I think I scared a few people unintentionally after I posted on my Myspace blog that I would close this site. In the first hand, i need to apologize for dragging people into confusion and maybe, disappointment. What I really meant was, I’m thinking of closing this blog to start another one on Archipel’s website, with a few other people. I’ve been really lacking time recently to feed this and I think it looks bad when there’s old posts. I rather would see a blog with various people, remaining active and fun than being alone here and fight it off by myself.

What’s been on?

I don’t know about you but I find that things have been changing really fast in the last 5 months. I feel like my dad when I say that but I really mean it. As might have seen, Nine Inch Nails is back and their album is now offered for free. Same for the new Autechre. I’m pretty sure we’ll see this scenario will happen more and more in the next months, to eventually become a standard.

Myspace will be also offering music for free, by streaming records from Universal and other biggies.

Ironically, Minus was giving away some music on USB sticks at last christmast and on a few boards, people started to mock at them. I’m not sure why, but sooner or later, could we say that free music could be become uncool? Maybe. Well, one sure thing is, people will always secretly be happy to receive the music from their favourites for free and some other, will feel really happy paying for it. It seems the real challenge here would be to find an adequate price for music; perhaps a subscription would be an answer? or an easier way to get the music you want?

Because you don’t want to confuse free and cheap, who are 2 distinct commercial worlds. You don’t want to be cheap, if you know what I mean.

So recently, after much thought, I feel like doing things in other ways. The blog has been fun but I’ve also had some frustrations because of it. I will prefer blogging a bit less. There has been no pluggin lately that has drawn my attention whatsoever. I’m not sure what’s going on with the nerds but they’re either slacking out playing on their iPhones with the new SDK or out of ideas.

One thing that has been inspiring me is this article about having 1000 fans. It mainly explains that an artist has to be closer to his fans, build a relationship with them and that if they invest an amount per year in any products, then you’d be ok to live from your art. I want this page to be something between people who have been supportive (I hate the word fan although once in a while, someone pops on Myspace, swearing me he’s my #1 fan… before asking for feedback on his music) and myself.

What I have in mind is making the next release as a custom, collectible product. Something limited to 80 or so.

NO ONE would get one for free.

The digital would be, most probably but the object itself, which would be a puzzle or something, will have to be paid for. The thing with releasing a batch of 1000 copies, people think you made 8000 and if they beg enough, you will get one for free. Then everybody who paid for it feel awkward…

CDs are more generic than ever.

It’s done, there’s nothing special about it anymore. We rather do something else and limited.

The idea basically came from these few promos I did for Kalimari and Archipel and from Discogs, I suddenly started to get orders for them. Someone even offered 80$ for a copy of my 3xCDs promopack from Mutek. This rings a bell, I think we have something there. If I consider that I barely sold 200 copies of my last album, I should then do something for 80 of these people. No distribution at all, no advertisement. I want to see where this will go and hopefully, sell out.

I also want to start my own mp3 blog, but to distribute my own music. Again, no advertisement, this would be for free and totally unofficial releases. I’D like to be able to contact personnally people who are really into my music, to know what my music is triggering for them and use the answer to feed my creativity for the next project. I’d like to move away from the commercial side and go back to the human side, engaging a dialogue, sharing emotions.

That’s basically how I’d like to conclude this last post of this Pheek-blog v.1.0. Soon the Archipel blog will start and we’ll continue that discussion then. Pheek.com will proceed to other plans and purposes.

Lovely article that goes exactly hand in hand with the Netlabel philosophy.

Setting new ideas in the community

It’s been nearly 3 years now that Archipel has been running and sharing music to the whole world. What nearly started as a project to release a few artists turned out into something much more complex and wide than I originally thought. More than 50 people joined and released or contributed somehow. At the moment, Archipel needs about five people to be functional, I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but I don’t have the time to do everything anymore. I also feel the face of the label and its world, to be changing. This would be due to the incredible amount of new labels, new artists that are arriving. Also, Social Networks such as Myspace has put many people in contact, setting new pace of music diffusion. I could almost say it’s overwhelming.

So, if I stick to my prior notes, as a the label direction, I’d relate to a few points:

• Let’s try to go with originality as a priority.
•  There’s no rule for musical direction besides that we need to love it and feel it is part of our collective tastes.
• Make sure people can’t really predict the direction of the next release.
• Give room to creativity. Music for musician, for DJs they can reinterpret. The label has to be our source of inspiration to continue.
• Don’t bother with Marketing. Hide it.

That last point felt very important and when things started with Myspace, I felt we needed to provide only but the minimum information. As an artist myself, I sometimes develop animosity toward aggressive promotion, flyering or spamming. I recently read a really nice article about new methods of martketing, called immersive worlds games. A really good exemple was Nine Inch Nails’ promo. They pinpoint things that we have in mind:

“(…)how to reach people who are so media-saturated they block all attempts to get through. “Your brain filters it out, because otherwise you’d go crazy,” Weisman says. That’s why he opted for a “subdural” approach: Instead of shouting the message, hide it. “I figured that if the audience discovered something, they would share it,” he explains, “because we all need something to talk about.”” (from Wired)

That said, we try to limit our information bulletins to a minimum and we will never post on Myspace about our releases. We prefer acting by putting out good music, somehow, it will reach the people it has to reach at a given time. We also mainly released material from people who contacted us. I’d say that all attempts we did to go ask for a release to artist has ended up as a failure. It seems that people who get to us, mainly come with an idea of the sound of the label and want to share their idea.

If you look at all that and the Archipel logo which is circular, represents a lot all those ideas. Spirals, circular motion, community, colours, warmth.

After 3 years, JS changed the logo and the website. We keep the same direction but we want something a bit more graphic, like the last few netreleases who had covers with a more linear approach. The anniversary release will be “Assignment 3: The sound of Archipel”

This release contains DJ tools and will be made as a new batch of toys for performers or people who wish to recreate new songs out of a bank of 3 minutes tracks. We have 3 mixes to start with for everyone to give an idea of the possibilities. Somfay, Baya and myself have used the same tracks but with different results.

No need to say this is exciting!

So we had in mind to stop the netlabel at release #050. There was a long moment where no demos we coming in that would reach us. We felt like we reached some end. Then came in a new batch of music, and it’s still coming in too. So we’ll see as what will happen after release 50 which could be after summer.

Speaking of mixes, DJ Mitch from Italy decide to do a “megamix” of my tracks and declared himself part of my “fanclub.”  It surely helps me blush here but I share the mix, its pretty cool too.

There’s a take on Resident Advisor about Beatport who’s going to take some cuts on smaller labels. I’ve been quoted too. I think if Beatport decide to clean out their number or labels, it can be a good thing indeed. I know there’s a lot of mixed emotions here, which I agree because I really understand the point of view of people against such a move. In a way, I’d agree that sales are not an indicator of good music. But I think Beatport wants to focus on their more productive labels. Smaller ones will end up on sites where there will be an interest for what they do and they will attract then the proper people for their sound; that’s basically how i see it. Let’s face it, ambient music doesn’t sell that well on Beatport. It’s not because it’s not good, it’s not Beat. Which reminds me of all those moments where some people came to see me while I play to ask for me “real beats.”

It’s early in the year and I can already feel the patterns of life hitting me in the back of my head like a boomerang that i threw off, early in 2007. Not that things started badly. No. It’s just the same stories repeating and giving news to my closest friends is exactly like when I had a 5 to 9 regular job. Except, I work twice as hard for less money. I’m still amazed that my friends think I run… excuse me, that I don’t have a real job whatsoever.

Which raises a lot of questions for what I do and what I’ll have to do for the year in process.

I don’t remember being so much involved in the planning of the things I have to do. I think for a moment, you just start doing music. Then, at another level, you start releasing your tracks, make money and then live from it. This implies a lot of work. Like, more than you can ever think of. For my part, and for a lot of people I know, we started off making the music we love, attracted to electronic music. More so, It’s really hard to really relate the full experience, but there’s some of that music that is life changing. I’m not even exaggerating and people who have experienced it know exactly what I’m talking about. We’re talking about an album, an artist where you really felt…

How can I describe it…

You felt close to him? You felt you could almost reach is soul. You felt like the music was directly made for you, that it had a story that had something about yours. You felt understood, touched, reached and you felt like you probably got many answers to your meaningless life.

Yeah I know, I can be deep sometimes but it’s probably the best words I could find.

My experience was with Hawtin’s Concept:96

Hawtin’s 1996 minimal series ‘Concept 1′ gets a re-release this month backed by a second CD of Thomas Brinkmann remixes.

‘Concept 1′ was twenty four tracks originally released on twelve 12″ singles back in 1996. The series was compiled onto CD in 1998, alongside a remix version ‘Concept 1 96:VR’, created by Cologne producer Thomas Brinkmann with a custom-built two-arm turntable, which revealed previously unnoticed depths in the sound. “I slowed down the speed of the record and used the left pickup arm for the left channel, and the right pickup arm for the right channel,” wrote Brinkmann in the original liner notes. “It was a scientific yet natural way of revealing the complexity of what was originally deemed minimal. It’s the same information they had before, but two times present. Like the idea of cloning and twins: still Richie’s DNA with a little mutation. A different groove.” (From Resident Advisor’s site)

I really want to come back to life changing music. I don’t think it’s by trying to do it that you obtain it though. It’s still a challenge since many say that you can only be touched by grace once in a life time. The goal here might be more of introspection on what’s the position of the soul in music.

It’s pretty hard for me to wonder how life changing music will come out again when I feel the music I long loved is getting jaded, tired and is slowly loosing its roots. That is, mainly because there’s a huge number of new labels, new artists and many people are just popping by with the intention of releasing music for the sake of it. The goal of bringing something new has been lost somewhere behind the need to become a star.

Never in the history of mankind, we got the opportunity to get as much of something we love in unimaginable quantities. Never. I was at Future Shop on a sunday and this guy ahead of my in the queue was explaining to his friend that he needed a new 1 terrabyte hard drive to pack more mp3’s. For God sake’s… only one? What’s going on dude, you’re so lazy and being, we all  have 5 terrabyte of music at home which could, in the end, play music for 10 years without listening to the same track twice. Geez.

So you get to see so many producer who jump on the bandwagon because they get to see that’s now possible more than ever to be part of it.

We lost the sense of sacred.

Holiness, or sanctity, is the state of being holy or sacred, that is, set apart for the worship or service of God or gods. It could also mean being set apart to pursue (or to already have achieved) a sacred state or goal, such as Nirvana. It is often ascribed to people, objects, times, or places.

In a society where there’s no more interest for churches, people are reuniting through other social networks. I strongly believe that generation X is experiencing bulimic experiences in an attempt to counter this need of sacred their ancestors had but they can’t obtain anymore.

This urge to create, to compose, to produce for a community of people has something linked to this. Yeah, I know, I can be deep sometimes. But I really think there’s something there. I really think it’s essential more than ever to forge your identity through sound, through whatever inspire you.

I haven’t come across any new VST that got my attention lately so I started to just put more attention to EQin’ and also bought some external gear FX. It’s crazy what you can do with compression and EQ. So my quest at the moment is to work with 10 tracks, linked through a matrix of 10 channels. Everything is linked, some parameters influences others and I’m going to have a friend working on a MAX/MSP patch for me. That’s my work for the year and it will be my only project. Get back to the roots.

I’m sick of doing tracks for doing tracks. I’m more interested to go back to roots, by working on tools and giving the initiative to the DJ or performer to adapt the music to the context he’s performing in. I’m not sure why, but I’m getting very bored of listening to the hits and oh God, I stay so far away from any charts.

Like emerging from a dense fog, year’s goals are becoming clearer. After 2 months of idling.

Thanks… and I mean it, a HUGE thank to everyone who supported, cheered and listened to my rants & negativity lately. I’m coming out of the fog, slowly but surely.

Clear out your goals now. We have a lot of work ahead.

David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars

A must read:

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne

Everyone, readers, supporters and friends, I take two moments of your time to wish you all the best for the next year! May that one be as or more special than 2007.

I just came back from visiting families, eating turkey and usual traditional foods. Good, relaxing times. I also met a friend of my brother in law who slaughtered me in remarks such as:

“techno is not music”

“techno artists have no talent”

“techno music is easy to do”

These are the usual comments i’m getting used to hear in Quebec, ever since the late 80’s.  Somehow, it’s sort of related to the previous post I made about local artists leaving for Berlin. There’s this obnoxious attitude here toward electronic music that makes it so annoying. If you want to add more, there’s also this almost same vibe that comes from other DJs and musicians that make, let’s say, house or techno (not the same techno I do). Ugh. Give us a break.

I really stopped arguing with people narrow minded. It’s just a waste of time.  That will also be my resolution for 2008, give less credit to what other people believe.

Resident Advisor 

One of my favorite websites, Resident Advisor, has been reviewing the year in much more depth than me. They made a selection of who they call top producers, top labels, top albums, top remixes… It’s nearly like an NHL All-Star game here. Choices are pretty wise to my own perspective, others could be discussed too but in the end, it’s someone’s point of view and appreciation so tastes are always not to argue.

Bigger guys stole the shows and it seems deep house is going to have a good run for 2008. We’ll see and if so, i’m thrilled to experiment that.

On another note, they made an interview with Montreal’s Guillaume Coutu-Dumont. It’s nice to see him there, getting some recognition but his answers reflects something present between Mnml producers from here: Montreal Bashing. Many of us, tired of the lack of enthusiasm and support, started a mass exodus to Berlin (or elsewhere). Montreal’s first minimal community has gone through a severe diet and left are Akufen, Beaupré, Mossa and myself. Gone are Deadbeat, Frivolous, Mike Shannon, Jeff Milligan, Ernesto, Mightykat, The Mole to name some. It reminds me of the year the Expos could have win the pennant but there was a strike and then the all star team they had just dissembled.

I’m not going to do any Montreal bashing myself here but I find the situation to be sad. I’m not sure if people here are aware of that situation. Or care…

If 2006 was the year where everyone wanted to leave or were talking about it, well, 2007 was the year where it happened. I could name about 30 artists worldwide who moved to Berlin (or europe). Perhaps one of the main reason is bookings. There’s not much chance of survival in North America for us. But I’m not going to go in there for now.

I don’t know about you but November was a terrible month for me this year. Total hibernation and anti-social crisis have got me away from everything. As I’m about to be a year older, December seems to wake me up.

Now, with things on my mind…

Internet and Social Networks 

It seems quite inevitable these days to talk about the internet and not mention anything about Facebook. This real phenomena is huge and I have my own view about it and how it has everything to change a few things about the way we use the internet.

At first, I believe, one of the thing that seems to make internet really popular, is music. For many years, we were dependant of a few medias such as radio and CDs to listen to the music we wanted, which felt wonderful but also, costly. The appeal to get music for free through piracy has attracted many people to use internet to answer their needs. For many, internet was all about porn and free music. For both, internet changed everything about how the business has been dramatically affected. I’m not going to talk about porn because I’m not in that industry, of course!

If it was a chance for people to get music for free, it also meant for artists, to be published for free and give distribution for cheap. It also meant for radio lovers they could start one with so many new options with the option of freedom of speech (ideal for a Canadian caught with silly CRTC limitations). There’s many other ideas and interests, of course, but that one is the one I know about and I know many people for who it was the same story.

This is where, to my analysis, Myspace got so huge. It’s maybe not the main idea, but surely something that really helped. I remember being on Friendster but the day Myspace got the option for artists to have their own page, with music and fans, that’s where it all took a sense for me. I was once linked with people who were my customers and these guys could talk back to me. I remember when I used to answer every messages and there was no spam. It was really something great!

I believe it was really appealing for people to be part of a network where many friends were and with the option of reaching artists you appreciate. This feeling of proximity, I believe, is really close to downloading all the music you want… I’m not going to develop on this because it’s a subject I’ve been discussing for a while.

This is where Myspace kicked Friendster in the butt and all others. Mainly because of music options.

Ironicly, Facebook came out strong because they were offering a non-buggy site with no spam (but filled with ads and scary information sharing about you). Just for that, it was a good thing to be there. Now that they offer artist pages, it’s seems like it will be a very dangerous blow to Myspace.

Again, music seems to make a huge difference.

But as music is taking a lot of place, it often feels there’s too much. It’s funny to see artists fight against piracy when soon enough, there will be so much music inviding your environment, artists will run to people to give them your music. Or pay them to listen to it, I’m not sure… but consider that option as something possible, I’m not even joking. Same for radios, soon it will be difficult to see exactly which ones you want to listen to because I’m pretty sure there will be so many it will be overwhelming.

That’s where social networks will be essentials. Because there’s nothing like word of mouth from a friend you rely on their tastes to tell you what you’re missing.

It’s pretty obvious, as a musician, you will need to position yourself solidly in these years. Facebook is a solid network and I’m pretty sure, a next one will follow up with better options.

That was my geek highlight for 2007.

2007 and music

There was a lot, and I mean it, A LOT of good and A LOT of bad music this year in the electronic field. For my favorites of the year, here’s some of what has been playing much in my iPod.

Andrea Sartori

His album on Persona is jazzy, intelligent, beautiful.

Onur Ozer

His album on Vakant is a must have.

Melchior Productions

On perlon, his latest album that just came out is a masterpiece.

offthesky

My buddy Jason is one of my favorite artist and his various productions on either Autoplate, Thinner or Autobloem are always hughlights. His stuff has a ridiculous number of plays on my iPod.

Ricardo Villalobos

A mix Cd, an album, call it whatever but this is rich beats and textures. Lovely.

For me, its the year where most of the same people come together. I get pretty much into the same artists i love and get more and more bored by the new wave of newbies that copycat other’s music. It’s inevitable but it’s just annoying. Don’t expect me to point out anyone, it’s not worth it and I shouldn’t even share this point of view but for me, 2007 has been the year where I officially started to get serious fed up of minimal techno to a point where I just got really really bored and disgusted.

I can’t say that this year was a negative one. Many good things, many new friends, many wonderful projects too. I look at 2008 with a lot of optimism too. I hope to update my blog more often too!

Just got linked to this wonderful rant about RIAA and Oink’s death. I’m happy to find a voice to speak out something I’ve been saying for years; Proves that people are finally following our work to the right destination.