BLACK FOREST MAGAZINE

How and when did ESCC9 come together a label?

Escc9 came together in the late part of 2009, and developed alongside the witch house/chillwave movements that began in the early 10s. Escc9 began not as a label but a multimedia collective made of artists by artists for the purposes of networking and media proliferation. our first efforts were .torrent based releases (one of the most popular and definitive ones was "heavy rotation" :

http://www.lastfm.fr/label/escc9/journal/2010/08/26/3vct3v_heavy_rotation 

Which saw over 1.2k peers/leechers in it's six months of seeding) through the hexagon.cc .torrent portal. i initially began the effort in Bangkok Thailand though when I returned to the United States the hexagon.cc .torrent tracker was blocked nationally by pro-copyright legislation passed by the US Supreme Court. It wasn't until late 2011 that we needed to find a new archive and moved to Bandcamp. We were maybe one of the last active "net labels" that decided to make this move as our mediafire archives and tumblr advertising was proving ineffective.

What was your main motivation and inspiration?

The main motivation that initiated Escc9 was an attempt to take media power away from corporations, labels, or blogs and give it back to the artists, it was very apparent in the early stages of 2010 and 2011 that the "underground" was being both bought and sold out since then the mainstream has co-opted many of the fashions we have influenced. So far as from what we can see this "is" working, slowly killing the mainstream music industry, even if escc9 is one of the slowest growing collectives in the digital age, our output is innovative and filled with a quality as well as an edge that isn't being found elsewhere.

Were you active before ESCC9 in any other projects or labels? I personally was offered a 3LP contract when I was sixteen by Morr Music in conjuncture with Warp Records; though I was unable to sign on the dotted line as they were asking that I front 5k USD to tour EU to support my release. I was a minor, did not possess a passport, nor own a laptop and I didn't think carrying my desktop computer and 17 inch monitor around EU would go over too well. Had I possessed the money, this would have been a great investment when one considers how important these two labels have became. My musical projects to date are fauxmusica (originally formed as a collaborative effort between myself and Bradford Cox of Atlas Sound and Deerhunter), Zeph/Prole (my first musical monicker and material that I sent to Morr Music/Warp Records in early 2001), and presently "Zanye East". Since the formation of escc9 I have also been affiliated in two other collaborative projects: Sacred Star (2011) and a three piece band called "Folding Pyramid" (2012).

What is the music scene currently like in New York?

The music scene in NYC is terrible; It's a self serving sport of cannibalistic competition where no one has the same collective or cultural goal other than hedonism. There is essentially no community present amongst experimental-independent musicians in NYC other than small left-of-center cliques in Bushwick or the very private and respectable Port D'or community in South Brooklyn. I left NYC after residing there for nearly three years, nearly half of that time being spent on the streets, in the gutters, sleeping on trains, or being kicked off couches and having sublets fall through. NYC is not an easy city to make it in, let alone for someone consumed with a passion for advancing the arts. Most respectable artists I met in Brooklyn were in similar situations or protected by their trust funds. There are a few very respectable musicians and performers who do hold down jobs while playing shows week to week, though many slowly their interest in the scene as it has been dying since the early 80s. Night clubbing is much more the entertainment industry, though most venues cannot seem to keep their doors open for long and playing experimental left field techno I had many difficulties trying to find gigs DJing let alone be considered for a residency, even with a massive network of connections. In the modern day music scene, real life friends are fans, and not all of your friends are going to want to spend their hard earned money week after week drinking in a bar to support your music career. Perhaps this is why the online communities are doing better than the real life communities. Simply no one can afford "The Underground" any longer and most venues will shut you down immediately if you don't pull in over 75 people. The smaller venues will do with 10-25 heads if people are spending money on alcohol, though fifty heads in a Bushwick venue is a full house, and that rarely happens apart from some "raves" where the line to do drugs in the bathroom is over an hour long wait. Such parties often do not release the details of the location of the event until only a few hours before the party, and of course bars or traditional music venues won't play this game as it's too risky. Even though NYC in the 80s may have been a new age and experimental punk heaven, you won't see the cutting edge of alternative culture there, unless it is a classroom where you are paying $50,000 a year to attend a design course at Parsons New School For Design.

Are acts on ESCC9 New York centric or from further afield?

Primarily no, apart from the début release from Drrty Pharms (Wolfe Margolis) and the collaborative efforts I recorded with other musicians while I lived there (Sacred Star, Folding Pyramid). Most of the acts on escc9 are from "The Internet", or basically we are scattered through-out the globe.

The label seems to transcend genres with doses of hip hop, pop, mutated electronica, occult psychedelic kitsch - are there any specific bands or genres that have influenced yourself?

.  There are so many, though I could not say any recently. My musical tastes are as diverse as the personalities and artists on the imprint I represent. The only pre-requisite for escc9 is innovation and novelty, either technically, spiritually, or some other psychological perception. Much of our music is in fact danceable, just not in the cheesy 4/4 house or dubstep perspective. When I recruit an artist, seeing eye to eye with the artist and sharing a similar world view is a huge plus, though as people change so does their understanding of the world-- that is inevitable. If one thing more than anything else has unified escc9 it would be the detest for popular musical culture and the goal of bringing about it's demise through sonic evolution. Electronic Psychedelia, or Occult Dance Music, is what we have became known for, which to me is better than being pigeonholed as a "witch house" label. It can and probably will be debated that escc9 is the true and "original" home of witch house, and not labels like Tri-Angle and Disaro, though we have more over disowned the term "witch house" (apart from Justin Ordnung of Radio Vril who still tags every song he writes with it) because of how the media has misrepresented the ideals and sound of the genre was intended to represent. I have no pension for "labels" or "musical genres" I don't want any of the artists to be pigeon-holed or limited by one persons idea of what something should sound like. I create new "flash-in-the-pan" genre tags that seemingly never catch on or take off on a semi-regular basis. I began tagging "witch-house" on last.fm in 2007 after reappraising my first release as fauxmusica "hello subversive arcitecht". To me it was an ironic representation of the sound based on my damaged upbringing very far away from what anyone would consider "society". What has happened since 2007 has been nothing more than a convolution of my original intentions by media affiliates of all levels. The original intention of what "witch house" was to be was a fusion of ambient-darkwave fusing it with post-punk elements and not something symbiotic with teenage devil worship. The goal was achieving a sort of avant garde renaissance via the "occult"-- a sort of fairy trance combining elements of trance, idm, and industrial (Two acts on escc9, Enix Inri and Radio Vril, seemingly do this to the T). This has happened on many levels, though I think in most cases when the average listener thinks of "witch house" they think of slowed down muddy hip-hop samples or acts like Salem and Balam Acab. While Salem and Balam Acab may have a completely different technical approach on how they create music, one similarity they have is "slowed" samples, which very rarely appear in any work associated with the escc9 branding, especially when the roster has artists like Argon Cowboy (Matthew May) who has this polished electronic pop sound similar to that of Boards Of Canada or Forest Swords, though it still fits into what I would consider "fairy trance" and is perhaps much more psychedelic than BoC, even though it this very quantized idm character at times it just goes into this otherworldly ambient sprawl where Window Blinds (Petri Parkkali and Thomas Scharer) fits the character and tense of classic music with a very modern sound in perhaps the most minimalistic way possible.

What do you look for in an act that makes it worthy of being on ESCC9?

When I contact someone about a release with escc9 there is only one thing I consider and that is, "Will this sound and style of music be important and influential in ten if not twenty years from now?" I think the greatest weakness of escc9 and the only exception to this rule is some of my own experimental material (primarily some of the Sacred Star material) which was more or less me experimenting and developing my abilities. I would hope twenty years from now this work would be ignored and more more prolific material gained focus :) Granted much of this work has been compared to Throbbing Gristle, and my own persona to that of Genesis P. Orridge or Gary Numan-- though I am much more a influenced by the work of Einstürzende_Neubauten, Cocteau Twins, Skinny Puppy, Gary Numan, and Cevin Key than Throbbing Gristle or Psychic TV. Though one of the artists on escc9 that I have been working with since the labels conception, Petri Parkalli (of Zoomonk and Window Blinds), is perhaps more influential to me than any of the names I have dropped previously.

The internet has opened up doors and revolutionised the way we listen to and consume music - do you think would ESSC9 have happened without the internet? What would you say the advantages and disadvantages of running an internet based label were?

Escc9 was developed with all of this in mind, perhaps as precursor to how this could positively and negatively effect the future of music, art, or humanity for that matter. The name "Escape Sirius Cybernetics Corporation" is a derivative of "Sirius Cybernetics Corporation" from Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" in which "Sirius Cybernetics Corporation" is responsible for the production and manufacture of just about everything. From toilet paper to personal computers , from robots responsible for processing trash to robots responsible for the operation of spaceships. I am actually not a particular fan of "The Internet" and in most cases I shun away from sharing my personal opinions, feelings, or talking about "real life" in a digital capacity other than spamming new works and promoting the musical works associated with escc9. I would hate to see such a future where robots responsible for the processing of waste were produced by the same company as our musical instruments and software or more or less any monopoly over creativity. Though Apple and iTunes seem to have their eyes set on exactly that. In the past one of my peers said that I was more of a philosopher than a musician, and this may be true, though what would either be without the other?

Are you or any of the acts regular performers on the live circuit? Any upcoming live shows people should be aware of?

Maybe in the past. Many of us are becoming aged, I will be turning thirty next year and many of the artists on the roster are much older than myself. Performing is a luxury that I am sure if all of us had the chance, we would partake in much more regularly. One of the newest acts to our roster NO EYES performs regularly in Atlanta, GA. Though apart from that, I cannot think of anyone on the roster other than perhaps Luna Lee Jackson of PrismViews and Black Sun from Santiago, Chile, who perform regularly or semi-regularly. I definitely feel like I am forgetting someone, and I definitely probably am, though live shows have not been a centerpiece of the roster thus far; Perhaps if any one of us, or the label it's self, had more funding that would definitely change.

What projects are you currently working on? Any new releases in the pipeline?

Most of our releases are not planned. They are speculated and discussed, though creativity can never be rushed, and it certainly cannot be limited. I don't believe in deadlines. The universe is ruled by chaos, and I try to take this into consideration as much as I can when I am dealing with artists and releases. When an artist agrees to release their material with escc9, the release happens as soon as I have the time to upload the album and begin promotion. Though usually it takes longer on the artists end to actually stamp-seal and deliver the album. More-so, musical should be as spontaneous as possible. I truly believe in that. While escc9 may be one of the longest running multi-media collectives online at the moment, we are perhaps the most unorganized of all the net labels to emerge since 2010. Possibly why we are the slowest to grow as well. We may be influential amongst artists, though the statistics prove that we are very far from "popular". Though the support that has been garnished in the past six months exceeds the entire previous three years of the imprints existence. Culture and art always exist with-in the rules of critical-mass. A very popular saying is" "Success takes a lifetime to achieve, though often happens over night." I think this is one of the main differences between art from business and if one thing is certain: Everyone affiliated with escc9 is more concerned with art than business, except for perhaps Vitamin Wig C (Robbie Hansen) who should be opening shows in Las Vegas, because he is the contemporary mixture of both Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson!