Dawn of Darkness Netlabelism Music: Interview with Genetic Trance (2018)[backup]

There was an issue around 2012 that my main email addresses had been hacked so I lost a huge amount of contacts. That was one of the reasons why I got completely distracted from Genetic Trance for about a year. I never deleted from my HDD any of the things released on my labels before about a month ago when I deleted some of the huge files. There is no particular organization, but I add every release to Discogs, even the ones with a huge track listing.

What do you think are the benefits of adding releases to Discogs?

The most obvious ones are cataloging, creating the link web of labels and artists, and various community aspects including ratings, collections, reviews, forums. There is also a trading platform there. Discogs also can serve as means of promotion. I can remember at least one instance of a G.T. contributor that learnt about us through Discogs.

How do you define what is and what is not a netlabel?

Basically, any entity that publishes releases whose artist names differ from the name of an entity (or its substance*), provided that the name of an entity is not the name of an artist.

*E.g. if the name of a publishing entity is X (not the name of an artist), and the name of an artist published within that entity is also X, the entity is a label. The situation similar to, e.g., Marilyn Manson as a band and Marilyn Manson as a person.

How and when did you first learn about netlabels?

It was seemingly late 2009. I was studying the discography of Intestinal Disgorge and I stumbled upon their collaboration with Endometrium Cuntplow, which was a netlabel release.

What was the first netlabel you heard of?

The netlabel for the before-mentioned collaboration was Pray for Death Records, though the first netlabels about which I was aware of their status as such seem to be TrashFuck Net and Proc-Records.

What are some netlabels that inspired or influenced you? Or that you admire?

The direct influence on the creating of Genetic Trance was Proc-Records. I was impressed by the design of their website. The first webpage of Genetic Trance even looked very similar to that of Proc-Records. The netlabels that I would also emphasize are TrashFuck Net, Love Torture Records and 20kbps Records.

What made you decide to start your own netlabel?

The direct urge was to be a part of the scene.

What were your reasons for choosing to releasing music for free? And why did you choose to not release physical albums?

The reason is that it was the only option that I could think about at that time. I was impressed by the immediate character of publication. The content was a priority, not the medium.

What is the name of your netlabel?

Genetic Trance. There are other ones as well: ;’; , ;’;, Conceptual Design, Default Recordings, Diploma Supplement Label, Haltura Project, Latent Ukraine, Merzlabel, Metawave, Reverse Infinity, Wikimedia Orb, бидлокор, настоящий кмдпач. Diploma Supplement Label and Latent Ukraine also feature cassette releases. Besides, there are two cassette-only labels.

Why did you choose the name you chose?

Initially, it was copied from the title of the first release:

https://archive.org/details/GeneticTrance

When did you start your netlabel?

In 2010, when I was fourteen years old.

What is the focus of you netlabel?

Initially, I was just releasing anything without rejecting any single contribution. After a hiatus in 2014, I started to rely on my choice.

Are your albums released under creative commons, copyleft or copyright? Why did you choose the method you chose?

Most albums are released under a default licence that platforms would offer. Very rare exceptions were caused by author requests.

What is your relationship to the artists that you release? Do you maintain any contact once you’ve released their work? Do you help promote them outside of their release itself?

I maintain friendly relations with a significant amount of the artists. I continue speaking more or less constantly with about ten ones. The are comparably many artists based in my city, I meet them from time to time. Concerning promotion, there were times that I was sharing each release on LiveJournal, that is the reason that some Genetic Trance archive.org releases have so many views. Since 2015, I am generally not ‘spamming’ anything at all.

How do you decide what artists you want to release? Do you approach them? Do they approach you? Do you have any specific guidelines that you follow? Do you act as a curator or is it all luck of the draw?

After I had lost my mail emails in about 2012, the flow of contributions started being almost of zero degree. Before that time I had put almost all my free time to managing the label. In 2015, when I revived G.T. after a year’s pause, I contacted some artists I knew and somehow started filling the emptiness. Soon after, I started a compilation series called Genetic Transurfin’. Since then, I request materials myself for those compilations only. Indeed, there are sorts of guidelines. For the moment I do not put out anything that I find offending or blatantly politically incorrect. I tend not to ignore things that I dislike aesthetically, because I emphasize the social-communicative aspect of what I do.

Can you expand on the idea of the social-communicative aspect of what you do? I think that’s an interesting aspect and I’m curious if you have any more thoughts about it.

I was referring to the strong emphasis of such relations regarding the quality of a work. If a person wanted to create, e.g., a stand-alone painting, he would not think about conforming to a particular institution like a gallery or a label. Further, I have mentioned before that this principle goes above my aesthetic choices. It means that if I am satisfied with a communicative situation and materials are not offensive, I will most likely make a publication, even if I myself do not enjoy a work.

What are or were your criteria for the music you curate and release?

As I have mentioned before, nothing offensive. Earlier I used to have no criteria at all.

What genres have you never released before, that you would love to release on your label or on a future label of yours?

Recently I have a desire for my label to be a part of global elitist trends, i.e. to release things complex, rare-looking and created with an exceptional intellectual effort and endurance. I refer primarily to the ‘club deconstruction’ trend, in the vein of recent Warp Records or Posh Isolation.

Are there any artists that you have yet to release that you would like to work with? Or that you always wished you had been able to work with?

This question is again intersecting my desire to follow trends. As I can see, various fashionable outlets show more and more admiration to simple and naive approaches to creation. There is always hope that some of the fashionable artists would once see himself as a part of G.T. roster.

How many albums have you released?

More than 1040 releases in the main catalogue. In general, more than 1120 items.

Who are some of your most notable artists?

For me, most outstanding and influential ones are Torn Hawk and Ex Continent. The ones that mean a lot for me are Razxca, Sascha Müller and Graffiti Mechanism. They were role-models for me when I was a teenager and continue to leave their trace in my present state of mind. The artist who has the largest percentage of appearances seems to be mhz_ and his aliases.

Out of curiosity, what was it about Razxca, Sascha Müller and Graffiti Mechanism that inspired you?

When I was just getting into netlabels, I was able to find some unique atmospheres that I had never experienced before. Razxca has something like a local fandom, because of his exceptional rawness and archetypal nature of his output.

Sascha Müller is a very prolific techno producer. I was struck by some of his works (I can recall Generation Fastfood and Zweireihen), because they offered a strange kind of de-realization and after that I started feeling like a completely different person.

Graffiti Mechanism was a kind of aesthetic revelation for me. It was something that I can call ‘friendly minimalism’.

Which are some of your most significant releases?

The most significant releases come from the ‘golden years’ of Genetic Trance before 2014, the time of my euphoric and reckless youth. The first release, surely, is a kind of a ‘source’ for the direction that the label took. The next one that comes to my mind is ‘Алёшины Истории №1’. I view it as a confident manifestation of boundless personal freedom.

Do you release your own work on your netlabel? What do you think of that practice?

Yes, I have done it a lot. At some point I felt that I did not want to overload the label with my works and that was the main reason of creating Merzlabel and now idle Haltura Project. For the present day, I continue putting out my various aliases on G.T., but I am gradually creating individual Bandcamp pages for some of my projects.

What do you enjoy about running your netlabel? What do you get out of it?

There was a point in ‘golden years’ that I spent 90% of my free and unfree time at managing the label. It was a real addiction with abstinent syndromes when deprived from doing it for even a couple of days. After I lost interest in G.T. for a year, at some point I got a strange subtle sensation of calling, which now motivates my management of the label. In other words, I started managing it not as a part of fulfilling a certain project or aim, but fueled by spontaneous desires that come and go, for which I care no responsibility.

What are some difficult things about running the label? Or what are some challenges?

I can say that there may be a challenge not about running, but about not ruining the narrative of G.T. by publishing unsuccessfully chosen albums or sequences of albums.

Has anything about it been disappointing or frustrating?

Yes. In the first place there were artists’ requests to delete albums. The problem is that the host (archive.org) did not have the function to delete things with a single click so I once had to remove a thing with more than a hundred tracks one by one.

What keeps you motivated to continue running the netlabel when you are feeling frustrated?

Once I had a deep thought that I should not do anything connected with art if this feels like doing something wrong. I believe that if a person feels frustrated, his or her actions should primarily be aimed at attempting to remove associated discomfort. Before it started to be my principle, I was motivated by thinking that deeds done in the state of strain or other kinds of discomfort become valuable taking these mental states as a background. I still think that they are valuable, but not always as much as things done naturally.

How much time do you put into running the label? Approximate hours per day, week or month?

As I have things to do outside of managing the label, I get to it as soon as one time a week, approximately. Though earlier I could sit at it every day.

Can you describe all the work that you do on a regular basis in order to run your label?

If I understood the question correctly, everything I need to do to run my label is to upload releases somewhere and put them out. In 2015 I used to have the own domain for G.T., but then I was just disappointed with the fact that I needed to pay for it every month.

In what audio format and bitrate do you release your albums?

I would not be surprised if my label has in it 99% of every audio formats that exist. If we are talking about MP3, all and any constant bitrates are present.

Why did you choose that format?

Again, I leave the format decision to an author.

Do you zip your files into a package? Or are the albums uploaded as individual files?

Though Internet Archive creates packages automatically, at some point I started to upload archives myself as automatic ones containing only audio, but no other files that I would like to put with a single download.

Aside from the audio files, do you include any other types of files or information with the album?

Yes. Genetic Trance even has separate catalogues for videos, texts and images alone.

What software programs do you use to run your netlabel? For converting and encoding audio, for metadata, for ftp, for making cover art, etc.

GoldWave, Total Audio Converter, MediaMonkey (useful for automatic tagging), Photoshop, and some other things I cannot remember. When I had my own domain, I used FileZilla for FTP, and CoffeeCup for editing HTML.

Where do you share your releases? On your website? Free Music Archive? Internet Archive? Et al? A combination of these things?

Initially, everything was put on Internet Archive. Since 2017 the platforms for most releases were VK and Bandcamp.

What do you do to promote your label?

Originally, I tried spreading them through various blogs on LiveJournal, VK, and Facebook groups. Now I rely mainly on social contacts, inside or outside the Internet.

Do you send releases out for review? If yes, is it traditional media – review sites, magazines, blogs, etc. Or are there non-traditional methods?

No. The only medium I know to have reviewed our works is [the website] ‘Yeah I Know It Sucks’.

How much success have you had in getting people to review your releases in magazines, blogs or websites? Any frustrations regarding this?

Nothing besides ‘Yeah I Know It Sucks’.

Have you had success in getting people in general to listen to your releases?

I know that there is an audience, but it is hard for me to estimate its size. There seem to be about 100 subscribers at our Facebook page and about 350 subscribers at our VK page.

Do you keep track of your download numbers and, if yes, how have they changed over the years?

Yes, I do. Regarding archive.org publications, there are seven things that reached 12–37 thousand views and a lot of things that reached more than 1000 views. Regarding our Bandcamp statistics, every month we reach the limit of 200 free downloads.

How important are download numbers and number of listeners to you?

They are definitely substantial. The size of the audience directly influences the quality of works that appear on Genetic Trance.

Do you feel that the lack of a physical object – vinyl, cassette, eight track, etc. – is a hindrance to building an audience? To getting any media to pay attention? If yes, why do you think that is the case?

In my opinion, physical releases are good for four reasons: for being either a commercial business, for the absence of any other alternative (as it was with original cassette culture), for achieving a certain status, or for being an artistic decision. Or a combination of those.

I sometimes dream of making a vinyl, but I understand that an author has to achieve some quality level and financial level for doing this. As I know, most contemporary vinyl releases achieve very minor spread and attention. Personally, I see much more potential in virtual albums as they do not stick to a medium and economize resources for that. They are much like an instant reaction to what a person sees around.

To make a successful physical release a person has to already have some social connections helpful to promote a record.

Anyway, as I have already mentioned, I have several DIY cassette outlets. Home-dubbing serves as a filter for what would be worth the effort of being recorded on tape and thus engaging both personal time and energy resources. My interest in home-dubbing is aesthetic and status related. But generally, I have sold no physical item ever, speaking commercially.

Has the lack of a physical object been a problem for any of the artists that you have worked with? If it has how have you responded?

Yes, I remember something like that, but the issue was that a person understood something wrong regarding the essence of my label.

In addition to promotion, publicity and releasing albums do you organize live performances or festivals for your artists?

Generally no, but I have performed myself a couple of times with my Surrogate Sigma project.

How do you finance your netlabel, including the labor you put into it?

Hard to say, I just use free platforms like archive.org or Bandcamp.

What do you think your legacy might be?

I am not sure that I understood the question.

Do you feel that you are filling a niche that other labels were not?

Generally, yes. I have a feeling that my label gave birth to some things that are somehow repressed from the social consciousness, something deeply personal and explicit.

What do you think about Bandcamp and any similar music hosting sites?

I like about Bandcamp that it cares about the feeling of uniqueness within standardization. E.g., the same page design model, requirements for track sizes, image sizes.

Do you think netlabels are sustainable? If yes, what do you think the future is for them? Should there be more?

A lot of netlabels became defunct, but there are more and more of them appearing, and they became more and more diverse.

Are there too many netlabels?

The fact is that there are a huge number of entities that do not fully consider themselves as being a netlabel, but rather a publishing page. If we view every such thing as a netlabel, then there are really too many of them in terms of the quality of proposed material. On the other hand, netlabels do appear that ironically react to this kind of overflood by creating things that wittily satirize this phenomenon.

Will netlabels be obsolete before 2025?

I think that it is impossible unless the Internet disappears. More and more trendy artists and labels create digital outfits. I can even predict that they would release themselves on underground-ish ‘junk’ netlabels as a provocative move.

Does your netlabel align with any political or philosophical positions or thoughts? Do you get involved with politics at all as a netlabel?

I am trying to abstain from politics as much as it is possible, though there were some political issues in the history of Genetic Trance. Talking about philosophy, I used to enjoy creating complex philosophical backgrounds that dealt with limitlessness of art, universal nature of art, or artistic freedom.

How do you feel that netlabels as a phenomenon overlap with any other artist practices – cassette trading, mail art, etc? Is there any overlap with podcasts, podfiction/netfiction, or any other art that is distributed for free?

There are netlabels that with their general appearance overlap with netart.

Talking about above-mentioned forms, there appear to be netlabels that pay exclusive attention to podcasts, mainly associated with dub techno, tech house or similar.

Are you aware of a chronological history of netlabels? If yes, what is it?

I remember trying to find out what the first netlabel is. I seem not to have found the answer. Anyway, it is easy to search for netlabels that are just old. I tried to perform chronological search on archive.org and it did not tell anything earlier than 2003 (Monotonik). Though I know that there could be things that are even earlier. 20kbps Records, e.g., says 2002 for its earliest release.

Is there anything else you would like to write about that wasn’t included here?

I would like to mention the importance of netlabels in terms of society. Any album released influences the worldview of an author and a viewer, and thus changes the way of history. The author should be responsible for the direction that the history takes after his or her action, by thoroughly analyzing properties of what he or she is going to publish and what message it carries.

What questions would you ask other people who run netlabels?

The main questions are: How do you view the purpose of your netlabel? Is it just for pleasure, for escaping negative experiences, or is it a form of social telesis?

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