Bleepwatch

[David Keifer interviews Brad Mitchell of Kikapu]

Back when he was a DJ at a college radio station, Brad Mitchell would sometimes check-out net-labels to find new music for his show. Today, Brad runs his own net-label, Kikapu, which will soon have 100 releases in its catalog. That’s what you call giving back to the community.

Q. Nearly 100 releases in only five years—that’s a real accomplishment. Have your ideas about the net-label scene changed with so much experience? Are you doing any thing differently?

A. Yes, we’re just about to go over the 100 release mark very soon. I started Kikapu almost five years ago, and at the time I had absolutely no idea it would be so successful and have the longevity it has enjoyed.

Overall, I think the ideology for the label hasn’t changed much - releasing quality music for free to the masses. The things that have changed over time are the number of releases per year, and the type of music we release. Early on, I was sort of stuck in the middle of the quantity vs. quality debate, but as time has passed and the label has ‘grown up’ more, I definitely lean way more towards the quality side and don’t worry about the number of releases we do. We have released so many hours of music these past few years that an extra couple of weeks between new releases won’t hurt anybody.

As far as genres are concerned, at the beginning the approach was more open-ended; I would release something I thought others would enjoy even if it wasn’t totally my cup of tea. But now I’m much more subjective (for better or worse) and the music we release is more to my personal tastes. Things now focus more on ambient, experimental, post-rock, and abstract releases, but still w/ a focus on electronic music.

Q. The net-label scene seems very robust. There are new labels popping up all the time, and there are a lot of labels with really deep catalogs. What do you think contributes to this? Aside from the fact that people just like free music.

A. It’s funny, when Kikapu started out you could probably count the number of netlabels in existence on your fingers (metaphorically speaking), and now the number is so out of control I have no idea how so many people find new music to release. I think the two biggest contributions to the explosion of this scene in the last couple of years are 1) cheap web hosting, and 2) the opening of the netlabel section at the Internet Archive. Before this, it cost you as a label owner to run a netlabel, unless you had a hookup w/ free hosting. Now w/ the Internet Archive, you can upload as much music as you want and simply link to it on your webpage. There has always been scene.org of course, but they are selective in who gets server space, so not everyone can take advantage of that.

But to be honest, I’m a bit frightened by how many labels are out there now. It seems that everyone else is more interested in releasing whatever gets handed to them just so they can have a big catalogue of albums. I mean no disrespect, there are many fantastic labels out there, but w/ the sheer number of labels online now being as staggering as it is, I kind of feel like the eclectic-ness and special community-like feeling of the netlabel scene of old is now gone. It’s just too much to keep up with anymore. But I’m probably just being a disgruntled old man ;)

Q. How important do you think it is to differentiate yourself from other net-lables? For instance by focusing on a particular genre or geographical area?

A. Pertaining to my statement above, I think it is quite important. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd nowadays, and having a particular focus on a genre, location, or what have you is very important. Location being the least important however, simply for the fact that the internet facilitates a global audience. I do however really admire the netlabels who try to focus on one geographical area; Alpinechic (Switzerland) and Interdisco (Germany) come to mind.

Q. The idea of limited edition custom made cds is really cool. How did the Circle series come about?

A. In the past I had toyed around w/ physical releases; we did a couple of not-very-well-received mini-CD releases a few years back, and then I put together a great CD compilation for our 50th release, which did quite well. But the focus was definitely always on mp3 releases. I saw the CD releases as an extra little feature to incorporate into the label every now and again.

But the inspiration for this series of discs was the Slo Bor Media label, which is run by Matt Borghi and Jason Sloan. They do limited-run releases of their music, all w/ handmade packaging and artwork. And I really liked the idea of making each release something really special and that would be considered a collectable to whoever purchased one. As far as the format goes, I knew I wanted to do a series of ambient pieces, but not have a normal album of a bunch of different songs. I really wanted to challenge the artists for this series, and that’s how I came up w/ the idea of each disc being one single 20-minute piece of music. It can be quite challenging to come up w/ a piece of music that is that length of time and complete it on a deadline. Or so I’m told.

Q. Kikapu has a podcast, too. Do you see those and RSS feeds as maybe something that’s going to have a place in the future of net-labels?

A. I think they already do have a place in the world of netlabels. What I would like to see is for them to have a more prominent role in the labels. For instance, most podcasts that labels have now are simply their newest release playing straight through (I’m guilty of this too).

I would like to see podcasts be an extension of the actual releases, each one having songs not found anywhere else, or each podcast being a mix of songs; almost to where each podcast is it’s own mini-release within the bigger picture and is something really special. That has been my goal w/ the Kikapu Podcast, but it’s difficult to get people excited and involved in something that only a handful of people will subscribe to. And I don’t have the time to create something new every month for a podcast. But as it goes on, more people are interested in it, and guest artists are submitting mixes for it now more regularly, so I hope it is something that will grow in stature and importance.

Q. Besides running Kikapu you also create music–what have you been working on lately?

A. I took over a year off from doing music, to clear my head a bit. Earlier this year I produced two new EP’s, and had a track on the Nishi 100 compilation [part 2, track 1: Sagimusume].

Currently, I’m buried in working on two new full-length albums. One is almost completed, and will be called ‘Pocka Seigt!’ which harkens back to the days of piano music in the early 20th century. The result is a really messed-up version of old tunes, heavily patchworked from random source material and processed to hell in certain places. Overall the feeling is dream-like, yet dark at times. The other album I’m working on is more straight-ahead, melodic ambient material. This one will be much less difficult and have more of an upbeat feeling to it. I’m still a long ways off from completing this album though.

[visit kikapu at kikapu.com]