bdta.pl
BDTA has put out another fascinating album. In January I took the opportunity to ask some questions to Michal, founder and operator of the Polish label BDTA. I wanted to put out this interview as soon as possible, but my translation skills are the slowest ever. In the meantime, Michal have had the time to a tour in Czech Republic and Poland as Gazawat and put out a couple of album through his labels BDTA and Modzok. Both of us are second language English speaker so please indulge on the syntax. Une traduction française paraîtra dès que possible.
Hi
Michal and thank you for accepting to answer our questions.
Can
you introduce yourself and BDTA ?
Well,
thanks to you for inviting me for this interview. Although when I
happily “accepted” to answer those questions I didn’t know yet
that your question list will be longer than most of the papers and
essays I wrote on the university. Probably this is why they kicked me
from it, like, five times now. Anyway, my name is Michal Turowski and
I am founder, owner and curator of polish DIY experimental label
called BDTA, we have around 140 titles released in our roster right
now, and before that I was running another label, called Oficyna
Biedota with around 50 titles released. So basically I am running
those things since 2010, and also I am making some own music,
primarily either solo under the moniker GAZAWAT or with other people
in bands named MAZUT and UROK, amongst other on-and-off acts and
bands.
First
I would like to ask you some questions to try to frame the time
settings. What is the history of your practice as a label and as a
musician/sound recorder ? How do you feel is it related to the
history of experimental music in Poland ?
When
it comes to history, it all started when I was working in a record
company in Poland. I started helping out during my high school, I
came there everyday after school, as I was really passionate about
music and it was a great adventure, and after I graduated they
invited me for a normal day job at their place. This company was
manufacturing and distributing records, and also was a conglomerate
of three different labels. One of the owners was a legend of polish
HC/Punk scene from the eighties and I learned a shitload from him,
second was this nerdy guy interested in rap and experimental music,
and third one started flirting with mainstream, sending his artists
from the label to those shitty TV talent shows and so on. So I had
three very different perspectives every day, a nice girl taking care
about promotion desk next to me, and opportunity to see how it is all
done. Having a label was some kind of a dream since I was very young,
as I was shitty in terms of playing any instruments and I quickly
understood that being a curator is probably my only chance to do
something interesting in artistic world ;-) And this idea grew and
grew with every next month I spent at this company, learning about
the whole process, and one day, few months after my nineteenth
birthday I was on a gig of great coldwave band named Wieże Fabryk
and I thought – ok, this is it, I am ready (whatever that means), I
am starting the label. I approached them after they finished, we
exchanged few e-mails and that was it, I became a label founder. For
three years I was learning on my own mistakes in Oficyna Biedota, and
in 2013 I decided to close it as I saw no real future for the label
in the current form and I took few months break before coming back
with much more thoughtful and consistent form, named BDTA.
Many
years later I found out that you can be an experimental musician
without ability of playing on any “real” instruments ;-) and I
started doing some own things that landed in my drawer. And my real
adventure with making music started somewhere in 2015, when my friend
from my hometown moved to the same city I am living in currently, we
were both somehow not fitting there, alienated little bit and so on
and we started this techno ensemble named Mazut, which somehow pushed
the blockade I had in my mind, so I started doing my solo stuff as
well not so long after that. And when it comes to relation of my work
and experimental scene, I don't really see it. I am of course
narcissistic little bit, like most of us, but not to this point.
Experimental scene was alive and good long before I started label, it
is right now and for sure will be after I will be done with releasing
or making music in some future. I think the more the merrier, and
probably there is no much harm in my activity on the scene. Maybe
there are some advantages of it, but I don't overestimate my position
here.
There
is an important documentation aspect with BDTA. You have records that
are edited in a small number of physical copies and are on display or
available through your digital catalogue. It seems that the more you
document something, the more you allow it to let it thrive and the
imposant catalogue of BDTA, which you can link with Officyna
Biedota's seems to me to show that. What was the trigger to start the
documentation and what energy keeps you doing it today and over the
last years ?
I
never thought about it really, but you are another person who noticed
this documentation/archiving aspect of the label's work, so probably
there is something like that. It was not really my point or something
I wanted to do when I started, it merely happened during the time,
very spontaneous. I am little bit a workaholic, when it comes to
things that make me happy. Working in label is sometimes hard work,
very time consuming, but this is something I just like to do, like
assembling die cast models or stamps collecting. Work is not so hard
when you love what you do, as simple as that. So as long as I have
the financial resources at the time, I am trying to be as prolific
with this field as possible. I am not putting myself any borders such
as not putting out more than one record per month or anything like
that. There are times when for three months no interesting title or
proposition occurred, but there are also moments when I am
overwhelmed with all the demos and materials sent to me and I can
release four or five albums in one week. As I probably mentioned, or
will mention later on, as I am answering your questions in
non-chronological order, I work with people around me, with my
friends and colleagues, as you can see in a BDTA roster, there is
quite a lot of them. This is what interests me most, I am not
reaching very much for abroad artists, or to make a repress of some
older things. I am working with great young artists from Poland,
creating their works currently, so somehow with this prolific
workaholic approach it came out that BDTA is apparently a
documentation of what is going on currently on some certain scene in
some certain country. Of course, this documentation or future archive
is not full in any way, this is just a small piece, a chunk, but for
sure is some kind of representative fragment of how polish
experimental music is looking currently.
And
I think that maybe for few people out there, starting a label like
that could be somehow motivating, you know? That now they have a
place where they can send their works and there is a great chance
that it will be released, that they don't have to worry about their
music being stored only on their hard drivers or in drawers. Of
course I am picky, I am releasing only things I like and respect, so
this is not an open road for everyone to release their shit. But with
politics of affordable low prices, of low production costs, small
editions and imprints, I can work on economical reason allowing me to
release music which I like and when I like it. There is not really
any recipe for this, any fuel, any particular energy for that all. I
just love this work, this is something relaxing and refreshing. And
as long as it will be bringing me joy, the label will work. I have no
commitments to anyone, I can stop at every point when I will see that
this whole thing is pointless and not amusing me anymore, but as for
today I don't see this scenario happening in the near future, simply.
BDTA
comes from Oficynia Biedota, the old label name, and Biedota means
poverty or the poor people. There seems to be an ascetic feel that
emanate from your practice and esthetic. Can you expand on that?
Yes,
literally we can put Oficyna Biedota as “Poverty Publishing House”
and BDTA links to it directly, as one label somehow transformed into
another, and can be translated as PVRTY or something alike. When I
started the label, I did not had a name, we were working for few
weeks for the first release without the name, and finally we came to
the moment of artwork design and something had to be put on the
digipack. I thought of this name as of something cheeky and maybe
little bit provoking, it just popped into my head and this is it. But
there is also something under the skin when it comes to this name,
metaphorically. The same as poverty is around us, and we very often
try to pretend otherwise and close our eyes on the subject, this is
the same when it comes to diy and mainstream relationship on the
barricade. From the mainstream point of view, playing a gig for fifty
or hundred people is a proof that those guys on the stage were
unlucky, unsuccessful, that this is some kind of shame. And from
their point of view this whole DIY thing is just a joke, something
that they close eyes as well when they pass it by. And they just
don't know or understand that for some of us this is really not a
point of concern and that we simply don't give a fuck how many people
will attend, as it is better to play a concert for five people
interested in your music than for a thousand of random guys on town
market. This is my basic lesson from my days working at semi-major
record company, heh.
In
an interview on Radio Student from Ljubjana, you also talked about
mysticism and capturing plants or abandonned buildings auras with
handrecorders. In what ways your or your labelmates'
relationship with sounds and music is related to religion or believes
? Or poesie ? Also do you consider your action as a musician and
label to be political ? In what forms ?
The
interview you mentioned was not really about label per se, but about
my recordings made under the moniker of Boleslaw Wawrzyn. I made
three albums with field recordings done in places of mass executions
that happened during world war second, as well as around the military
cemeteries. As you probably know from your own environment, because
unfortunately the history when it comes to our remembrance of those
dark spots of our past is very similar all around the world, very
often those places are forgotten, hidden somewhere near the back
alleys or deep forests. This works were based on concept, that
silence is not the same everywhere and is based on context. And that
silence on mass grave sound very different from normal forest
silence, because of this context. I was afraid that this recordings
made under my own birth name, from the position of interested in
experimental music twenty-three years old guy in Godflesh t-shirt
will be misread, treated as some kind of sick provocation, so I came
with this backstory of retired coal miner named Boleslaw Wawrzyn. And
this is another context besides pure audio work by the way, when I at
some stage came through and said that this is my work, no one were
interested anymore. This poetic history with outsider art roots was
more interesting for most of the people than this work on its own, in
pure form.
I
think that everything around us has the meaning when it comes to art.
The same as there is no such thing as “self made man” as we all
are made by our environment, the same situation comes to music. In my
opinion, even if you don't see it or admit it, upbringing in strict
catholic society like we have in Poland for sure will have a mark on
your works. And so on, and so on, and so on – to quote Slavoj
Zizek. I can't and won't speak on behalf of the artists on my label,
so I will not tell you what is their relationship to poetry or
religion or whatever else, as everyone has their own fuel. But I
think personally that everything around us makes those bricks used in
building art of any kind. And when it comes to political beliefs and
situations – I try my label to be as much apolitical as it is
possible. And by “apolitical” I don't mean this nazi bullshit,
that being apolitical means that shaking an arm with some bigot is a
cool thing and that we should not make it as a big deal, but real
politics free environment. Polish government is bunch of fucking
dickheads and we have problems with them everyday, this is one thing,
so when you want to relax and listen to some music do you really need
any political gibberish in your head? And second thing is unnecessary
polarization. I consider myself as a left winged guy, but does really
views of label owner should matter? BDTA fans should care about music
and not about the fact if me or any of the artists are vegan, LGBT or
whatever else. One thing is for me certain and important – that
artists from the label and the labels itself is free of any nazi
shit, hate towards anyone and respectful towards all diversities.
This is a ground rule. Whether the artists or my fans are more
liberal or conservative, who they support, do they pray of engage in
extramarital sex, I don't care.
In
Mazut we sometimes take some stands, but I treat it more like
activism than politics. For instance, we opened our set once with
piece of lecture about abortion, during the time when our parlament
was talking a lot about a total abortion ban. Or we made a collage of
propaganda speeches made by city council of Wroclaw about the
“European Capitol of Culture” title they had. Mazut is the name
of the low quality fuel oil, and our music is mostly fueled with
frustration and anger, which sometimes can be used in good cause.
How
do you see the opposition between mainstream and underground / DIY ?
In terms of organization and in terms of sound for example. What are
the pro and cons of working DIY ?
Since
always I was into DIY and I just did not myself in other way of work,
I cannot see myself anywhere in distant or close future, working on
those mainstream terms. Of course, for each person in the world, each
person engaged somehow in the “scene” this terms of being
mainstream or sellout are different, for some surely I am already
mainstream, because for example I am agreeing for interview requests
and using media to promote my work and my music. I don't see anything
wrong In that, but for sure there are guys out here, who will think
that this is selling out already. For me the border is quite simple –
this whole mainstream thing is starting to happen at the moment when
profit is becoming the most important thing, and when you are going
for compromises and losing honesty. In every possible way of
expression through art, no matter if it's visual, poetry, music, for
myself the honesty is most important. If I have a hunch of some kind
of insincerity, holowness, opportunism, I lose my interest instantly.
So I have no interest in mainstream, but of course I don't shout at
the taxi driver to change the radio station of whatever ;-)
I
don't really see the cons of the diy work. Of course, more money,
more people engaged, stuff like that could boost up my work somehow.
More people on gigs, more people buying tapes and so on, but to be
perfectly honest – I don't really care. I know my place in this
world and in this scene, and I prefer to do fifty or one hundred hard
copies on my own terms than being pushed to make decision like “well,
I don't want to put out your music, it is too harsh, to experimental,
my research inclines that this won't be an economically reasonable
decisions”. Over my dead body. I am also – very slightly, but
still – a control freak. Everything I build with my labels during
the last seven years came with my hard work, with my own
renunciations, I have a problem with letting anyone and his hands
into this, but I think it is quite common. On the other terms, of
working with my own music, I am not a skillfull musician. I don't
know any notes, I have no idea how to play on keyboard, I just sit on
my carpet with a synthesizer, open a can with red bull and push the
keys in somehow random way to achieve some melody. Sometimes this
intuition is bringing me some material in ten minutes, sometimes it
takes few hours. I am huge fan of lo-fi, I put all of my tracks
through the shitty microcasette recorders, experiment than with
tapes, with playback speed, to achieve what I want to. I cannot
imagine going into some real studio with some kind of producer or
engineer and to waste his time and effort with my autistic kind of
composing. And I can see as a label owner, when I hear stuff that
people send me, that nowadays, with all possible technology, if you
are a smart guy knowing what you want to achieve, you can really do
the whole thing on your computer. We are living in times of bedroom
producers, and all tools and equipment are within range, you just
simply have to know how to use them and what you want to achieve as a
final result.
I
have my roots in punk and industrial scene, everything around me is
diy since I was starting to be interested about things around me. I
just don't know any other solutions, and I am not eager to know them,
really. I feel good with the ways and solutions I already know and
implement into fields of my work.
What
is your equipement like ? Do you often change equipement ? What is
your relationship with technologies both in the music making realm
and as a part of your work as a DIY label ?
When
it comes to running a label I don't really use much equipment and I
don't change it very often. I change it when it breaks and is useless
anymore, simple as that ;-) I use of course laptop, typewriter which
I love when it comes to making some flyers or artworks, an external
CDR burner (which is much more practical, as this breaks from time to
time and it is better to change the external drive than internal in
your computer) and a double tape deck for cassette duplication. From
all this roster, decks are most fragile and frequently changed, as it
is hard to buy a good equipment for semiprofessional work for
reasonable cash. So I have to exchange the cassette equipment pretty
often, although one deck is fucking unbreakable, a panzer model
Kenwood KX-W4060. I use it for five or six years now and this is the
only one that never made any problems. And obviously technology is
great and I love it, for instance because of our talk now. What would
be the possibilities that you would even hear about a small label
like mine in let's say 1995? And if we would exchange this interview
handwritten via snail mail. Dear God no, just no.
And
in my music work, I change equipment pretty often. Mazut and Gazawat
are both pure analog, and I am a phony rather than real musician, I
use a lot of different stuff like reel to reels, tape recorders,
dictaphones, shortwave radios and so on. A lot of different toys like
this, and each one gives you some other perspective and other
possibilities, so I buy new gear like that very often on every
possible occasion. I also use much of different guitar pedals in my
work, so I am fan of ebay hunt in that department as well. But when
it comes to essentials, there are four things that are always in my
setup – microkorg synthesizer, fostex mr-8 recorder, boss mt-2
distortion which is probably the best guitar effect ever made, and
custom stomp pedal delay with socialist super mario etching,
handcrafted by my friend and his awesome yung_miki industries. When I
play solo liveacts, I am using all the tracks put into ableton, which
is much more covienient for a guy without a car or drivers license,
but I cannot imagine playing with Mazut or recording albums on
laptop.
You've
relocated from Wroclaw to Warsaw recently, what is your experience
and relationship to both places ? One band on BDTA is called Ghosts
of Breslau.
Yes,
Ghosts of Breslau is in fact from Wroclaw, which is my home town, and
his first releases were trying to capture the very harsh and specific
history of our city, this is a great project, and Patryk who is under
this moniker is a great guy, so I am very glad that he agreed to
release his works in BDTA. I was living in Wroclaw for twenty four
years of my life, so I have some memories from there, mostly bad
memories, as most of the guys who were not really stars of their high
schools and had some bad relationships in the past ;-) So sure, I am
somehow connected to Wroclaw and always will be. Few years ago I went
through pretty tough nervous breakdown and started psychiatric
treatment and I just wanted to run away, change the environment. I
found a nice job and my good friend from the city became my awesome
girlfriend in the meantime, so I just stayed here. Difference between
Warsaw and Wroclaw is very visible on every point, such as the
difference between let’s say Paris, London or Berlin and a
not-so-small but definitely smaller city in the country. Warsaw is
always living, and culturally a lot of great stuff is happening here
every day, so much you can get overwhelmed by it to be honest. And
often I am. A lot of great people lives here, lot of very eager for
work cultural activists. Besides that, of course, from more pragmatic
point of view, stuff like promotion etc. is much easier, as most of
the journalists, bloggers and so on are living here or visiting from
time to time. So for me personally living in Warsaw is much easier on
so many fields, but on the other hand, after three or four years here
I feel that I will never like this city and get used to it as to my
home town.
There
are recurring or common themes in lots of releases on BDTA. Beside
the nature of the sounds that are often exploring and breaking
boundaries in the different genres and tones, one often finds songs
titled or coupled with references to the occult, cults or secret
societies, rogue planets and sci-fi, weird historical occurences,
computer world oddities with Jakub Adamec, or frontal and subtle
questionning of the way rape culture irrigate our realities through
its mass representation in a lot of the pornographic medias and
fictions with your project Gazawat. On the album History written in
Chechen Blood, there seems to have news broadcast clip. You can hear
also some of that on Mazut's recording. I find these to be ways to
confront with hardly defined wrongs in modern society in unobvious
ways, which is stimulating, offering going and comings bridges with
the reality of these wrongs. Whetever its soothing field recordings
and ambient, synthetic punk or overwhelming industrial noise, there
seems often to be a door connecting it with contemporary issues in
BDTA releases as opposed to a simply escapist approach that music
often have.
Can
you share your thoughts on these methods and what is your view of
what can cultural subversion be or do in an era of relative general
uncertainity ?
I
don't really try to change the world and it was never my goal, I
don't think that it is for most of the artists from the roster. I
have no idea is this cultural subversion and any cultural work at all
might do some good or something significant in todays world, most of
the people around are interested in their own lives and not think too
much about anything around us, so what can we do. My father is the
great example, he is a man in his fifties, with two university
degrees, having very responsible work as a main accountant at one of
the companies in Poland. After whole day with papers and microsoft
excel he is looking for some fun, playing some computer games or
watching some blockbuster action movie, I really doubt I could anyhow
talk him into watching some Bergman for example ;-) I am trying to
present in my label music that is somehow escaping from the drawers
and the silly genres, music that is not only for listening, but also
as a starter for some research on your own or intellectual dispute. I
doubt that many people around us will be interested in taking this
chance and to do something with this, but even if one person will
look more into so interesting subject as occultism in broad
perspective, or after listening to my soundplay about chechen wars
will go into wikipedia and read some more about this, if we can
anyhow interest people in something – it would be simply great. For
me, music without any concept or narration is just dull and boring,
no matter if this narration is about occultism, modern history or
rogue planets. I just love art which tells me something more than
just nice and pleasant tone or picture.
On
BDTA, we can often find references to other cultures or places such
as Kelev, Souvenir de Tanger or the Afrikanische Volker album. As of
today, one with an internet connection and enough time can become
very documented on particular genres in short amount of time. How do
foreign cultures and their musical aspect influence you and the
people in your surrounding's music practice ?
Global
village makes it possible for you to find an rather obscure polish
label, or for anybody else to find and really get into some vital
scenes from the other part of the globe. Friend of mine, one of those
people you can treat as walking music knowledge library, used to
proclaim that only vital noise/guitar scene is the australian one,
since he was constantly digging tons of bandcamp lo-fi demos and
australian were the best. At the same time, we draw inspiration from
what we ingest, and this - sometimes in form of more or less direct
plunderophonics - comes in hand when you look for means of artistic
realisation. Personally, I spend a lot of time reading about vicious
phenomena of various places and cultures, and you can find imprint of
that in my work as Gazawat. Artists such as Souvenir de Tanger or
Czarny Latawiec center their explorations on Middle East or Africa,
getting more and more fluent in using those inspirations not in a
manner of mere imitation, but rather incorporating them into their
personal language. Generally speaking, thanks to said global village,
one can get inspired in foreign methods of creating music, or foreign
symbolical systems, and incorporate them into his or her personal
work - but, as participation in global age means something different
than before, this process goes along without the simplified
colonisation of metaphorical wild lands; we simply got more
horizontal - you can be a polish guy or girl really digging
australian noise or palestinian hiphop, even without stepping your
foot on their land - and your knowledge of the scene and means of
understanding can be the one of the local, not of the tourist.
Can
sound manipulation, sonic fiction or narratives leads to alteration
of perception of reality and reality itself ? Is there a point to
utopia ?
And
what kind places are summonned in your and your labelmates' work ?
what is your relationship with imagined places ?
Is
there a form of vision of the future you would like to pursue through
music ?
Whatever
the future is, I’m sure it’s bleak. I don’t want to sound too
black-metalish, but human really is his own worst enemy. So, given
that most of my personal work and a vital part of my catalogue
revolves itself around the murky and grimy areas of human history,
one could derrive an idea that future is not bright. But speaking of
place and time, one should consider how modernity - in it’s
current, liquid state - altered our perception of those terms,
disconnecting them from personal, present experience. A lot of
projects released in BDTA utilise this knowledge in varying ways - on
the one hand you have Kakofonikt album called Kaktuus, which is an
approach of transposing the experience of ingesting hallucinogens
onto music, dividing this process (see: titles of tracks) into an
interpretation of a how to manual, so you have real time description
of an otherworld trip. On the other hand you have Centralia Prijedor
EP, or most of Gazawat albums really, which are basically an audial
documentaries, strongly connected to a named occurrence, in a named
place - only the time is altered, as it often draws inspirations from
newsreels of past events. I guess, the most actual in terms of time
and place is a bootleg of Mazut, 1712. It’s pretty local in
character and hard to explain, but I’ll give it a shot - we played
a gig in our hometown, Wroclaw, which was European Capital of Culture
2016, in the last night of the closing ceremony, on a city-funded
festival. Those lengthy intros and outros in Polish are a sound
collage of various local politicians, news reporters, city officials
describing how the city would benefit from the ECC title, and how
Wroclaw (before WW2 a german city) is a multicultural, diversity
friendly place. All of those samples are mixed with local neonazi
rallies. Outro is a lecture of a local Director of Cultural
Departament on how city loves independent and DIY initiatives - in
fact, Wroclaw did it best to kill anything valuable in that places
for last years, making it virtually impossible to maintain such
initiatives. That was our take on newsreel style, present-and-place
oriented commentary. So, summing up - personally speaking, and I
believe many of BDTA artist somehow share this belief - there’s no
point in creating utopias when real world provide at least a handful
of places and times that need describing. But music, as any other art
form really, is a storytelling tool - you can denote certain feelings
connected to various places and times by the receiver, and it doesn’t
have to be a documentary type of work.
Besides
BDTA, you've openned other forays over the past years in the form of
different sublabel. You have Soup Bob, Modzok and Lasy Painstwowe.
Quite a garden it is, is esthetic continuity and coherence something
you care about ?
Yes,
definitely. Oficyna Biedota was in the matter of fact a dumpster of
everything that interest me. I think and hope that I have something
like a broad horizon when it comes to music, I like good indie rock
at the same level as I like noise and experimental music, I can
fluently go in my ipod from Burzum through Run The Jewels to Xenaxis
during one train ride, so in Oficyna Biedota we had some
posindustrial, rock, punk, electronics, more conceptual stuff etc.
And in my opinion, in XXI century label is something that is stated
in this name. A label, brand, tag, not really a stable or whatever
like it used to be many years ago. When I am realising fifty tapes
and put someones album on the web, how much does it costs me? 50
euros? 70 euros? This is amount of many that is reachable for anyone,
specially if you are playing in band of four or five people for
example. Those people can nowadays release their own music, probably
even promote it better than I do, they don't really need me in terms
of any distribution, promotion or whatever alike. But what can help
is this label that I am putting on the record, a tag that helps the
audience. Of course, after few years of hard work I have some die
hard fans and die hard enemies, for some people the BDTA means that
this is ebola infected shithole that need to be eradicated from their
horizon, for others those four letters mean that this new album is
probably something cool and interesting. They've liked ten other
albums from this label, so maybe they will like this new release,
aight? And this is my work basically, to put this tag, to support the
artists with my labels name somehow, they can do all of those things
on their own, as I said. So this esthetic continuity is very
important, as it gives a power to this tag and builds and supports
trust from fans of our work. Soup Bob really was born for one band,
named Test Prints, which is awesome, but with their sub pop-oriented
alternative guitar pop they didn't fit to my primary roster. I really
dig their work and wanted to release it, so we started a new brand,
although I don't think that anyone else will be released under that.
Mozdok on the other hand started to release my own works, when I
started releasing solo stuff. I am a total no-life douchebag, so I
spend a lot of time making new tunes as Gazawat, and also I am
impatient kind of guy and when I put some of my effort into something
I want to show it, even only for my friends and few fans. I don't
want to interfere too much with my personal things in BDTA, although
sometimes of course something is released in the main label as well.
And Lasy Panstwowe came with ours (my and my girlfriend) interest in
amateur lo-fi field recording, we did some works and put it out in
that form. I hoped that it will grow into a label oriented only on
field recording, but it is probably not very popular concept in
Poland, and also Tomek Mirt in his Saamleng is doing much better work
on this field, so it went into hiatus.
Beside
your music and those labels, you also work. Is it a day job or is
your work related in any meaningful way with your practices ? Do
other musicians or practionner on the label are in similar or
different situations ?
Well,
you can say that my day job is currently related to my practices, as
I am a sales rep in one of the biggest polish companies specializing
in CD/DVD replication and vinyl pressing. So my main goal is
contacting labels and potential customers, mostly from abroad, and
trying to negotiate a good deal for both of us as it comes to
manufacturing a record. Of course as usual, salary could be better
and my boss could be nicer, but it is something interesting and
developing on so many levels. And of course, I can manufacture right
now titles released in my label on cheap-as-fuck price levels, so
this is for sure a plus of this job. But before I’ve landed here I
was selling electronic cigarettes at the mall, taking care about
logistics in petrochemical company, being a guy responsible for
promotion in company specializing in toy wholesale etc. I’ve done a
shitload of very often stupid and useless stuff to earn money for
everyday living and for running the label, and since day one label
was an afterhours hobby rather than any serious business. Hobby also
means hard work, of course, but for mental health I prefer to treat
it that way, it is less nerve consuming this way. And about the
artists in BDTA – there is a lot of them and every single one has a
different history and background, so there is no principle. Some of
the artists have day jobs, some of them are freelancing on various
things, some are trying to earn on their music, which is very hard
and very often makes you depend more on your partners and relatives
;-) Some are working in small business, some in huge corporations.
So, every artist is a different situation, really.
Now
I want to ask you questions more oriented on the practical aspect of
your experience. Your releases are non-profit and low cost, both on
the physical part and on the digital part. One can get the entire
digital BDTA catalog for less than 30€ or about 120 zlotys for
example. And you also share your benefits with a cancer-fighting
association, Rak'n'Roll. How did these economical practices came
about ?
Earning
on the label was never a goal. Of course, if some titles are selling
better than the others and if I have some income that I can “invest”
in manufacturing next titles, it is great, but it happens rarely.
Basically the idea was to make music affordable and not at all
exclusive on any level, but to balance it somehow so I will not lose
my own money, as this is a hobby and not charity. I am totally sick
of those artsy fartsy labels that release small editions in a totally
exclusive prices like 30 euro for album or whatever. Let’s say that
when I am making an title released, I am giving some percent of the
imprint to the artists, some are always reserved for promo and
friends giveaway, and after that from the copies left in my label, I
should sell around half to be on zero line. The other half can
provide some very small income, but more often is also given away, as
artist need more copies or whatever. I am not really a good
bookkeeper, I am not writing every single copy of a CDR into excel,
so maybe sometimes even after the sold-out I did not earn nothing, I
am not sure to be perfectly honest. But as long as all the sales are
on my other account, used for buying materials, printing artwork etc.
for next titles and I don’t have to feed this second account too
often from my paycheck, this is a good thing and some kind of
achievement let’s say.
And
when it comes to digital sales, I noticed after years that giving it
away for “pay-if-you-want” basis is not the greatest possible
option, but I also want those to be affordable and cheap. My main
target is of course physical release, but if anyone for any reason
wants to have a file more than he or she wants a cd or tape – cool
with me. Of course it is great to have some extra money from it, but
this is not a priority. And specially in Poland, where in most cities
a salary revolving around 500-600 euro is a great fucking salary, I
don’t want to have those digital files too expensive. Especially
when every bit of music in the whole world is available through
soulseek, torrents or whatever other sources. I think that this one
dollar is cheap enough for anyone to buy and support rather than look
for the other ways to have those mp3’s. I always wanted to all of
my releases and my work to be as inclusive, as affordable, as
possible to reach for anyone as it is possible. So this pricing
politics is one the ways to achieve that.
And
about sharing – yes, 40% of the monthly income from digital sales
is transferred to Rak’N’Roll foundation, dealing with brave
people fighting with cancer. I was never a 100% true punk kid, but I
consider myself as someone who came from the punk scene and punk
background. And helping people in need was always very important for
me. I know that I can count for many great people when I get into any
trouble, and I want to be the one who helps as well, no matter how
pathetic and cliché that sentence sounds. I had some small battle
for my health in the past, a few friends of mine left this world
unfortunately, so those charity actions are something that fuels all
work of BDTA. Besides that percent of income, we very often engage is
some kind of auctions with some rare gems from our catalogue and do
whatever we can and are able to do. Today I finished mastering the
new EP of my band that will be released in small edition for our
upcoming tour, and all the profit from the sales will go to Kinga, an
awesome person, who was badly injured while on bike by some
car-driving dickhead who run away from the scene. And this is
something I consider the most important in running a label, to be
honest.
Do
all your releases get a physical treatment or are there some digital
only ? What is the difference between a digital aspect of a release
and its physical one ?
Basically
yes. I am a collector myself and I just love physical editions, I
just love the object. This is something powerful and something that I
don’t have to explain probably, there is nothing better for a music
fetishist than having a great looking CD, LP or tape in their hands.
And when it comes to a title that you were really looking forward
too, being able to finally listen something you waited for a long
time – when you open the parcel from a distro or whatever, this is
pure fucking magic, right? Of course editions in my label are based
on my current financial possibilities, and let’s put it in a very
harsh way – “possibility of sales”. Some better known artists
can sell 100 or 200 pcs and if I am able to do this, I am doing this,
some of them are not so known yet and it is impossible to sell their
tape or cd in such quantity. But even if I can currently do some
silly amount like 20 or 25 tapes at the moment, I prefer to do this
more than to do only digital release. Being a collector is one thing,
and being a pragmatist is the other. If you will look on bandcamp or
soundcloud for example, in every minute there is more music being
uploaded there than I can event count to, you get it? I don’t even
know such numbers as every new band is emerging every single day on
the whole world. I am only a very small diy label from Eastern
Europe, it is often hard to get my releases promoted on visible even
when it comes in a nice package or something alike. Think about it
how much harder would it be if this release would be only a release
on bandcamp, an http url basically. When it comes to my outlets, solo
or with mazut, we sometimes put out some available only in digital
concert recordings, for free download. Sometimes we (or I) play a
gig, we have recording of it, we feel that it is something neat and
good enough to show to the world, but not something that can sell,
being reviewed or whatever, not something with chances for serious
impact on whatever level. So in that rare occasions we just put it as
a digital, but I always prefer a hard copy and nice physical release.
You
have some really great and thoughtful artworks. They are heteregenous
but all share a certain sensibility ? Who and how are you working
with to make those ?
Well,
thank you. Basically all of the artists have a total freedom when it
comes to the artworks, so few of the covers in my catalogue are
probably not fitting into the bigger picture perfectly, but I think
most of them in fact makes some kind of “aesthetics wholeness”.
Sometimes artists know what they want, somethimes they are totally
carte blanche when it comes to artwork and I suggest something, very
often in both of those cases I am asked at some point can I take care
about that or do I know something who will, and I do. A lot of
artworks in the label came from few artists who frequently
collaborate with the label visually – Maciek Misiewicz, Pawel
Starzec, Maciek Wlazlo, Martyna Wyrzykowska, some of them are done by
me. Even if I am not doing the artwork, but rather just “pick”
the visual artist, we end up with something that I really like and
done by someone who I really respect as a creator. This is the key to
this certain sensibility, probably. Few of the musicians from the
label are also visual artists or designers on their own, and my main
key to work with someone in the label is my respect towards their
work and my friendship with someone, as 95% of people in BDTA roster
are my friends for sure. So this also helps, as usually human beings
pick friends similar to them somehow, maybe also in aesthetics point
of view ;-)
And
even if some of artworks are not fitting in my opinion, or I don't
even like those (which sometimes also happens) – I am not
interfering. I am a fan of marber grid solution, but situation in
which labels layout or label logo is more important that vision of
musician really sucks. Somehow I like visual consistency of artworks
from Sacred Bones, Posh Isolation or Czaszka Records, but as someone
who also makes music and is trying the artwork to be a part of the
album narrative on my own, I would rather cut my dick off than
release my album with some fucking black square on the cover in the
place of my artwork that I wanted and thought will fit.
How
do eroticism, architectures crumbling or not, archival pictures
displayed on your cover relate with the musics on the label and its
goals on the listenner ?
Although
I deeply cherish your effort of contextualization for my work, I am
afraid I will disappoint you here, as I really never though about it
and have no idea if this anyhow even remotely relates. For a lot of
artworks I cannot speak, as it was – as mentioned – made by
artists in cooperation with designers, so they would have to speak
about every situation on their own and to make this statement. For
me, this is purely aesthetics that interest me and which I like, and
also when it comes to my work, it simply fits to the narrative. When
I was making material for “Rape Culture” based on gruesome
concepts of sex violence and rape pornography I just knew that I need
artwork that will correspond to the subject. When it comes to Mazut,
we are both fans of industrial aesthetics and minimalism in design,
and it can be seen on artworks made by Pawel or Martyna, at least I
hope so. But this is something that connects with the previous
question, I don't feel as someone who should put words in “my”
artists mouths.
What
is the distribution of your releases like ? You have distribution
through polish digital underground shops like Serpent Music and
8merch, can we find your release in some other stores or at events ?
How have the orders you've received over the years progressed ?
Well,
most of our titles are released in very small and limited quantities,
so we don't really push it hard into distribution. Mainly because the
distributor needs – obviously – his piece of cake as well and we
can manage without them, it is not really some hard to achieve goal
to sell for example fifty tapes nowadays. 8Merch you mentioned is a
platform similar to bigcartel or whatever, where you have your own
store, so this, as well as our bandcamp, is operated by me and my
girlfriend. Besides that we push some titles through the discogs and
we are cooperating with serpent.pl which is possibly the oldest and
the best known webstore with very often underground music and very
fair attitude towards labels and musicians. They don't cut much of
the commision, they pay on time and they are great people, besides
that with postal rates and stuff like that it is much convenient for
our customers to buy few different titles from different labels at
one place rather than pay for shipping costs of one tape. When it
comes to digital, we are also using an aggregator for streaming
services (which are necessary, but from the financial point of view
they should just go fuck themselves, not an original statement, I
know) and for some digital stores like itunes. But as I mentioned
before, with our policy of selling digital releases through our
bandcamp for one dollar, our earnings from itunes or amazon music are
not spectacular, obviously. But on the other hand, why shouldn't we
do this? Maybe it helps somehow and it costs nothing ;-)
Quantity
of orders placed obviously grew little bit when we transformed from
Oficyna Biedota, focused mostly on polish music, with polish lyrics
etc into BDTA which is much more, let's say “universal” and
approachable for people from abroad. Most of the orders placed are
from our fans, who support us since a long time and very often are
buying almost every new release. We can basically function mostly
because support of our loyal fans. People who just liked this
particular or another and wants only that thing are somewhere around
10-15% of all orders.
You
have series of compilation records that do not display no musician
names or track titles and you have mentionned how this practice was
aimed at focusing people more on the music than on who made it. Can
you talk about these sorts of excesses in musical digging cultures ?
Are there some other aspects you are bemused or critical of ?
Centralia for example made this cover "You fucking people could
dance to anything"
Scene,
whenever you define it as an art scene, music scene, underground
circle of x people or whatever, always goes with certain trends, and
one can go for them, or try to use it in certain way - I guess you
can't skip the fact that this is the way it goes. Numerical series
was one of ideas of how you can just point your finger onto those
practices – when the unnatural hype is rising, based more on the
name of the artist and their status more than it is based on the
music itself. We wanted to cut off the flesh of all PR bullshit and
strip it down to the music, so you have to focus on it’s purity.
When you observe techno parties, it's often done the same way, with
politics of no announcing of the DJ's, so you go there not knowing if
the one spinning would be a prime-booked star, or some rookie. As
with Centralia, Schwarze Kanal EP, with the cover you mentioned, was
a last part of a progressively rhythmic and dance oriented trilogy.
This topic, of how modern techno culture strives for a controversy,
and feeds itself by a certain aesthetics, is a recurrent one in most
of our - Paweł/Centralia plays in Mazut as well - work. How you can
transpose this interest/expectation into something with a meaning
behind it? In case of Centralia's Schwarze Kanal, whole EP revolves
around violence in Germany - be this German Autumn, riots on
Mainzerstrasse or Solingen neonazis. I guess, Paweł's point was to
prove that you can pour anything violent, pair it with 4/4 beat and
it would fit, never mind the source of the samples.
Do
you feel there is a community around your label or of which your
label is a part of ? Do people with different approach on musicality
and sound meet ?
Do
generation meets ? Do people from different cities get to know each
other ?
Is
it common for people to jump in and out the stage and be at the same
time public and musician ? As of my experience, I can feel there is
always a more or less slight unease linked to experimental practices
being perceived or pursued as a form of cultural elitism, especially
when they tend to happen in more institutional settings. But at the
same time that you can't always completely blame institutions that at
least give these musics a space to exist. So another question I want
to ask you is about underground spaces in Poland and in neighbouring
countries, what are they like and what are their relationship with
cultural and state institutions ? Do you go to see shows in bars and
club ? In squats ?
Oh
man, this is a lot of questions in one, but I try to answer all
without any omitments. Probably have to write myself some kind of
blueprint for that one. I think that there is a strong community
around my label. Sure, we release a lot of one time albums, accept
some demo requests and so one, rarely I release music that I fell
love with, without even meeting the guy or girl who made it, but most
of the artists on the roster are my friends, as mentioned. And those
best friends are making the core of the whole label. Few people which
I know for years, who I love spending time with, who are let's face
it – most important for me in some ways. And this is this community
for which running a label is a cool thing, even when I am under the
weather from time to time. Pawel Starzec is one of those guys, he
plays with me in Mazut, he is releasing his solo outlet Centralia in
BDTA, making artworks from time to time, helping in many other ways,
even consulting some more intelligent interview questions ;-) And as
his help is remarkable and exceptional, there are few others similar
to him, I like to think about this core as some kind of a collective.
But when it comes to the contacts with outside world, even on very
small scene like the one we have in Poland there are some ridiculous
frictions from time to time. There was a time few years ago which
came with a boom of a few new labels being born at the same time, and
sometimes it is shown that we are still too young in knowing each
other to cooperate on the best possible level. Guy from label A is
talking shit behind the back of the guy from label B because he
released a tape of the artist that released before in label A, guy
from label C is whining that we are agreeing for the interviews, as
is his opinion cassette culture is something elite and exclusive and
we are making this whole thing approachable for hipsters and shit
like that. And sure, this is something that happens in every small
and somehow inbred community, but this is absolutely unnecessary. Or
the situation when you have three techno party bookers in one city
and two of them are making their own gigs at the same day, in venues
that are 300 meters away from each other, what the fuck. But I want
to believe that we all just need some more time to reduce this
frictions, as in the end nothing that we do really fucking matters
and we are not making this world a better and more peaceful place
with our experimental music CDRs ;-)
About
the community in broader context, it is just awesome, that everything
blends in a great way. I remember the stories from my older pals,
when skinheads where chasing punks and depeche mode fans were beaten
on the streets by heavy metal fans, who thought that they have
exclusiveness when it comes to wearing black t-shirts and so on.
Right now, in this global village, with internet, postmodernism and
other shit it is all thrown into one jar. I spot the same people on
classical avantgarde festival called Warsaw Autumn and on the Black
Metal gigs. People who are attending hardcore punk gigs are buying my
tapes and sitting in front row during my gigs with their eyes closed.
This all blended, and this is awesome, that we have an army of great
open minded people rather than stupid subcultures. Although I was a
part of quite tense situation two months ago for being bald and
wearing a flyers jacket as someone took me for a nationalist scum
probably, but I think that twenty years ago someone would give me the
taste of blade before I would lit my cigarette after leaving my flat
;-) One of the greatest music bloggers on the experimental field that
I know of lives in a small village at the end of world, where postman
leaves parcels with records for him at the house of his neighbor
living kilometer away, as no road leads to his house. And this
doesn't stop him from writing or making music on his own, this is one
of many proofs of the great times that we live in. Usually people
from both sides on stage does not blend in Poland, I personally don't
recall the situation like that, but maybe we are still more uptight
that others as the whole nation, I don't know. I was talking with
Wojtek Kucharczyk recently, who is a manager and helper of great
techno act called RSS B0YS and he told me that abroad, even in very
close to us Czech Republic people are just going crazy during their
gigs and storming on the stage to dance, when we are for sure more
stiff as the whole nation and it takes twenty minutes of a set to
notice someone slightly starting to dance.
As
for the institutional support, with few small exceptions like people
from Kronika Art Center in Bytom, Daniel Muzyczuk from MS2 in Lodz or
an absolute hero, Andrzej Zaleski from CSW in Warsaw, when it comes
to institutions we are in “us and them” situation clearly. I am
not the guy who is going from door to door begging for some support,
but most of the institutions in Poland does not even have any
programs or whatever alike in which we could participate or sign
into. In Warsaw it is very visible, that each of the cultural
institutions have their favourites, specially when it comes for
example to visual artists who are kind of “by the way” making
music or somehow personally connected to the people from so called
“Artworld”. Few names playing over and over again each year in
three different public places or galleries, this is ridiculous.
Artworld is sticking to itself basically while we are trying to do
our job. Of course, as I said, there are exceptions, for example
mentioned Andrzej Zaleski is making this year a cycle presenting few
underground DIY labels like mine in CSW (Centre For Contemporary Art)
Warsaw.
There
is one situation from last year which is a great summarization of the
whole topic – Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw booked Wolf Eyes for a
gig, after they finished a local noise rock band called Sierść
started some guerilla concert there. Two smallest guitar amps on the
world, one drum, one hihat, vocalist, they just came there and
started playing a noise gig after a fucking noise gig. It was like a
minute and the half before security intervened and stuff got out of
hand in physical kind of way between a guy from the band and someone
from the institution. This says all about how supportive most of them
are, with this loud statement saying that noise and counterculture is
good, as long as we can take control over it and as long as it is for
our guests in white shirts sipping red wine from plastic cups.
But
as long as we have squats, local venues and so on, we don't really
need any support from institutions, we can manage. This space left by
museums or galleries mentioned is greatly filled by owners of great
places, which on one hand make some profit-oriented bigger gigs, but
on the other hand let you play there and give all infrastructure and
support for the gig, even if they know that this act will interest
mostly your partners, few friends and a local homeless dog. Even when
we have in Warsaw, which is biggest polish city, only four or five
places so open and supportive like that, trust me, this is enough for
us to function on level allowing to repay those institutions with the
same urine they gave us :-)
You
promote show with BDTA as BIEDOPAD and you also organize a festival.
How often ? Is it easy ? Are there obstacles ? What spaces do you use
? Are there many organization promoting DIY shows and event in Poland
?
BIEDOPAD
happened one time in Wroclaw as a three days evening festival with
something around 15 gigs on it, after that we made few one and off
gigs under the same name, and after that we put this idea with single
gigs on hold. It is too time consuming for me to book gigs in a city
three, four hours away from my current home and to go there every
time once or two per month to see if everything is ok. Also, I had
some minor health issues on my end, and the club which hosted the
event had some problems on their own, so this idea is not dead for
sure, but simply not happening currently. But I hope that we will be
back on track with the weekend festival, maybe even this year. The
festival was really not my idea, I just agreed to a proposition made
by two of my friends who own the venue in Wroclaw, it was named Neon
Side, now they changed the place and it is called Carpe Diem. And for
me this is the best possible solution and the most convenient for
sure, as they provide financing backup, and I am mostly responsible
for the bookings and lineup, and everything else, from technical to
PR stuff we are doing together. So, as long as I don’t have to risk
with my own money, but I can use some provided ways of financing –
I am in heaven as you can imagine. So in that particular case we did
not have any more obstacles than every booker or owner of a small
venue has anywhere in the world. Of course, making a lineup strong
enough so people will have the reason to go out of their comfy
houses, but not strong enough to make the tickets with some bizarre
crazy pricing, this is a hard task. Finding this balance is risky,
sure. Trying to promote the event and to drop the flyers around the
city is hard, of course. But it is a nice thing to do. About
organizations – not really. If you have “organization” trying
to do an event, in most cases this is not a DIY event anymore ;-) We
have few very open-minded and fair for artists venues, we have here
great local activists who are doing the bookings etc after their
hours spent at normal day job and so on. So I cannot complain about
that, a great folks are here on the scene. Besides doing this
Festival I am not really doing much concerts now, as I simply don’t
have enough time, but I know lot of this from the other perspective,
when I am trying to book some gigs or small tours for my music
outlets. And I know the countries where this is really harder than in
today’s Poland. But those are not any organized forms, mostly just
single people with great passion.
In
shows you organize and which you attend is there a link between
musics that are more party music and musics that are more deep
listenning musics ? Are there events when both happens ?
For
me personally the best event that links both ways of connecting with
various liveacts and various ways of associate with music is Unsound
Festival that occurs every year in October in Krakow, Poland. The
whole thing lasts a week, which is little bit too long for me, but
specially the final weekend is really packed tight with various
events. Usually during the day and of the evenings you have many
experimental gigs, very conceptual, ambient or whatever, with the
narration and context great for just sitting in the chair with the
eyes closed and listening, and during the night you have great techno
parties at old Hotel building named Hotel Forum. It is impossible for
me to see everything and usually at the beginning I am trying to
cross out at least something that is not a priority, but after few
days anyway I end with skipping something that I was really eager to
see. But this is how festivals probably works anyway.
Is
it usual to travel to attend shows or hear music ? If so where and
how far ?
I’m
not much of a traveler to be honest, I am a boring guy sitting at
home and focusing on work that has to be done, so I am probably not
the best person to answer this. When I was living in Wroclaw, we
often went to Prague or Berlin to see some gigs, as the city was much
closer to the border and much more dull itself than Warsaw is
currently. While living in capitol, so many things are happening here
constantly, as I mentioned before, that I don’t really feel the
need of traveling anyway. And I hate festivals, so even with some
great events like that in Poland I rarely visit those, with exception
of mentioned before Unsound in Krakow. Very often it goes other way
around, that I am going somewhere with my girlfriend for some holiday
and I – of course, as most of the people – have my laptop with
me. And when I have my laptop I have everything to play a solo gig
with Gazawat. Sometimes we try to somehow connect our personal
vacation with some small gigs, just in the meantime, on the occasion.
Lastly,
I would like to ask you about to recommend us what are some
interesting places to go to listen to these musics ? What are
festivals or fairs to look forward to ?
Well,
it connects very much with the previous question and the best answer
I can come up with is – stay home, read a book. Reading will make
your eyes sore after some time, but this is good for you. And if you
want to leave and travel, and for whatever stupid reason you think
that Poland is the best option, oh come on. Seriously, Poland is
great, it is a beautiful country with so many awesome thing to see,
but it is much better idea to go and see the Baltic Sea or some old
church or whatever than go to polish festival. Everyone are so
psyched about Off Festival for example, but polish musicians are
usually treated there like shit and playing in some bizarre slots
like 2 PM in the full sunlight. You will be probably tired and
hangover so you will skip those local acts anyway, and all of the
headliners are made of an ensemble cast of headliners from other
festivals. So don’t bother with Off, you probably have the same
festival in your country. If you really want to attend the festival
in Poland – pick Unsound. It is the best one. Probably.
And
what are some musicians you are interested in now and we should keep
an eye on ?
I
am a really lucky man, who works with most of the artists that he
loves, so this is a hard task for me, as I don’t like to brag about
artists from my label. But obviously, those are in most cases my
favorites. I strongly recommend two acts emerging from the polish
noise scene, but doing currently some absolutely awesome things on
fields that are way above the, let’s say, “typical” noise as
most of the people imagines that genre – Purgist and MAAAA. Besides
that I can surely recommend great works of guys such us Robert
Piotrowicz, Piotr Kurek, Jacek Sienkiewicz, Lutto Lento….We have
great black metal scene, with Mgła, Furia, Blaze of Perdition,
Morowe or Mord'A'Stigmata to name just a few.
But
if I would have to recommend just one and only one CD from Poland to
someone interested in polish experimental music, it would be debut
album of Księżyc from 1996. It was recorded more than 20 years ago,
but still it is absolutely mind-blowing and something I cannot even
describe with words. If you are into digging into obscure archives of
strange blogs, you should get yourself into the old catalogue of
label named OBUH, a lot of beautiful gems there.
http://bdta.pl/index.php/project/va---bdta-2013---2014/
