Downliners Sekt

[+]  What's your musical background?

We don't really like to give many details about our age, nationality or social origins, because it often alters the way the listener will perceive the music. Anyway, we all come from small boring towns where the mainstream music didn't have the same influence on teenagers as it probably has today.
Like many kids from the same area, we would spend days locked up in garages plugging in old electric guitars and fuzz boxes, jamming and experimenting out a few chords but filled with an insatiable urge to explore sonic possibilities. At the same time, a strong and loud local scene emerged and after a few exhilarating gigs, primitive tours and psychedelic inputs some of us eventually produced seminal records.
Soon breakbeats and samplers rose up along our path, and fundamentally disrupted the way we wrote and thought about music. It then pushed us to relocate in cultural epicentres to evolve within a growing electronic music scene.
Our devoted and fast apprenticeship of new production methods and programming, allowed us to collaborate with several artists coming from different music horizons.
From this vibrant period will remain everlasting DJ sets, chaotic performances, and another bunch of releases. Those first deals also unveiled the dysfunctional side of the industry we were introduced to.
This is when Downliners Sekt started to take shape, coalescing from individual projects, waiting in the shadows and growing slowly but immaculately from deadlines, budgets schemes, and formats.
Even if we weren't directly involved into any particular scene and were difficult to be boxed into one particular genre, our first efforts awakened growing interests from a few indie labels. Soon, a deal was finally cut.
As it turned out, it was - again - a waste of time and money, just like we had experienced before within bigger structures. We then understood that the line between major and independent labels is thinner than most people think and doesn't want to be crossed.
We ended up with our debut album finally mastered and free of rights ready to be released under our own terms. As filesharing addicts, it felt natural to give it away on the internet.

[+]  Why free?

The initial idea of a classic independent release didn't sound appealing, aware that the usual limited 500-or-so copies of such an album, would be short term. We know how it usually works in this case. An average distribution doesn't guarantee you either cash, exposure or promotion, besides the important fact that we would lose ownership of the rights.
By making this album available online for free download we knew it would have more impact, and that the music will be available for ever.
Time has proved us right, and since the first release the download rate has remained constant.
There are now tens of thousands of copies of each album flowing over the internet , and that is a hundred times the exposure we would have had with a traditional CD release.
There are even tracks from 'Statement of Purpose' that we produced 7 years ago which are currently being played on dubstep sessions. People wouldn't have access to those tracks today, if we hadn't choosen to release the album that way.

[+]  Like Radiohead?

Hmmm.... Well not really. Its quite frustrating when people tell us 'Cool! Like Radiohead!'. It seems those guys turned themselves into free music scene leaders within 3 months, making more money than any fuck wit on a major label.
Since our first release we offered the option to download the album for free or donate what one thought was worth paying. That was 3 years ago, and we weren't the first ones.
Mr Radiohead turns up with his cool new idea and his 160 fucking kbps and the world bows to his mediocrity. This is how they hijacked for their own sake a social phenomenon and turned it into a marketing tool to promote their physical release.
Because of the low quality of the files, the lack of artwork and credits, and huge difference between the mixes of the free release and the commercial one, we quickly assumed they didn't take the radical path.
Radiohead becomes number one on the bestselling charts, and the industry wins another battle in its propaganda devaluing the quality of mp3 releases.

[+]  What are your working methods?

We work every album with the thought that it could be the last. This is always in the back of our minds.
Being heard as independent artists is a constant struggle, a battle against the odds. What keeps us going is the driving force that pushes us to share our beliefs, dying to deliver, at any cost and by any means, looking for something honest to share, most of the time out of anger or simply out of frustration and the feeling that something is missing in the fucking picture.
Unlike most of the bands , who generally have to hire qualified professionals, we keep total control over our material in terms of writing, recording, mixing and mastering. Each release has been made from scratch to end by the three of us, with little budget, borrowed gear - sometimes without the owner’s consent - and huge commitment. Since the beginning of the project we have hardly lived together, in the same town or country, for more than a few months; that's why the internet has been from the start the perfect tool that allowed us to develop constantly all our ongoing works, the best immediate way to share ideas and files. This was the basis on which 'Statement of Purpose' and 'Still Engine' were written upon.
Over the last few years though, we sometimes had the opportunity to share a studio, so it felt natural to play live when we could. Once again separated, we came back to our best known production method but with one difference: this time the files used were our own pre-recorded material. This was the starting point of 'The Saltire Wave'. We then spent the last two years producing and mixing it.

[+]  What are your influences?

On a strictly musical level, our influences surely are what you think they are. But dead straight artists, people who have adopted a culturally non-conformist attitude, showed integrity and fought hard to impose their original views over the mainstream, are who inspires us the most. Creative minds that irrevocably influenced their time that constantly redefined their work within the complexity of an ever- changing social environment and cultural context. True artists’ careers take shape in the shadows, kept away, immaculate, far from cover magazines and spotlights. We like to think that the works influences us less than the attitudes behind them.

[+]  Did you named yourself Downliners Sekt after the sixties band?

Yes! Someday a friend said we sounded like the Downliners Sect on ‘K’, so we thought for once we would sample a cover instead of sampling what was inside... In a period when sampling was all over, it didn't feel out of place to take the name from a band that we thought was dead. Just like we would have sampled a breakbeat from them. On the other hand it's a band we used to like in the past, and not only for their music, but for their pre-punk attitude as well.

[+]  How do you position yourself within the netlabel scene?

Technically DSekt is a netlabel, but we don't feel that we're part or related to a 'netlabel scene'. 'Statement Of Purpose' and 'Still Engine' sound styles could be easily pigeon-holed within the netlabel en-vogue electronic genres, because up until now we haven' t heard many net-albums that sounded different than the usual electro, minimal techno, or ambient releases. Thing is, unlike most netlabel artists, our music is not strictly computer-based and we like to think the production is really taken care of.
We often have the feeling that artists involved in this scene perceive music just as a hobby. The average quality is being set so low by myspace-like communities, that it’s hard to find excellence in this amateur maelstrom.
On the other hand it helps the mainstream cartel maintaining the illusion that they are the only ones to release quality. Then the rare gems issued from the free music scene are continuously downgraded by lazy old-fashioned music journalists who wait to be handed the monthly CD package with its ready-to-go review, instead of going to look for the real information where it is...

[+]  Do you make a living from Downliners Sekt ?

Fuck no! But then again, that's not really what it's all about. The real issue here is to ensure that people will not earn money with our music. By any means.
The concept we're trying to lay down is a bet, an investment we make for a better future. The listener should be the one who decide the value of the work, not the industry. In some way we feel like artisans, devoted hand crafters, who value quality over quantity and, aiming for a fair trade. We've reached a point where people start to re-value musical works, and understand that music is not free, but just by paying a few bucks for a self-produced album is enough to support the artist.
To be clear, if everybody that has downloaded 'Statement of Purpose' had paid one single dollar, we could easily make a living of Downliners Sekt.

[+]  Are mp3 and p2p killing music?

Of course not! They are just killing the music industry, and that's fucking great. In some way the industry dug its own hole.
We have to remember that a few decades ago the production costs of a vinyl album where huge in comparison to its selling price. When CD appeared, the production costs dropped dramatically, but still they almost doubled the price of albums. The industry has made its biggest profits since then.
CD burners and mp3's were just the predictable side effects of a technology they created. Their next move was to use their vindictive skills, brainwashing people over the quality of these new formats that they couldn't control.
Let's be clear, nobody is capable of hearing the difference between a high quality mp3 versus an Audio CD. That said, thanks to those compressed formats, the access to cultural contents has been simplified significantly. Internet and p2p's are now huge, and have become limitless and barely free archives. The cultural heritage hence retained by an arty diaspora is now unchained.

[+]  What would you miss if the label scene came to disappear?

Like in every massive market changes there will always be people suffering from collateral damage. There have always been skilled professionals working for the sake of the art. We must remember that the history of pop music has been built upon a few exceptional albums made using the very same methods used by labels. At the time labels were also acting as a filter, imposing a standard of quality. Musicians had to prove themselves to be good enough to deserve to be signed. This avoided the chaotic and low quality material that you can find within myspace and so on. It is now possible to produce an album at home, but that doesn't necessarily means that everybody is capable of doing it.
Anyway, we won't miss the typical A&R - either from independent or major labels - who wasted artist credits and skimmed on the budgets to finance his very expensive habits. RIP.

[+]  How do you see the future of the music industry?

We don't really care about the future of the 'music industry', as 'music' and 'industry' are obviously two contradictory terms, and in fact we would love to see music emancipate itself and go its own way.
We believe that we are living the very last days of the filesharing 'golden age' and unfortunately the industry has already raised measures to transform this demilitarized zone into an over- surveyed area. Although their moves to refrain piracy and filesharing might succeed on a short term, digital music has permanently transformed the panorama.
Mp3's, iPods, p2p and digital music stores are pushing the listener towards the single track format, and obviously accelerating the fall of physical outlets. Nowadays people tend to download and listen to just one or two tracks from an album, and not bothering to listen to the entire work.
This has changed major label market policies, and more than ever, records are built around a single chart-formatted track. As far as we're concerned we feel more comfortable with full-length formats, but we leave it up to the listener to decide whether to download a single track or the full album.

[+]  So what are your next moves as an artist and/or as label?

As you can imagine, it's a constant struggle to be able to create the space to get together and make it happen, even if we know that this state of urgency could contribute to our inspiration.
If we find ourselves in a similar dynamic again, no doubt we will be driven to write music we would like to hear ourselves.
As a label we aim to occupy a space, alongside with other net labels wishing to redefine the standards of underground music, left by the dying independent label scene.
Up until today netlabels’ works are seen from a perspective that values the form but not the actual content, maybe because they're not part of the corrupted industry financing and controlling the media and the public opinion, and once our position is understood, we strongly believe the media will consider us as any other independent artists coming from traditional labels, and grant us with more critique than a few lines in a reductive net label section.

[+]  How can we collaborate?

It costs us a lot of money to keep this project up and running, so obviously donating is a great help.
Also, design artists, flash programmers and all the creative minds out there are always welcome to contribute on the aesthetics front.