Sixtoo
FP: But still, distributors have to do what they have to do to pay their bills and stay in business. They couldn’t just start shipping only a quarter of the bigger independent labels to make room for more of the smaller ones. If they wanted to, they could, but then if people going to record stores didn’t know about any of this stuff, and didn’t buy it, it wouldn’t really help anyone. The distributor could go out of business like a lot of the smaller ones do.
Sixtoo: But I think a lot of independents are just cutting out the middleman entirely. I think a lot of smaller labels are just selling copies directly to a store in the middle of nowhere, and do the shipping and do a COD order.
FP: It seems like there are a lot more smaller record stores in at least the bigger cities in North America, as opposed to chain stores that aren’t doing very well. There’s lots of specialized stores, for example, that sell Techno only, or left-field and jazz reissues and stuff. If, across the country, more cities have more stores like that, it might get more interesting to sell direct, if you can easily find out where all these stores are. Or maybe some of the smaller distributors can tap into that.
Sixtoo: But that relates back to certain styles of music as fashion, and that’s a really dangerous thing. You might put in work to help get a ball moving on a certain movement, and then it’s a fashion thing that works for a little while and then the next day, they’re cut off. As an artist, I’ve always tried to not get caught in that and keep trying different things and in some ways maybe strangulate my own career to retain some longevity. Because I think it is easy to end up being in some movement. For example, the minimal techno movement right now in Canada is made out to be like, huge, where it’s such a small thing, it can’t sustain itself for very long, you know? Maybe it’s bigger than I think it is, but I think there’s a lot of similar examples that are dangerous. [See observations about Ska and Emo in the Matt Collyer interview in this issue.]
FP: Yeah, I can see it being risky if stores or distributors get too dependent on just the one thing.
Sixtoo: There’s so many third-party investors involved in distribution now that even if you go to an independent distributor, it’s probably owned by Universal, because sales of people like Universal are down so much that they need to invest in something that’s selling, just to maintain their distribution economies for themselves. All these people are trying to protect their asses, they need to have the same sort of volume going through the warehouses.
It can be a huge conflict to have to deal with an independent like that. For example myself, my records go through Caroline, and that’s huge, I don’t know what I think about it. Ninja goes through Caroline. But in the end, I know that if I sell a record through them, I’ll get paid in sixty days. So if there is no other alternative, what do you do about that.
I think people really seriously need to think about how to start up some kind of new method of distribution for records, not only in North America but in Europe and Japan as well. Because it does get down to this idea of perpetuating something to the point of being a fetish object in other parts of the world, so you could charge thirty, thirty-five dollars for a piece of vinyl. That seems crazy to me, which is a big part of why I wanted to do something with Ninja. When they sign somebody in North America, they sublicense to the UK office, and then everything retains its domestic pricing, so people don’t have to pay twenty-five pounds for my record.
FP: I was happy myself to pick up the double vinyl for under twenty bucks. Ninja has certainly figured that out. But for independents or individuals trying to get more reach outside of their hometown, they don’t have the same volume and have to make do with less profit per record, and probably still have to charge higher prices than Ninja to break even.
Sixtoo: There’s definitely something to be said for sublicensing, where smaller independents support bigger independents by sublicensing the material and keeping the pressing costs down. And, as a result, getting access to bigger distributors who actually pay. That’s what Bully’s doing now, sublicensing to get distribution through Ninja, even though it’s really, really small– they only do up maybe 1500 CDs. And on the strength that Ninja has, they can sell that in, like, an afternoon, then wait 60 days and press up another batch. It seems to be a good way of going about it, although the bigger independents are taking on some risk there. They have to know that the artists will be able to get out there and create enough of a profile for themselves, through shows and touring, to warrant having these records available in smaller cities and towns. That’s the constant battle for all the artists I know, how to balance all this out.
FP: And the labels too, they would love to help everybody out, sharing their distribution clout or connections, but how much risk can you take, is the big question. And just as most labels are flooded with more demos than they can even listen to, much less sign, some distributors are flooded with more tiny labels wanting to get on board than they can keep track of. Some of these distributors, like Revolver, deal with hundreds of labels already, so there must be thousands out there trying to get adequate distribution.
Sixtoo: The crazy thing though is, for example, I give a release to Revolver, Revolver is only going to take it if they can get it exclusively, so that they could trade product to some other distributor on credit, and then it becomes this system where nobody’s actually getting paid, it’s just like trading goods, within companies, for credit. And that’s how a lot of the distributors in the U.S. work, especially with independents. A band will say, “Oh, that label has my catalogue,” and some other distributor wants to pick it up, they have to buy it from this distributor, so then they’ll trade goods, and that trickles down into the waiting time for payment, so the band has to wait twice as long because they can’t get paid until this other thing sells that their album got traded for. It’s fucking nuts.
But there has to be some other way that can work for people. Unless you just tour like crazy and sell at shows and on the Internet. But even then, it’s almost impossible to get a booking agent to put a tour together for you if you don’t have an album behind you that’s out there.
FP: When did you start putting out records with a label– was it with Anticon?
Sixtoo: Anticon was when I pretty much first started.
FP: They were kind of like Bully at first, small self-run label?
Sixtoo: They did a couple of small-run projects, and then got a P&D deal with Revolver–pressing and distribution, which, if you can do that with somebody who’s actually gonna pay you, a P&D might be a good way to go for some labels. But finding somebody who’ll carry out such a deal properly isn’t easy.
FP: Do you intend to keep doing stuff for other labels besides Ninja?
Sixtoo: I’ve been doing music for real labels for almost 5 years, and been making music for almost 12, and I think any one label I might work with couldn’t keep up with the amount of material I produce. It’s important for me to be able to have a spontaneous thing and record things when the emotion is there- that’s why I have a studio in my house. My Ninja record is the most focused and directed project I’ve done in years, and there was more effort put into it than most of the stuff I do, but I’ve also done stuff with Mush Records in Los Angeles, Vertical Form in Germany… I also mixed the last DJ Signify record on Lex/ Warp. From one thing to the next, I could be working on beats for rapper friends or trying my own leftfield sort of stuff. That’s a lot more rewarding than being stuck in one thing where you can’t take influence from other genres. And of course, being a record nerd, my tastes are all over the place, everything from free jazz to punk rock. It’s a product of being a teenager in the 80s in North America, all that hip-hop, punk rock, skateboarding and graffiti, it all happened at the same time for me.
FP: I expect that a lot of other artists will be mixing more and more varied influences– especially fans of vinyl, so many different styles are being reissued, from punk to reggae to free jazz to metal, often ending up in the same record collections.
Sixtoo: I think it’s partly a by-product of digital culture. There is a class element to it– I mean, if you can afford an internet connection, you’re already in the one-third of the world that can afford to buy records, too. But there is a large network of people now who can share information and spread awareness about a lot of past music that had never been properly documented, or that escaped attention when it came out.
FP: Sample-based stuff like your work can help to digest all that. It’s rewarding to listen to, for someone my age [34] who gets a lot of the references. It also relieves whatever record-nerd guilt I might have about living in the past– it’s nice to know someone’s making something new from all these old records.
Sixtoo: [laughter] I’ve been interested in hip-hop for as long as I can remember, and my whole philosophy of music is, first and foremost, of the sampler as an instrument. With that philosophy, you look at all types of music as the exact same thing, which is something to pillage [laughter]. So if you want a raw sound, you go to punk rock; if you want nice ride cymbals, you go to jazz. I see all those styles of playing as resources, even less than music.
FP: It doesn’t seem all that different from what music has always been about, which is everybody ripping off everybody else, but with a new twist each time so it gradually evolves. If you listen to records year by year, within each year a lot of stuff sounds like it’s all the same. Over time, all these different styles and sounds evolve. A professional studio guitarist today would know how to play tons of different styles– do a Motown lick, a reggae choppy rhythm thing, a blues-rock vamp, all these different things were once new and also kinda derivative.
Sixtoo: I think using the sampler as an instrument, that’s what you learn to do: take the strong points from any genre, and amplify or use them to accentuate whatever you’re working on. That’s a relatively new thing– sample-based music has only seen mass popularity in the last 10-15 years, really. It’s in its infancy, and I think that only now are people looking at the creation of music with that perspective and philosophy. It’s still a minority in a lot of ways, because there are stigmas, things like “ripping off other peoples’ stuff is not creative.” I don’t think that’s creative either, but it’s a different thing to chop it up and flip it around and make something new out of it, or use it directly to create an emotion– I mean, if Les McCann did it better than I can, I may as well take what he’s done, take one chord he played to represent that emotion, you know.
FP: Have you done many mixtapes?
Sixtoo: I used to do mixtapes, but now with licensing as hungry as it is, I’ve decided not to do that stuff anymore. If I do, it’s basically something I do for friends or giveaways at shows or whatever.
FP: So the licensing problem comes from the sampling for these tapes?
Sixtoo: Yeah, well, for example Amon [Tobin] just did a mix, and he included some friends, and he called them up and said “How much do you want for me to put your song on my mix tape?” And they’d say, “Well that promotes me really well, but I want $500” or something. If you have to do that for 24 artists, then your overhead for this thing that’s not even really yours is suddenly bigger than it would be for creating a record of yourself. And who knows if it’s going to sell– that stuff is so prone to downloads, because it’s all singles-based, it’s like disposable music, you know? New York radio tapes are still, I think, widely-traded on the Internet, the same way actual cassettes were in the 80s & 90s. Everybody that I knew that was involved in hip-hop sort of grew up on mixtapes, especially New York college radio, and WBLK– that was the one I always listened to, Red Alert and those guys.
Back then, it wasn’t a big deal to circulate tapes, people would just go through their 12-inches and this stuff was usually what was being played on the radio anyway. But now, record sales are so low that a lot of people are trying to find money any way that they can, so if you put somebody’s song on your mixtape without clearing it, you’re sort of asking for it.
The cassette tapes kind of fizzled out in the late 90s. Now people are taking a lot of these radio shows and just ripping them to MP3s, and uploading them. A lot of these servers now, you have to rip something for them in order to get access to them, and I think that’s why a lot of promos are getting ripped early. I know that my last record was ripped like, three months before it was even available.
FP: Really?
Sixtoo: Yeah, because the minute the promos go out to the writers, the writers want access to the cool servers, so they rip the record and upload them, just to get access to mixtapes or whatever. Which is sort of disgusting on a whole other level. But I don’t really mind if people are downloading it before it comes out, it just creates a buzz for the record, as far as I’m concerned. Unless you make a wack record and everybody’s trashing it [laughter.]
