Italian Horns, paintings by Benjamin BertocciPan is, in no way, my favorite god. As someone whose girlfriend is way hotter than I am, I’m pretty partial to Hephaestus. That probably explains why I don’t really care too much for neofolk and its accompanying aesthetic. I don’t mind that Christ killed Odin and that’s why we’re all weak and talk in a ninny tenor, while those who have achieved the gnosis of a complete Current 93 record collection wail in that rich baritone that we all rightly associate with the woodland giants that triumphantly lurch through the suburbs of Manchester. Sorry, Odin aficionados and Nietzsche thumpers; I like winner gods, and if you think I can tell the difference between your philosophy and Edie Brickel’s, you’ve woefully misunderstood this conversation at this bar. I’ve looked at your arm tattoo from every angle you’ve asked and it still looks like a fucking swastika.Okay. That’s a completely idiotic misrepresentation of neofolk, and if Dais Records were a neofolk label, I’d apologize. And if they were a noise label, I’d apologize in advance for all the Boyd Rice jokes I’m going to make later at the same bar. But Dais Records is not a folk label and Dais Records is not a noise label. Dais Records is, for lack of any other word that makes any sense at all, an experimental music label. While that’s a term that is, for reasons that I’ll never be able to understand or respect, held in derision in some quarters, I’m down with it. As Ryan Martin, co-owner (along with Gibby Miller) of Dais, put it the night I met up with him at Glasslands to watch Italian Horn, Rosenkopf, and King Dude: “Pretentious just means you know what you want to be.”Ryan and Gibby started the label in 2007, when Ryan, as Genesis P-Orridge’s personal assistant, was given permission by her to release a series of long-discussed-on-message-boards-but never-released tapes. They followed this with releases by Twin Stumps, Cult of Youth, Cold Cave, Italian Horns, and a number of essential re-issues. They also did the first American vinyl of the virtually perfect Iceage record. That record was then re-released by a local jangle-pop label that got rid of its bonus songs and sold me an Iceage t-shirt for 20 bucks that promptly shrank and now no one believes me when I say I was into Iceage first. Just kidding, Jesse Gasface was into Iceage first, and anyway, I got a new t-shirt and had it adjusted using the newest t-shirt aging technology to make it appear that I purchased it in 2010. Take that, jangle-pop label! Anyway.Experimental music can easily be misperceived as ahistorical, obsessed with the new, because of its refusal to be absolutely subservient to tradition—or, at least, traditional songwriting. But every experimental music fan I know is reverent to the past, almost to a fault. Dais Records seems to be walking a fine line very well. They see themselves as direct descendants from Harry Smith and his Anthology of American Folk Music with forgotten, unjustly ignored (or, in the case of the Genesis P-Orridge tapes, rumored-but-unheard) experimentation. Yet they are equally invested in releasing new music by their peers and contemporaries.
King DudeI talked to Ryan for hours about the label. I meant to only take about 40 minutes of his time, but he had so many fantastic stories of discovered tapes and discovered weirdos that, even after hours of interview, I had to write him the next day for some clarification on their aesthetic. I had gotten so lost in the creation myths of the records and tapes that he and Gibby put out, I’d sort of forgotten to ask questions. On the subject of their over-arching themes, Ryan wrote:“Aesthetics is the most difficult thing one can ever describe. It's true, we are very aware of how we want things to sound or look (sometimes, that's out of our control), but I think the sticking point is our personal connection to the releases. We have a story with every release, and either it’s that we are friends with the people whose music we are releasing (Italian Horn, Cold Cave, aTelecine) or it was a personal quest to release things…Gibby and I both have a shared mutual love for unheard recording and art forms that seem to be overlooked or under-appreciated—rooting for the underdog. That kind of personal curation seems to resonate with a particular audience, which, thankfully, supports what we do. All the releases make sense together as a package (the label), because the records have this invisible strand that connects everything via the label's personal curation.For example, at a gallery group show of paintings that one would go see, you see certain obvious things that connect the various works (works on paper, works about water, etc.), but more times than not, things are not that obvious. This is where you have blind faith in the galleries curatorial staff to select things for a myriad of reasons. Their job is to organize the chaos based on their acute observations of the work and how these very different things are pieced together in a way that people will not dismiss it. You can see this sense of fine-tuned aesthetics over and over in a local sense with labels like Sacred Bones and Wierd. Why do these releases make sense together? Because, in the minds of the label operators, these all go together in a variety of abstract ways. It's a very confusing puzzle—some days, I have no idea how it even goes together—but it’s the label's job to put the puzzle together. When you fail at that, then you are 'just another label' that puts out fodder for nobody.”
RosenkopfNow, in all fairness, I should point out that there are few things that drive me bananas more than the use of the word “curate” in any context outside of the guy showing me the stuffed dragons at the Museum of Natural History, but, since Ryan has his feet in both the art and music world, I’ll let it pass. His larger point is well-taken; the roster of Dais Records is a successful combination of the “Let’s get our friends together and put on a show” of the communal music that we love and the “Let’s get our friends together, smash a piano, and then set it on fire while we kill virgins in Yoko masks” of our shared love of ambition and terrible beauty, as well as our striving-for-the-great-unknown history, even if it’s a history that was ignored, or hasn’t even happened yet.Dais Records’ newest releases that I particularly dig are:
—A retrospective of artist Seth Price’s audio works (Neubauten-gone-synth-pop. Awesome.)
—Long-time Daniel Higgs collaborator, American Cloud Songs.
—Italian Horns (Live, they sounded like Warehouse-era Husker Du. Check them for sure)
They've got a lot of other cool stuff, some of which isn’t entirely my steez, but what do you want? It’s a record label, not a mail-order bride, so you should check it out yourself.Ryan Martin also runs the tape label Robert and Leopold, which does actually put out noise music. Admittedly, not knowing much about noise beyond wearing out all my old Missing Foundation tapes, I liked the tapes he gave me quite a bit.¡SELF-PROMOTION! I will be reading my “Reasons Not To Have Sex In The Bathroom” from The Official Book of Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll at the book release at PowerHouse Arena (37 Main Street, Brooklyn) today, July 12th. See you there, maybe.@zacharylipez
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—A retrospective of artist Seth Price’s audio works (Neubauten-gone-synth-pop. Awesome.)
—Long-time Daniel Higgs collaborator, American Cloud Songs.
—Italian Horns (Live, they sounded like Warehouse-era Husker Du. Check them for sure)
They've got a lot of other cool stuff, some of which isn’t entirely my steez, but what do you want? It’s a record label, not a mail-order bride, so you should check it out yourself.Ryan Martin also runs the tape label Robert and Leopold, which does actually put out noise music. Admittedly, not knowing much about noise beyond wearing out all my old Missing Foundation tapes, I liked the tapes he gave me quite a bit.¡SELF-PROMOTION! I will be reading my “Reasons Not To Have Sex In The Bathroom” from The Official Book of Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll at the book release at PowerHouse Arena (37 Main Street, Brooklyn) today, July 12th. See you there, maybe.@zacharylipez
