Bleepwatch

[David Keifer interviews Eduardo Padilla of Umor Rex]

I recently had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Eduardo Padilla, a musician, writer and aesthetic impresario from León, Mexico. Turned out that Eduardo and two co-conspirators, Daniel Castrejón and Edgar Medina, were getting ready to start up a new net-label called Umor Rex. Sure enough, on Wednesday July 12^th, 2006, Umor Rex was up and running. So far, Umor has two releases under its belt, with two others—”Sans Nostalgie” by the Felix Building and “Bambi” by Les Enfant Bastard—due out by the end of August. They also have several more scheduled, and a team of eight artists (of which I am happy to be one). Over the past couple of weeks, Eduardo was gracious enough not only to submit to the following questions, but to provide illuminating answers as well.

 Q.  Assuming that–ala Marshal McLuhan–the medium really is the message, how do you think net-labels, being purely digital entities, might evolve differently from traditional labels?

A. Well that’s a damned tricky question Dave. And another headache courtesy of M. McLuhan. We’ll, let’s see… I really would rather withhold any bets on the future, but that would make me a poor subject for an interview… so here are a few angles, dismembered, see if they make any sense when assembled:

• a. the safe bet, the obvious: the floodgates of rampant amateurism open and threaten to cover everything with the tepid buzz of mediocrity. Everyone feels entitled to an “artistic career”; those proverbial 15 minutes of fame will not do, not when you have some cracked bootleg software, a fast connection, an equally cracked ego just achin’ to swell, and a mindlessly wide mp3 collection which you barely ever listen to anyway. Critics despair, historians run for cover. Paradoxically, the medium splinters the musical spectrum, not unites it. Just like with the Romans… all fragments into feuds. A good thing or a bad thing? The possibility of a world wide melting pot of musical degeneracy hangs like a pitch black cloud. A ludicrous mass of over-production and over-expansion, everything sounding pretty much like everything else. Imagination withers off and dies. Remember that lousy E.T. game for the Atari 2600? They had to bury all those millions of copies in the Nevada desert… first the atomic testings, then the E.T.’s… poor fucking iguanas. Now that’s a rather simplistic view you know, it’s just a dimension.
• b. the longshot: artists get rid of the middleman. Then they get careless and monstrously self indulgent? Not necessarily. I mean, hey, you could say the same thing about all those Led Zeppelins in rock history (but then again, Led Zep never made a bad album… excepting Coda… and Houses of the Holy… and the Song Remains the Same… skip it)
• c. musicians on the experimental and/or independent side of things get the biggest possible break, regardless of talent (I’m actually some kind of optimist, and do believe there’s a staggering amount of talented folk out there, doing interesting stuff). Really, the netlabel could be the future of experimental music. It works in many ways… yeah, the netlabel is god’s gift to moribund humanity… or to that particular brand of lunatic known as the experimental musician in any case.

 Q.  What’s your idea of a net-label as brand? That is, as a kind of embodiment of a particular aesthetic attitude or ideal?

A. Don’t know about you man, but I remain skeptical towards all attitudes and ideals. I’m a “doubt everything except doubt itself” kind of guy. Theories, I may respect and love some of them but ultimately, I believe in none. I see them as specialized little animals running amok in an abandoned, run-down museum… some may be sharper and faster than others, but they all get to kick the bucket at the end of the film. Therefore, our blotched manifesto (more on that later). So Umor Rex is an empirical venture. Aesthetic parameters? We have none, as you can hear from our fairly contradictory roster. I distrust aesthetics… I don’t care if Kandinsky is a giant and I’m a flea, I simply refuse to swallow his bogus Topology of the Soul. Some people take themselves so seriously you know, they become laughable. Now there’s a circle for you Vlad! Regarding attitude, yeah there is one, or to be more precise, a group of dissonant ones, battling it out, producing sound and colour in the process. Jacques Vache and Alfred Jarry, I always say, those are our patron-saints. We got the name from them. We trust our fate to their sulphureous stars.

 Q.  If Umor Rex was a silent film star, who might that star be?

A. Buster Keaton! Hands down.

…maybe Lon Chaney too, on Buster’s day off.

 Q.  What made you want to start a label of your own?

A. Every Thursday night Daniel and I would drink at my house and talk endlessly about music, and sort of share whatever musical discoveries we had made that week. Beer and music appreciation night it became, and not even women (ours or others) could drive our attention off of that. Now, we used to run this arts and literature mag on the web, called Contramotor (soon to be back on the air by popular demand), and there we met this other fella, named Edgar Medina. He wrote reviews for our musical dept., but later it turned out the guy was actually a prominent figure in the Mexican independent/experimental electronic music scene. Who just happened to live in the same dismal town as us. So we became friends. After getting sick and tired of doing the monthly Contramotor routine (it will now be a more permanent like site, and we’ll add and subtract whenever we feel like it) we just started to say “we might as well start our own netlabel”. Jokingly at first. Then it sort of dawned on us, it was actually feasible. We had some interesting contacts due to our contramotor days and thanks solely to the miracle of myspace… so we suggested the idea to Edgar and he lept right up in an Eureka! sort of way. He’s got the connections, the experience… Daniel and I just have a pair of ears each, and lots of free time on our hands… perhaps me more than Dan.

 Q.  We crossed paths on myspace. How have you met other people on the Umor roster?

A. Pretty much the same way, we have discovered all of them through myspace. In the particular case of Cagey House, we were fans of your work months before even thinking about the netlabel. We were not optimistic about getting you to publish something with us… “ah, he’s probably signing a deal with Fatcat as we speak… why bother? Well, let’s just ask him, otherwise we’ll be forever annoyed by the ‘what if’ bug”. So I’m glad we asked!

 Q.  Ah. Well, Fatcat would probably have never catered to my insane demands, anyway.

In “Notes Found in the Shipwreck of a Botched Manifesto,” a document posted on the Umor Rex homepage, you declare “Musical Purists will not be served; snobs need not apply.” That’s certainly a clear and concise statement; nevertheless, would you care to elaborate?

A. That’s just me having fun. Some go for soccer, others for arm-wrestling… me, I write something like the Blotched Manifesto. In late 19th century Europe I could have been considered a classy character. Here and now, I get called a nerd. No point dwelling in that… see, I hate snobs and purists. “The dog is a snob, in the sense that he respects power and prosperity, and objects to the poor and despised”. And purists! Ugh. Even people who only drink bottled evian water annoy the hell out of me.

 Q.  Speaking of Jaques Vache—it’s struck me recently that Dada (and I suppose Vache wasn’t really a Dadaist, but nevertheless) started out as–or at least had its roots in–a magazine and a cabaret. Both of these enterprises are community-oriented; they’re means to create a common bond among people. Do you think that net-labels could be better able to fill this kind of function than traditional labels?

A. How can one not love Dada’s self-destructiveness? It was sub-atomic chaos in the flesh, spilling out into the street. It was the boiling point of an early Marx Brothers film. They only lasted what, 4 years? But it’s amazing they lasted that long. They never agreed on anything! Tzara made an art out of disagreeing endlessly with himself, from one beat to the next (again, Groucho).

Here at Umor, we’re explosive minded individuals but we’re also laid-back… almost sloth like. I don’t think we’ll be clawing at each others throats any time soon.

Yes, I do see netlabels… or at least THIS NETLABEL, as a collective game. A bit of a childlike thing really, “let’s play the libertarian pirate experimental society out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean”.

On the other hand, we don’t want the boat to sink you know… so pure anarchy is out of the question. Not anyone can play at steering the wheel.

Also, I must say, this Umor Rex game, is the healthiest form of deviance I have ever engaged in. Alas, if only the thick of thick-headed humanity could use its innate perversity for such harmless subversion. Merry melodies and merry maladies, that’s our stock in trade.

[visit umor rex at umor-rex.com]