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Interview with Primordial Music (June 2007)
von PGB
Yes finally its now online. You have read some reviews here from bands of the label Primordial Music. And because of the special kind of business-plan of this label, I wanted to give you more infos about it. Here the answers, I recieved from Mat and Gus.
Matt Collins of HAZMAT and Primordial Music
Gus Yoo of AZRAEL TRIGGER and Primordial Music
Music Discovery: Primordial Music is a small Industrial Label. So please tell us something about the label and its history.
Matt: We started the label to self-release our first album for our band, Neuroplague, back in the nineties. It was just the most convenient way to get our music published and distributed. I have always had a strong DIY ethic, if something needs to get done, I prefer to just do it myself. We released another album for Despirator after that, and continued using Primordial Music as our resource to distribute, market, advertise, manufacture, etc., all of the things you need to do to get your music out there.
Last year I resurrected Primordial Music to serve as a hub for all of the music that I had been doing lately, and for some of the really talented people I know who create some great music. We are not a record label in the traditional sense, but more of a community of artists creating art for it´s own sake, and helping each other out.
Music Discovery: The most important thing is, that you are offering the CDs of your label as free downloads. Why have you chosen this kind of distribution?
Matt: Our goals are to distribute and promote our music, and the web offers a democratized, low cost way to do it. Manufacturing little plastic discs has nothing to do with our goals, we want to get this music out there, get it into people´s ears in the easiest way possible. We decided to make most of the albums free because right now, we´d would rather more people hear it for free than have a few people pay to download it. It´s not like we´re passing up a truckload of money, unfortunately.
We hope that enough people will enjoy the music and want to pass it along, make copies, tell other people abut the bands and the website. We think the music stands up pretty well and speaks for itself. Where it goes from here, who knows.
Gus: I have always felt that music which is detached from money is the most relevant and truthful. By offering our music freely, we are making a strong statement. We make music because we love the artistic process. I personally love collaboration, the spirit of which i hoped to bring to Symbiotic as well as AzraelTrigger.
Music Discovery: How does the financial side looks like. How do you get the money for promotion and productions costs, or is this part for the bands? Or is everything payed by merchandising stuff?
Matt: Right now we distribute online files, and post a few ads on myspace - promotion and production costs are very low. Traditionally, the financial side of the music industry is a big joke, and the artists are the butt of the joke. Even moderately successful artists usually get screwed. So we are lucky, because we are free of the business end of things, and can do what we love without having a financial forces steer our art in any direction.
Just like a band that makes more money selling T Shirts at shows than by the actual sale of their music, we hope to open other ways of creating compensation for ourselves. It is really an experiment right now, and who knows how it will work. I am happy enough just enjoying the ride, and not too concerned about the destination.
Gus: Obviously we want the bands to be compensated in some way for the hard work of producing albums, we devote many many hours to craft the music. Listeners can help by buying merchandise or making donations or by simply spreading the word. It would be a shame to run ads in order to pay for the hosting costs, we are working hard to avoid that.
Matt: Yeah, we´d prefer not to at this point, but advertising does support a lot of things that people enjoy for free, like TV, sports, radio, etc. That´s one way the bands could be supported. Licensing tracks for commercial use is another possibility. And there could be other support that can come into play if there´s enough interest and demand for the music. We´ll just have to wait and see.
Music Discovery: Please tell me something about the bands signed to Primordial Music. Matt and Gus, you are both members of some of them too. What´s your part in those bands?
Matt: Hazmat is my solo project, so I do everything for that, although I had tons of participants doing remixes for the new "4 Point Remixes" album that just came out on May 1. All the songs that were remixed were originally on the debut Hazmat album that came out last year. I am also involved with a few other bands on the Primordial Music label, in some way or another.
Gus: I participate in Neuroplague, Symbiotic and now my new project AzraelTrigger. but also i have played live shows with Eye Kandy and Porcupine Defense. We are a tight community that have worked together for many many years, and as well as being label-mates, we are very close friends. I think that kind of strong core is essential when trying to build a label like Primordial.
Matt: All the bands on Primordial Music are working underground, independent of the traditional music industry influences. We do it all ourselves, make music that we like, and don´t worry about fitting a label. To me, that makes Primordial Music more "punk rock" than Green Day and more "alternative" than Nirvana.
Music Discovery: The Complex and Eye Kandy are two of the new releases. What can the Industrial fan expect from those bands and the other bands from Primordial Music?
Matt: The Complex are currently playing shows in and around New York city. They recently played a show with Armageddon Dildos, and they´re working on new material.
Eye Kandy disbanded some time ago, but their members have gone on to new projects. Tom went on to play with Bile and then Godhead, James went on to do The Panic Lift and is working on a full length release, Chris went on to do Life Cried, he is getting ready to release his second album on the Noitekk label, and Kaliss has recently started up a new project called Dream Kill Dream. So a lot of talent was in that band!
Eye Kandy do have an older EP and their original demo that we will be re-releasing on Primordial Music soon. That, along with the Erasing The Past album will pretty much represent the complete Eye Kandy back catalog, so it will be great to have their collected works available for people to hear.
Gus: As a side note, i plan to form another project with Chris from Life Cried. We have always wanted to do music together and now we will have an outlet in Primordial.
Matt: Absolutely, there are all kinds of projects in the works now that would never have seen the light without having somewhere for them to go. It is like a great excuse to get some creativity happening, and I think a lot of valuable music is coming out of it.
Music Discovery: What are the next releases we can expect from Primordial Music?
Matt: The next release, due out in July, is the debut album from Azrael Trigger, which features Gus Yoo, the vocalist from Symbiotic and Neuroplague. He has put together a really diverse album that is sounding amazing so far. It´s put together with various producers and collaborators adding pieces to the whole thing, rather than in the way of a traditional band, writing and recording songs as a group. He is in the final stages of mixing right now, and we are excited about finally letting people hear some tracks.
Gus: Check out the AzraelTrigger Myspace page, there are a few preview tracks posted there. The upcoming album called Season to Sever will be untraditional in the way it is produced. I am hoping for exciting results.
Music Discovery: Is Primordial Music limited to Industrial and EBM, or are you thinking about some other styles too?
Matt: We are primarily focused on dark, electronic music, the "Sounds from the Afterworld." Pretty much everything on Primordial fits that description, but we try not to limit what might happen in the future.
There will be an album out later this year from Despirator, which is myself and Renee Ilardi, which definitely does not fit the industrial or EBM label, but could be called darkwave or gothic I suppose.
Music Discovery: Do you know some other labels like yours too, or do you think you are something special at the moment? Do you think there will be a trend that some more labels are offering free downloads of their releases in the future too?
Matt: As far as I know, we are the only record label that offers so much of our music as free downloads. There are plenty of websites that offer free services, like myspace, craigslist, flickr, skype, etc. But record labels giving away full MP3 albums? For free? I doubt it.
Gus: As far as i know, Primordial is a unique label.
Music Discovery: Lets talk about numbers. Do you know the number of downloads and are you okay with these?
Matt: As of May 2007, we have had about 5,000 downloads of full albums plus another 15,000 downloads of individual tracks. We get a few hundred visitors to the site per day, more when an album has just been released. We launched just one year ago, and have only had myspace and other online ´word of mouth´ advertising, so I am ok with those numbers, I guess, especially considering the relatively small world of industrial music.
Gus: The numbers seem to be increasing.
Music Discovery: To come back to the bands. How does it looks like on concerts? Have you some CDs for selling them on concerts too? Or is everything going through downloads?
Matt: For myself, I personally don´t plan to play any shows with Hazmat, or any of the bands that I am in, any time soon. I am more interested in the writing and recording end of things these days. As for the other bands who have music on the Primordial Music website, they might make CDs to distribute at shows, so far it has not been much of an issue.
Gus: I plan to play live shows with AzraelTrigger. Initially, i will not offer merchandise. That might change depending on demand.
Music Discovery: You have one release from Neuroplague, that is not for free download. Is it planed to have this as a free download too in the future? And why is this a standard release?
Matt: The first Neuroplague album, ´Alter,´ was released 10 years ago as a CD. We still offer the CD through Amazon.com, so that people who do want to buy it can get a hold of it, right now there are no plans to make it available for download.
We are getting ready to release a new Neuroplague album with a bunch of stuff to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the album´s release: a remastered track with a video, and some new remixes. It´s going to be great to hear those songs in a new context, for fans of the original album, but for us as well.
Music Discovery: What are your next plans for 2007 and 2008? Something special so far?
Matt: We have a bunch of great new stuff coming up, hopefully there will be a new album from Earthworm sometime in 2007, the Azrael Trigger debut, the Despirator album, and the Eye Kandy re-release. Plus there will be new material from Porcupine Defense and Hazmat sometime in the not too distant future, and some other new projects may come to light. And then maybe the whole thing will explode in a blaze of glory, never to be seen again!
Music Discovery: Some last words?
Matt: So long and thanks for all the fish.
Gus: Thanks to everyone for the continued support, the response has been tremendous.
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von PGB
Yes finally its now online. You have read some reviews here from bands of the label Primordial Music. And because of the special kind of business-plan of this label, I wanted to give you more infos about it. Here the answers, I recieved from Mat and Gus.
Matt Collins of HAZMAT and Primordial Music
Gus Yoo of AZRAEL TRIGGER and Primordial Music
Music Discovery: Primordial Music is a small Industrial Label. So please tell us something about the label and its history.
Matt: We started the label to self-release our first album for our band, Neuroplague, back in the nineties. It was just the most convenient way to get our music published and distributed. I have always had a strong DIY ethic, if something needs to get done, I prefer to just do it myself. We released another album for Despirator after that, and continued using Primordial Music as our resource to distribute, market, advertise, manufacture, etc., all of the things you need to do to get your music out there.
Last year I resurrected Primordial Music to serve as a hub for all of the music that I had been doing lately, and for some of the really talented people I know who create some great music. We are not a record label in the traditional sense, but more of a community of artists creating art for it´s own sake, and helping each other out.
Music Discovery: The most important thing is, that you are offering the CDs of your label as free downloads. Why have you chosen this kind of distribution?
Matt: Our goals are to distribute and promote our music, and the web offers a democratized, low cost way to do it. Manufacturing little plastic discs has nothing to do with our goals, we want to get this music out there, get it into people´s ears in the easiest way possible. We decided to make most of the albums free because right now, we´d would rather more people hear it for free than have a few people pay to download it. It´s not like we´re passing up a truckload of money, unfortunately.
We hope that enough people will enjoy the music and want to pass it along, make copies, tell other people abut the bands and the website. We think the music stands up pretty well and speaks for itself. Where it goes from here, who knows.
Gus: I have always felt that music which is detached from money is the most relevant and truthful. By offering our music freely, we are making a strong statement. We make music because we love the artistic process. I personally love collaboration, the spirit of which i hoped to bring to Symbiotic as well as AzraelTrigger.
Music Discovery: How does the financial side looks like. How do you get the money for promotion and productions costs, or is this part for the bands? Or is everything payed by merchandising stuff?
Matt: Right now we distribute online files, and post a few ads on myspace - promotion and production costs are very low. Traditionally, the financial side of the music industry is a big joke, and the artists are the butt of the joke. Even moderately successful artists usually get screwed. So we are lucky, because we are free of the business end of things, and can do what we love without having a financial forces steer our art in any direction.
Just like a band that makes more money selling T Shirts at shows than by the actual sale of their music, we hope to open other ways of creating compensation for ourselves. It is really an experiment right now, and who knows how it will work. I am happy enough just enjoying the ride, and not too concerned about the destination.
Gus: Obviously we want the bands to be compensated in some way for the hard work of producing albums, we devote many many hours to craft the music. Listeners can help by buying merchandise or making donations or by simply spreading the word. It would be a shame to run ads in order to pay for the hosting costs, we are working hard to avoid that.
Matt: Yeah, we´d prefer not to at this point, but advertising does support a lot of things that people enjoy for free, like TV, sports, radio, etc. That´s one way the bands could be supported. Licensing tracks for commercial use is another possibility. And there could be other support that can come into play if there´s enough interest and demand for the music. We´ll just have to wait and see.
Music Discovery: Please tell me something about the bands signed to Primordial Music. Matt and Gus, you are both members of some of them too. What´s your part in those bands?
Matt: Hazmat is my solo project, so I do everything for that, although I had tons of participants doing remixes for the new "4 Point Remixes" album that just came out on May 1. All the songs that were remixed were originally on the debut Hazmat album that came out last year. I am also involved with a few other bands on the Primordial Music label, in some way or another.
Gus: I participate in Neuroplague, Symbiotic and now my new project AzraelTrigger. but also i have played live shows with Eye Kandy and Porcupine Defense. We are a tight community that have worked together for many many years, and as well as being label-mates, we are very close friends. I think that kind of strong core is essential when trying to build a label like Primordial.
Matt: All the bands on Primordial Music are working underground, independent of the traditional music industry influences. We do it all ourselves, make music that we like, and don´t worry about fitting a label. To me, that makes Primordial Music more "punk rock" than Green Day and more "alternative" than Nirvana.
Music Discovery: The Complex and Eye Kandy are two of the new releases. What can the Industrial fan expect from those bands and the other bands from Primordial Music?
Matt: The Complex are currently playing shows in and around New York city. They recently played a show with Armageddon Dildos, and they´re working on new material.
Eye Kandy disbanded some time ago, but their members have gone on to new projects. Tom went on to play with Bile and then Godhead, James went on to do The Panic Lift and is working on a full length release, Chris went on to do Life Cried, he is getting ready to release his second album on the Noitekk label, and Kaliss has recently started up a new project called Dream Kill Dream. So a lot of talent was in that band!
Eye Kandy do have an older EP and their original demo that we will be re-releasing on Primordial Music soon. That, along with the Erasing The Past album will pretty much represent the complete Eye Kandy back catalog, so it will be great to have their collected works available for people to hear.
Gus: As a side note, i plan to form another project with Chris from Life Cried. We have always wanted to do music together and now we will have an outlet in Primordial.
Matt: Absolutely, there are all kinds of projects in the works now that would never have seen the light without having somewhere for them to go. It is like a great excuse to get some creativity happening, and I think a lot of valuable music is coming out of it.
Music Discovery: What are the next releases we can expect from Primordial Music?
Matt: The next release, due out in July, is the debut album from Azrael Trigger, which features Gus Yoo, the vocalist from Symbiotic and Neuroplague. He has put together a really diverse album that is sounding amazing so far. It´s put together with various producers and collaborators adding pieces to the whole thing, rather than in the way of a traditional band, writing and recording songs as a group. He is in the final stages of mixing right now, and we are excited about finally letting people hear some tracks.
Gus: Check out the AzraelTrigger Myspace page, there are a few preview tracks posted there. The upcoming album called Season to Sever will be untraditional in the way it is produced. I am hoping for exciting results.
Music Discovery: Is Primordial Music limited to Industrial and EBM, or are you thinking about some other styles too?
Matt: We are primarily focused on dark, electronic music, the "Sounds from the Afterworld." Pretty much everything on Primordial fits that description, but we try not to limit what might happen in the future.
There will be an album out later this year from Despirator, which is myself and Renee Ilardi, which definitely does not fit the industrial or EBM label, but could be called darkwave or gothic I suppose.
Music Discovery: Do you know some other labels like yours too, or do you think you are something special at the moment? Do you think there will be a trend that some more labels are offering free downloads of their releases in the future too?
Matt: As far as I know, we are the only record label that offers so much of our music as free downloads. There are plenty of websites that offer free services, like myspace, craigslist, flickr, skype, etc. But record labels giving away full MP3 albums? For free? I doubt it.
Gus: As far as i know, Primordial is a unique label.
Music Discovery: Lets talk about numbers. Do you know the number of downloads and are you okay with these?
Matt: As of May 2007, we have had about 5,000 downloads of full albums plus another 15,000 downloads of individual tracks. We get a few hundred visitors to the site per day, more when an album has just been released. We launched just one year ago, and have only had myspace and other online ´word of mouth´ advertising, so I am ok with those numbers, I guess, especially considering the relatively small world of industrial music.
Gus: The numbers seem to be increasing.
Music Discovery: To come back to the bands. How does it looks like on concerts? Have you some CDs for selling them on concerts too? Or is everything going through downloads?
Matt: For myself, I personally don´t plan to play any shows with Hazmat, or any of the bands that I am in, any time soon. I am more interested in the writing and recording end of things these days. As for the other bands who have music on the Primordial Music website, they might make CDs to distribute at shows, so far it has not been much of an issue.
Gus: I plan to play live shows with AzraelTrigger. Initially, i will not offer merchandise. That might change depending on demand.
Music Discovery: You have one release from Neuroplague, that is not for free download. Is it planed to have this as a free download too in the future? And why is this a standard release?
Matt: The first Neuroplague album, ´Alter,´ was released 10 years ago as a CD. We still offer the CD through Amazon.com, so that people who do want to buy it can get a hold of it, right now there are no plans to make it available for download.
We are getting ready to release a new Neuroplague album with a bunch of stuff to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the album´s release: a remastered track with a video, and some new remixes. It´s going to be great to hear those songs in a new context, for fans of the original album, but for us as well.
Music Discovery: What are your next plans for 2007 and 2008? Something special so far?
Matt: We have a bunch of great new stuff coming up, hopefully there will be a new album from Earthworm sometime in 2007, the Azrael Trigger debut, the Despirator album, and the Eye Kandy re-release. Plus there will be new material from Porcupine Defense and Hazmat sometime in the not too distant future, and some other new projects may come to light. And then maybe the whole thing will explode in a blaze of glory, never to be seen again!
Music Discovery: Some last words?
Matt: So long and thanks for all the fish.
Gus: Thanks to everyone for the continued support, the response has been tremendous.
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