who wish to align themselves to what you’re doing.
Good luck!
hey
Thanks for comment, really great.
You make some really interesting points, some we find very familiar to us.
I’m still before my first coffee so…haha.
I think your’e take on the data farms is definitely a familiar conversation. They deal in data, and it just so happens this data is largely music. Much like the music industry that eventually could see how to make money on scale, these new platforms are generally speaking, extensions of that same thinking. I think belongings this relationship is agreeable between artist and farm, then that’s ok. I can’t comment really on what might appeal to one person, group over another. Although I totally agree with you, it is not the world I want to be in. I think it’s very clear what the objective is with many of these platforms. I don’t think we need to feel forced into these unbalanced relationships. We simply don’t have the relationship. I always felt it’s like the equivalent on feeling bad because we are not invited to a party, but the party isn’t for us anyway. It’s a bum deal for the most part. I agree, that part is pretty dismal, but I think that is not the area that should be the focus, it’s almost like a different industry or an industry that no longer has a face that we want to look at. So let’s position ourselves somewhere else.
I think your impression of a partially formed idealistic approach is partially correct for me. It is partially formed. We don’t know what will happen or how certain things need to be adjusted as we go. I believe in Agile, and shipping early, working in the open, and don’t agree with top down hierarchy. So, I think the idealistic part but be fair, should there be a desire to have an outcome, which in our case is basically the focus shifts more to the creativity of the music itself with a more collaborative approach with roles shared. The label is both label and artist, the artist both artist and label. Can we begin to find ways to promote together? Can we share sounds, tracks, directions? All these things. I think we already know the answer to these questions, we do it in other forms all the time, so this is really about shifting the mindset of how this can work.
No appeal outside is a super curious one. I presume you probably mean for the bigger picture, career progress or similar? as obviously there is clear appeal there in some forms. I think this is a super interesting area. So I would ask, does a label need to provide a career, if we say that is what we are talking about, that fits into an industry model that we already recognise as problematic? If the desire is about gaining popularity, then that can be found elsewhere. If it is about gaining money, then there is always the potential to earn money credited or not. If its about say getting work elsewhere based off that work done with the SM-LL label, and how do you provide that proof to a potential employer or new label? Well, i’d say at that point, as with every point along the way, the artist isn’t forced to not take credit, it’s just not announced by us. There is an ambiguity around it. This does also leave the possibility of someone else taking credit for work that isn’t theres, but then I would say they should, as it isn’t anyones. I think that will be super curious.
I think also, unless I was unclear, I don’t want to reduce ego or branding, at least not generally. I think ego and branding are great tools. I think with SM-LL, there is an interesting tension around brand for sure, one mentioned a little in another reply, but ego is always there in some form of course, but when credit being a method to connect creative output to ego is compromised then I think that shifts things slightly, although that’s probably after the fact. During the creative process things will be a bit different. There is a sense of working together to make a good record, not purely a snapshot of someones artist brand/name. I appreciate this is a tricky distinction and overtime maybe we will get better at articulating when we explore it.
I think you also raise a super good point about “your scheme” and being “all about SM-LL” is definitely an area we struggled with. So I have always had to correct people in the past, when referring to me as a label boss or similar, or as your label. I’ve alway referred to it as “the label” and encouraged artists to help evolve it and play a joint role. This has often been really difficult as typically artists expect those more traditional roles. I think it’s worked best when working with Software Developers who are used to working in Agile methodology as they are comparable.
I think what SM-LL ends up becoming is everyone, with roles being blurred and being taken on as temporary, not fixed. I don’t decide whats what no more than anyone else.
I think your point about everyone contributing as a sovereign-less ghost is actually kind of correct. I think I will definitely use this so explain this more 
So, I have a dislike for hierarchy and have anarchist beliefs. I think the idea of SM-LL being at the top and artists below and uncredited is a scary one if assuming we take credit for everything and claim ownership of SM-LL. I think it’s fair there will be credit attributed to people wether they want it or not, we can’t control or would want to control listeners, but I would say that applies in all cases. Do we acknowledge it or utilise in problematic ways, is the distinction. If everyone involved in SM-LL has a shared role, then everyone benefits in the ways we set out. So it becomes less about our system and everyone else under it looses out, and more a shared system, ideals, and we work together to understand how to iterate on these ideas.
I think the likeminded minds is very key and I think this goes to the other point about being forced. It seems being forced would have to ensure likeminded or not, you have to, but then of course, that falls apart a bit like as mentioned previously about not being able to attend a party you don’t want to be at anyway.
Obviously this is probably more concerns about if this was a model for all, that we should all be like this in some idealistic vision we all should agree on, but we shouldn’t. A world that was all in agreement sounds like a dictatorship regardless of the ideals and aims that fuel it. I think this is more about providing balance and options and using a methodology that enables beneficial ways of working. We couldn’t force someone to remove credits, as there would have been doing collaboration to begin with or any credits to remove. Nobody would be working together if the belief was to then expect a different output with regards to credits, at least within the SM-LL output. Obviously they can take credit outside, but then that is always a possibility anyway.
I have found your comment super useful and challenging. I love it It really helps us work out these sticky areas. It’s definitely not a simple thing I feel so I really value this immensely and to consider for a moment that others might also read this and think about these areas and create interesting methodology is super exciting.
the current terrain is questionably not for us, speaking as someone who makes music and wants to share it and pay for things, so the more creative thinking around finding other ways the better I feel.
thx
Hey
Band is a term I never considered applying, but definitely will look at the ideas around what a band is, when applied to this, and see how it shakes out. There are definitely similarities for sure.
Nice, thx
M
hey
Ah I love this
Asking more is so true. I think often we get stuck in trying to define a thing, which of course keeps us based on what we already know that falls into that definition and less about what it could be.
In my day job I am constantly faced with the challenge of asking the questions to reframe conversation, problems and mindset and even though I get that practice on a daily basis it’s still not habitual. I think the way many of us are brought up in school, this idea of learning, retaining and delivering information often comprises us on different ways of working, different values, different outcomes.
I think “Ask more than you answer” could be a track title. Something I think we will probably keep should there be a need.
I think your approach to what a label can be, is very similar to my own. It abstracts things slightly, to allow us to understand the components and to then see what a reconfigured version of what we may have already defined can look like.
The source of information and how it is retained is something we have been playing with for some years. Our Batch format, has digital information which we could, and have edited, yet the vinyl comes with nothing on it except a catalog number and a side and even that we are refining. If the digital information is altered or removed, the data on the vinyl is really all that remains. To add to that, originally we have colourful spots as our “covers”. At the time we were experimenting in using Facebook as a promotional tool. It was actually our biggest way to gain traffic to our Bandcamp, which was when we pulled it haha. The values were simply not aligned and we didn’t feel what it brought us in value was useful. I mention this as the colourful dost where an attempt to stand out among a sea of blue and pictures of cats and typical social stuff, which seemed to work. After leaving the dots served no purpose, so we remove them all and turned everything to no cover. Although of course, we have to add something to Bandcamp, it’s compulsory. So we picked black as this seemed one contender for our best shot at highlighting the cover/no cover challenge. Our website, of course, has no covers. All our promo documents and when we share with Boomkat they require an artwork. They all get a black square called artwork.jpg
I think your last point is totally true. It is up-to the individual to be either involved or not, but I think we are hopeful it’s not just someone who makes music only, but perhaps people with other values want to be involved and help shape things.
Thanks
Nice concept. It resonates with the questions of value of the art as commodity. Also the question of the presence of the artist and the (illusory) control we can have over our work is the interesting one to explore. My music is released by the label that is recycling/upcycling old cassette tapes. They would erase the existing music and replace it with whatever they feel appropriate, also printing new labels and covers. I hope one day, when there is no-one listening anymore, they will do the same with my tapes.
hey
This is really good.
I think your points are really interesting and I feel the areas you mention do tend to lean towards the tension around an ideal, or a proposed model for the future, almost a manifesto and here-in lies some issues with that. And I totally agree with you on all your points on this.
I think the perspective I find myself leaning towards is more about the tension that occurs when within the system as opposed to an ideal to remove from it. Also, I don’t think we understand the situation at hand enough to be so bold to make some idealistic vision we should all operate under, as we should probably more ideally operate under whatever means we want, which obviously creates tension there also as we are all different, and I think that’s a given and should/will maintain. At least that’s how I feel at the moment.
I don’t think over-saturation is undesirable per-se, it only compromises the search for specific music or being searchable perhaps, if that of course is the aim. I would challenge it has to be. There is something in being discovered, even if only to an individual.
Also, your point about the desire to be the publishing of music is quite a challenge too. W have certainly questioned this. I think at this stage we are thinking about more as sharing with consideration to the constraints on which creation is made and how much that is reflected in the publishing. An obvious one being how much should it cost?
I think I totally agree, anonymity, especially when dealing with the innovations and tools we use today is a hard one to sell. I need to look into that more as it’s not something I have been particularly interested in. I think there is a distinction between being, anonymous and credit taken or being attributed to some creative output. I mean, for one I am posting on Lines, and many of the artists we have worked with post on Lines. I don’t want to be anonymous personally, but I definitely don’t like the idea of being popular or famous either. However, often this isn’t entirely choices we get to make on our own.
I agree with your point about using Bandcamp if trying to distribute an ideology, I think your probably right, it falls over in thinking of the purest form. I think the aim is not to do that. It’s less about ideology and more about the option of alternative conditions and how that might feed something we have perhaps yet to see or work out.
I think also we aren’t thinking about this challenge as disavowing institutional capture but more the affect this has on creative output, collaboration, ownership etc
Bandcamp isn’t a perfect platform for us, that’s for sure. But it does provide a stepping stone and restraints for us to challenge what we think we know and also test some ideas and share that finding. We do this a fair amount actually. A good example was a recent record we spent nearly £3k on manufacturing, artist fees, promotion, mastering etc and although there were many reasons we felt this was an expense worth spending, we often had the same conversation about getting money back (we didn’t haha) or how is this worth it etc etc. We always reminded ourselves what we are getting is a better understanding of these systems and how we feel in relation to these, and this knowledge is just how much that costs in our case. This was incredibly valuable for us. We already felt these systems are not for us, but we spent time and money to challenge our beliefs and we were certainly challenged haha
As I say, there is a tension that I think is super valuable that we prefer to harness than step out of. Ideals typically end badly and imposing a model of doing something simply doesn’t fit all needs, the music industry is an obvious one. I think it would be a mistake to approach it in the same way with the belief that the new model is the way and follow us.
You use some complex words and I am not the best with vocabulary so I hope I understood what you were saying or at the very least added something of value
I think a mind like yours is going to be great to bounce of.
Thanks
What’s the context? It’s very different if it’s ‘people grooving in an underground club under a single strobe light’ vs ‘empty white room in an art exhibition’.
With my own stuff I started with ‘a single picture of my instruments which got image processed 1000 ways’ so it was always the same image but made different to relate to what the music was. Got bored of that and have been doing ‘xstarfish generated colorful or grey abstract images’ for a while, partly so the imagery could keep up with my music output. Also my stuff gets dates, not names
Is this listener music? Dance environment? Functional? Secretly Richie Hawtin the whole time trying to see if it was his muse or his image driving celebrity? 
If it was him, I think he’d find that it was the image that drove the celebrity, but the functional value of the music (as something he wanted to hear) was unchanged and no less effective. It does seem to me that social qualities are totally orthoganal to questions of function or value. But knowing that changes nothing: the work will be the work, whatever it is, and it’ll be popular or not, so it comes down to what you want to exist and how you want it to exist.
So again: what’s the context? My own is ‘I spontaneously extrude music in as sophisticated a way as I can, every Tuesday live on the internets, then let people download hi-res of it free’. I’m intentionally not thinking about popularity, and so it has none, even when it’s good. Is your stuff meant to be a trend, or meant to serve a function, or is it more of a grand conceptual experiment going deeper into that minimal space?
Hey
Value is definitely something we have played about with. It reminds me back when we started I got an email from an artist who I admire massively, and they enjoyed the music but had issues around the cost. The digital was £15. They explained they could buy a physical cd for that price and found it hard to justify. I was obviously over the moon to get an email from this person and about the very subject we were challenging. We talked about it some more over email, and I explained that it is interesting that we are more happy about spending £15 on a piece of plastic that holds the music, than on the music itself. I forget how I phrased it, but it suggested I could just send some plastic in the post and it would be of value? haha obviously I was provoking this challenge, but it does poke at where value exists, as you pointed out.
This conversation actually formed the beginning of the Batch format. We decided on a look that fitted a few considerations, cost, visual, format and went into having hand-cut 12" made for people who wanted them. The cost has gone up over the years, and currently it’s costing £25 a record, which is crazy expensive. All that is plastic and labour and nothing is music on that 12", we separated it out to the digital. We tried to make the record itself challenge what was of value in materials, but then also poke at what a label/artist output creates in value and what that does when in this format. We are still tweaking this all the time as we go and still have lots of questions as you can imagine.
I like your idea around your tapes being erased and nobody listening. My wife is a practicing Buddhist, I’m more an anarchist although this is really a very new discovery for both of us. It does cause for some interesting conversations around the dinner table haha. I mention it as Buddhism talks about “everything is impermanent” and I totally relate to this. I think it has inherent influences on our idea of value and our acceptance of things outside of our control.
I think we easily get distracted by this sense of reward coming from being acknowledged, it is of value, sure, but there is value in lots of outcomes, regardless of our expectations.
thank you
I totally agree
A comical approach to thinking about Richie Hawtin for me is, it’s two people. One before the haircut, and one after, and I guess we get decide that a little, but ultimately the drive was, from my understanding, to be like The Cure hahaha. What I mean is, the considerations of that era, versus todays are very different. I think being popular in the 90’s in that scene was somewhat, at least to my young teen eyes, something of a consequence of creating music that sold many units. But we can probably more confidentially see over time that wasn’t entirely true. I think you still have choices in how you operate and present yourself to be “known”. Also, the music before the haircut was better hahahaha In my mind, the real Richie is still in some basement somewhere with no hair making amazing music haha. I dont recognise this new fella in the band haha
The context, I think that’s it. It depends and all perspectives the are presented based on that are valid ones.
I think the term “trend” makes me uncomfortable. I remember when I was asked to play some music for a friend at his Uni, and I was being hassled by a girl who didn’t like the music I was playing. It was my own. After which I was asked to play some cd’s to fill the time, and found it super uncomfortable that a beat was all they needed to enjoy themselves. I was very young and very idealistic probably, but I learned that there is something odd about popularity. I use a basic approach that if lots of people like it, then it’s probably crap. Obviously this is a massive sweeping statement and falls apart immediately, but popularity seems to exist for itself, regardless of the trigger. The term “being popular” comes to mind. I do seem to prefer when something becomes recognised as being something that works in a specific time but perhaps not in another, so the output is unrelated to the time. It’s just what it is. I can’t worry about if it will be popular or not. That’s not for us to decide really, it’s more an effect to the cause. But we can think about what that means to us as we navigate cause and effect.
My context, at least in the studio, is to make something as quickly as possible before my mind gets in the way haha
Haven’t read all the comments and don’t know how relevant my 2 cents to the label you’re putting together are but it reminds me of a art project space that had exhibitions by unnamed artists. However they released the artists names after each exhibition. In my books they only achieved to highlight the importance of the cult of personality instead of freeing the exhibition experience from it.
I did like it when recently Sähkö released a record from anonymous artist without making a hassle about it.
Hey
It’s a lot of comments and some dense stuff so no problem
Actually the label has been around since 2013 but we are always changing things. Your comment is super useful, especially the Sähkö record, I missed that one. Great label for sure. It’s not the first time someone has mentioned a similarity between us and Sähkö, although I think it’s quite different really, but yeah certainly in a similar area I think it’s fair to say.
Interesting on the gallery as well, although I suppose really a temporary step in presumably challenging what we regard as quality art when removing the artist. The classic “I could have done that” but actually never doing it comes to mind.
thx
Fan for the label a while already and applauding this move! I think it’s suiting style wise to go minimal on branding. Very refreshing in this age where the trend seems to become a celeb on Instagram and success is often attributed to one person.
I think the anonymous concept is interesting and I’m not sure why there is so much focus/outrage on ‘exploitation of artists’ if the group of artists all are on board. It calls to mind authors who have written using a pen name in order to be free in creating something. I do hope that there is some context and framing about the music or goals of the music even if there’s no info on those who made it, especially since it seems like the individuals involved have spent some time discussing.
hey, thanks for the ongoing support
appreciate the comment too, thats great.
hey
Yeah I agree, I think it’s all totally fine belongings people are being screwed over. I guess that frustration often comes from the era we are in and people being able to comment immediately. Although obviously I don’t think anyone on Lines has been like this, which is good. Certainly some questions around stuff, but then I would expect that given it needs challenging really.
Personally I struggle with notes on releases, and up until now we have generally found it doesn’t really offer much, but I think that’s fair to say thats from our perspective. Typically what have been doing so far is using promotion as a way to talk about themes or ideas, maybe through interviews etc and leave the release alone. I totally understand your perspective on this though as many enjoy reading about things behind it.
What we have been experimenting with more recently are hashtags. This helps inform some of the tagging within the platforms like Bandcamp and Soundcloud, but also we found presents an interesting ambiguity around them when not used entirely for finding something.
It struck me that often you’d get the tag, lates say #techno, and it’s used to help people find something that might appeal to someone who likes techno, or maybe it was to define its style, or maybe it was scene or production-related, or maybe its a new sound that Techno heads of the '90s would argue is “not real Techno” whereas a new generation would argue it is and…yeah, it basically means whatever the user wants it to mean.
I liked this idea of using ambiguity to inform something around the release, but also leave much up to interpretation. It’s also really fun to create, and the general message around the release is easier to create, especially when working with the artist all the way through the process as we have been. I think this is probably the approach we will use initially unless we think of a different approach, but I don’t see us writing out explanations. Having said that, I have thought about how that might be a problem for some, but the minute I do, I can’t help but feel that more the reason to not put something there.
I guess ultimately, as with everything, it really comes down to the music and what that needs to support it if anything at all. I think we are likely to keep track titles as this feels like an opportunity to address some of these things, and typically there are working titles anyway, and removing them to create a number or something seems counter to the tracks somehow.
I think it’s likely we will see a combination of working titles, theme titles and clearly thought out titles, and maybe that will be enough with a few key tags to support things. I wonder if saying for example “This was made using a Nord Modular G1 over a year creative daily project” versus a few tags that say something like #Nord #daily-upload #need-sleep, says any less than a sentence? I think we will stay open though and playful with it. Also, I can’t help but find Bandcamp’s Typography and UI a bit messy and more information gets super confusing visually I find. It’s a good point though for sure, I think it’s worth thinking about more actually. Thanks
It would also be interesting to eliminate the name/identity of the Label. Does this stand as some kind of tastemaker/ curator- a bit over an over hyped role these days.
This is not to say it cant be done well- or the no artist names isnt an interesting idea.