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pipeline5.interview:Sublingual Records
Sublingual Records is a Cambridge, MA based label run by Jonathan LaMaster, who's also a member of Saturnalia, a group on Sublingual's roster. Mainly issuing music from Boston and the surrounding area, Sublingual's eclectic catalog consists of mostly improvised music, traditional and otherwise. Sublingual, though still relatively small in size, has grown consistently from its inception, and LaMaster is always looking for something new, broadening both the horizons of his label and its listeners.
interview by Adam Strohm
Adam: How , when, and why was Sublingual started?
Jonathan:
I started Sublingual Records in 1998. It was something I had been
thinking about doing for awhile, as I had been putting on shows in Boston for
a lot of New York AND Boston artists since 1996, people that no one else
seemed to want to take a chance on booking. So I just started bringing people
up here on my own (and then also along with the Boston Creative Music
Alliance in 1997) These were folks like Elliott Sharp, Zeena Parkins, John
Zorn’s Masada, William Parker, Mathew Shipp, Henry Threadgill, etc, etc, as
well as cool Boston acts like Prelapse, Debris, Roger Miller, Cul de Sac,
etc. It seemed to me that starting a LOCAL label to highlight the work of
some of these folks (along with my own group, Saturnalia) might be the next
logical progression from there.
The real kick in the pants that I needed came when local Boston hero
Roger Miller (founding member of the now legendary art-punk band Mission of
Burma, and currently member of The Binary System and Alloy Orchestra)
approached me with the idea of putting out a compilation of Boston musicians
who were doing stuff that was, shall we say, a little left-of-center. The
main source of inspiration that we started with was Brian Eno's compilation
No New York, which documented some of the No Wave scene in New York in the
late 70's, including Mars, DNA, the Contortions, etc. That comp, like the
product that eventually emerged as SLR001: Boston Underbelly - Music From the City of Revolution, featured a handful of artists doing approximately 10 minute slots each, rather than the common 30 bands doing 3 minutes each on
some comps. Boston Underbelly was pretty diverse, too, featuring free improv
oriented stuff (Saturnalia, Binary System), along with electronic music
(Andrew Neumann), some noise music (Thurston Moore, who had recently taken up
residence in Western Mass., and Bill T. Miller and his groups Out of Band
Experience and Orgy of Noise, the later of which featured members of Melt
Banana), some avant rock (Neptune, and Sigmoid Flexure which included a
bunch of folks from the band Prelapse who eventually moved to NYC and
released a very "Naked City" inspired album with John Zorn actually producing
and playing on it), and even some oddball folk rock (Mile Wide.) Shortly
after the Underbelly came out, we also released full-length cd's by Andrew
Neumann (SLR003: No Fly Zone) and by my own group, whose debut cd was simply
self-titled Jonathan LaMaster's Saturnalia (SLR002).
Do you see the Sublingual catalog as a cohesive string of releases? If so,
what ties them all together?
The bands on the Boston Underbelly comp. all "fit in with each other by
the virtue of not fitting in anywhere else" as Brett Milano wrote in the
Boston Phoenix, and that tradition has sort of stuck with Sublingual; I still
present music in a wide range of genres, united primarily by a tendency for
improvisation, extended instrumental techniques, and often by stylistic
cross-pollination (i.e. Thurston Moore doing his noise-rock thing along with
a free jazz saxophonist named Wally Shoup, and percussionist Toshi Makihara,
on SLR007: Hurricane Floyd.) Recently we released a gorgeous record that John Fahey fans (and fans of his early Takoma label's roster, especially Robbie
Basho) seem to love. It's called Song of the Earth, by (former) East German Steffen Basho-Junghans, and it's all solo acoustic 6 and 12 string guitar music, mostly improvised, and with NO overdubs. The Tokyo in F cd (SLR004) which documents saxophonist Ken Fields' (Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, etc.) first ever encounter with some great Japanes improvisors from the bands Rovo, Arepos and Bondage Fruit is also completely improvised but very "melodic" as well. Then on the other extreme we've got the aforementioned
Moore/Shoup/Makihara cd Hurricane Floyd which is a much more "energy
improv" (and often brutal) affair, as is our latest release, a double cd that
features turntablist Christian Marclay along with Ikue Mori (who was once in
the band DNA featured on that No New York comp. I'd mentioned earlier)
playing drum machines, and Elliott Sharp's whacked out guitar, sax and
powerbook histrionics. This is a double cd, recorded at the School of the
Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) in Jan. 2000, which features Marclay, Mori and
Sharp on the first disc, and students from the Sonic Arts Program of the SMFA
on the second disc. That one's called Acoustiphobia Volume One (SLR009/010). We've also got 2 very different electronic albums out, both by Andrew Neumann, and a string trio version of Saturnalia called Saturnalia String Trio, who have a vinyl 7 inch record and a full-length cd available on the label, both of which feature the additional sax, flute and trumpet playing of NY free jazz veteran Daniel Carter (from Test and Other Dimensions in Music,
who recently collaborated with rockers Yo La Tengo and will do so again at
the 6th Annual Vision Festival in NYC)
How did the label get into presenting concerts? Was this simply a natural
extension of your duties as a record label?
As I said, in my mind, the LABEL really came out of doing the concerts,
and I still feel that it's important to present live music, even if the
artists AREN'T on Sublingual: several of our releases have actually been
recorded AT these concerts, and appear as live documents (the Hurricane Floyd disc, the Acoustiphobia set, and much of the Saturnalia String Trio
releases). I tend to document EVERYTHING I present, and boy do I have a
library of stuff at this point! Also, concerts are a great way to spread the
word about the label, sponsor worthy causes, and, a-hem, sell more cd's!
How would you describe Boston's "scene" right now? Boston's a commonly
forgotten city in terms of experimental music, I'd guess. What's happening
now that people should know about?
Oh, there's a pile of stuff here actually. One of the reasons I started
Sublingual in 98 was because I didn't perceive that anyone else here was
putting out experimental stuff, but there are a bunch of labels here now that
either sprang up after Sublingual started (like Tautology, who do mostly
local free-improv, and Intransitive, who do more noise and electronic
oriented stuff) or labels run by people who have moved here recently (like
Sedimental and Squeeler). There's a brand new label called Lithiq that's
pretty cool, featuring this group Enuma Elish�, tons of things, really. As far
as bands and such, we have a thriving free-improv scene which even has it's
own festival called The Autumn Uprising Festival. I'm on the board of
directors for that this year; also the Asian American Jazz Festival run by my
friend Jeff Song, which I've always been the Stage Manager for. There are
tons of great musicians here who teach at Berklee or New England
Conservatory: people like Joe Maneri, Ran Blake, George Russell, Bob Moses,
Paul Bley, etc. There's a cool electronic collective here called The
Toneburst Collective, featuring such neo-luminaries as DJ Flack, Hrvatski,
and Electro Organic Sound System, a.k.a. DJ C, the turntablist and electronic
musician who was born Jake Trussel. I've worked with Jake quite a bit in
blending drum and bass with free improv, and most recently we've been
collaborating together through the rock band Cul de Sac that I'm in. (We're
currently recording our new album with him). Cul de Sac was actually one of
the first Boston bands I really grooved on. I was a big Cul de Sac fan back
in '93 when I moved here from the midwest after college, did some playing with
the synth player Robin Amos (he's featured on about � of the debut Saturnalia
cd), and eventually got the chance to go on tour with the full band in '97 as
a substitute bass player for original bassist Chris Fujiwara. They asked me
to join permanently in the summer of 2000. Man, who else: of course Roger
Miller and his paino/drums duo with Larry Dersch called The Binary System.
Lots of people. We also have some amazing record stores like Twisted Village,
and two of the best distributors in the world, Forced Exposure and Surefire.
They've been a HUGE support to Sublingual. There are also some amazing film
and video makers (like Jeff Silva and Alla Kovgan of Pixonik Labs), visual
artists, and performance artists here in town. I'm a part of a multi-media
collaborative called The Outside Art Collective which has been putting on
some cool shows and some guerrilla street theatre performances which have
been very exciting. So Boston is actually a pretty exciting city; I find
myself going to New York less and less these days! Though I still love New
York, too; I maintain a ton of connections and collaborations down there as
well.
Since you're the owner of Sublingual and also in a band on that label, do you feel that this gives you any special insight on band/label relationships or other areas of making and releasing music?
Sure, in many ways it does: I certainly recognize how I would like to be
treated by a label, and I work as hard as I can to maintain good
relationships with everyone on the label. I'm really into community building
and a collective orientation, which I think is helpful; I don't know. I work
pretty hard, but at this point I'm only a one man operation, technically,
though there are a lot of people who help on the periphery with things, like
many of the artists themselves, my amazing graphic designer Joanne
Kaliontzis, and my friend Alla who helps me with the Sublingual website
(www.sublingual.com). What I have NEVER wanted was for Sublingual to be a
vanity label, so I have chosen to put out more albums by OTHER people than by
projects I'm in myself. I'm currently sitting on an AMAZING recording (in my
not-so-humble opinion!) that I did with European free-improv giant and bass
virtuoso Peter Kowald, plus the aforementioned Daniel Carter, and drummer
Lawrence Cook (who got his start on a bunch of ESP discs in the 60's), and
I'm torn as to whether I should shop it around or release it myself. The same
thing goes for this amazing album Red Go! which was the final Jupiter 88
thing that Michael MacDonald made before tragically taking his own life over
a year ago. Michael was a good friend, and I play violin on several tracks on
the album and it's some of my best work ever. Michael was successfully
blending seemingly disparate influences like Music Concrete and Arnold
Schoenburg influenced dissonance with pop, trip hop and even country. You'd
think no one could pull that off, but Michael was such a genius; a successful
architect, too. Anyway, I'm trying to figure out what would best serve that
record, as well. The other Jupiter 88 cd's came out on Unit Circle Rekkids in
Seattle, so I've been in touch with them about it. We'll see. And there are
just tons of other recordings, both studio and live, that I've done over the
years. At any rate, I can't really see myself releasing more than like 4 cd's
a year until I can find another good business parner or two; we'll see. But I
know my strengths and limitations, and I know how much hard work it is to
promote a band, let alone and entire catalogue of artists. So I guess that
serves me well.
How do you usually meet up with the musicians that you put out? Do you know
most of them already?
In the beginning, of course, I was mainly putting out Boston artists,
but through the concert promotions I was meeting more and more of my heroes
from all over the world, so the last few releases have branched out beyond
Boston, which I think has been a very important step. I do still have a local
mission, however, and am hoping to release some more local stuff soon.
Is Sublingual now what you thought it would be by this time when you started
the label? How did your vision differ from what presently exists?
It is so much MORE than I had expected! I mean, in some ways, in the
beginning, it really took awhile to develop distribution and to get reviews
in the major media sources for experimental stuff (such as The Wire, Jazz
Times, Jazziz, Alternative Press, and some of the other biggies that have
been covering our stuff more recently), longer than I would have hoped,
really, but I've been learning as I go, and things are really going well
these days. I think we've only received ONE negative review about ANY of our
last 4 or 5 releases! Pretty surprising, given the "experimental" nature of
most of our releases. Of course it's a constant work in progress.
What's in the future for Sublingual?
Well, I'm currently working on a great new record by a violin virtuoso
named Jon Rose who is originally from Australia but has also been living in
Berlin and Amsterdam in recent years. It's called STRUNG, and it actually
features Jon along with several other string players from Amsterdam, none of
whom are actually Dutch! They're all "transplants" so to speak. It's just
an amazing record. All string related stuff such as the obvious "violin
family" (including viola, cello, etc), plus hurdy gurdy, records and samples
of string music, homemade stringed instruments (for which Jon is famous),
and lots of electronic manipulation of strings. It's absolutley astounding,
and as a violin player myself, I couldn't resist it; I've been aware of Jon
for many years now. He's got a fair amount of stuff out on Chris Cutler's
Recommended Records, among other labels, and I first met him in the fall of
2000 when I put on the First Annual Sublingual String Improvisors Festival.
All of the other performers that night were amazing (LaDonna Smith came up
from Alabama, and the violin/tuba duo of Harald Kimmig and Franz Ludwig
Huebsch came over from Germany, etc) but Jon's set really resonated with me
because of his amazing use of electronic manipulation. He had designed all of
these sensors to detect bow motion and all of this other stuff, and he also
has a GREAT sense of humor, which I find kind of refreshing. As boundary
breaking as "experimental music" can be, I do feel it can also be fun, and
Jon Rose is all about fun. He's got a great website at:
http://www.euronet.nl/users/jrviolin/
There is also the Acoustiphobia Volume Two cd which I am awaiting
approval on; like the first Acoustiphobia, it was recorded at The School of
the Museum of Fine Arts as a celebration of their Sonic Arts Program (lead by
Lauren Weinger and Doug Henderson) back in January of this year (2001) and
also functioned as a CD Release party for Volume One. And what a party it
was! We had Thurston Moore playing with fellow guitarist Nels Cline and
electric harp player Zeena Parkins, and there were all of these amazing sonic
sculptures by people like Elliott Sharp, David Moulton, Liz Philips and Anney
Bonney, and a bunch of the SMFA students. So perhaps that will surface at
some point. There are also the things I mentioned early that I'm on and am
trying to decide what to do with, so I've got plenty to keep me busy over the
summer! It's also a BIG plan for me to beef up the Sublingual website
(www.sublingual.com) with such things as unreleased tracks in MP3 format,
tons of video shorts from our library of past performances and multi-media
explorations, etc. So tune in for all of that!