Interview: Andrew and Andrew of populist records

Last Monday populist records held the release party for Nicholas Deyoe’s album with throbbing eyes at Machine Project in Echo Park. It’s a significant event not only because we’ve got a sweet new album to listen to, but because it marks the new label’s first release. We managed to catch up with founders/owners/operators Andrew McIntosh and Andrew Tholl  to discuss plans for the label and all of the stuff coming up that we get to be excited about.

First off, how was the release party? I’m sorry I had to miss it.

The release show was very successful. You can’t really go wrong with beer, cupcakes, live performance, and a bunch of people who are excited to hear some new music.

Ha, agreed. It seems like there’s been a serious groundswell of new classical and experimental music coming out of LA, and specifically Echo Park, in just the last couple of years. Is that the case, or is something that’s always been there just gaining more exposure lately?

Los Angeles and the West Coast in general have traditionally been places of great creativity and experimentalism. In the earlier part of the last century we had Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and John Cage. Other composers like Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, Harold Budd, and James Tenney chose to make this area their home as well. The West has an iconic history of being an enclave for free spirits and rogue thinkers, while on the East Coast there seems to be much more infrastructure and a more clearly defined concept for how music is made.

[See: this cell phone video of Nicholas Deyoe and Clint McCallum playing at the release party]

That being said, it is hard for us to speak for LA’s more recent history since we both have only been here for the last six years, but it seems that right now there is a whole community of exciting musicians who are choosing to make a place for themselves in this city. Many of us come from elsewhere, but a connective thread in the community that we’re referring to is that many of us came to LA for CalArts at some point. What we like about the community here is that it is not clearly defined and has many faces, but it seems to be made up of people who really believe in what they are doing, do it well, and are committed to presenting a wide range of music in a compelling and often slightly unusual manner.

One might think that by starting a label at this moment, you’d be perfectly poised to capture what’s been going on (and I’m sure you’ve heard more than enough references to what New Amsterdam is doing in Brooklyn). At the same time, with all of the developments over downloading, minuscule payments from streaming royalties, and so forth, this is a pretty rough time for labels, perhaps even more so than artists. Could you discuss your thoughts on going into this business side of the scene?

Well, I don’t think either of us ever really thought we should start a record label because it would be a great way to make money. We probably won’t…at least not for quite a while. But it still seemed worthwhile for us to start the label anyway. While it might seem like we’re suddenly jumping into the music business, both of us have been working as freelance musicians for years – which is very much a kind of business that you run for yourself; starting a label is just another aspect of that. As far as the comparisons to New Amsterdam go, we haven’t really heard many…we’re just starting out and I don’t think too many people are aware of us yet. But we are very aware of New Amsterdam and think the community they’ve created is pretty amazing. If we could do the same out here, we’d be pleased.

Nicholas Deyoe’s with throbbing eyes is one hell of an aesthetic statement for a label’s first release. Do you see yourself as representing the whole of this music that’s being made in and around LA, or do you have a sound in particular that you’re hoping to cover? Perhaps something akin to the more drastic side of modernism featured here?

Well we had to put something out first, but I don’t think that our first release should necessarily be taken as a statement towards what “kind” of music we intend to continue putting out. We put out Nick’s music because we like it and think it’s really good and deserves to be heard, which is probably the biggest criteria for anything we will put out in the future – we have to like it. But there’s a lot of different kinds of music that we like. While we both live Southern California and want to put out projects from our community and invest in the people around us, we don’t really have a goal of representing the entirety of the Los Angeles music scene…it’s just too big.

How hands on are you with production? I know that sounds like a silly question, but I’m curious…I know some label heads who are check in on their artists every day in the studio, while others, in a sense, foot the bill and wait for a recording to be delivered for them to take to the market. I know this first release had been previously recorded. Is that the plan?

Well, we had been talking about starting a label for at least the last year, maybe two, and we had already played on half of the works on with throbbing eyes, so we were already pretty involved before anything official happened. The album needed a home so it motivated us to actually get things going and start the label. While the album was Nick’s project, there was still a strong collaborative effort between ourselves and him throughout much of the production process. For now, I can’t really see us putting anything out where we don’t already have some sort of relationship with the composers or artists involved. Also, the way an album is put together – the space it’s recorded in, the musicians, the mixing, the track order, the album cover, etc. – is very important to us and is something we are very consciously crafting for each project.

What’s next for the label?

Our second release comes out on March 13 and will be a mostly solo album of music by minimalist composer Tom Johnson that Andrew McIntosh is recording and organizing. It also features local musicians Brian Walsh on clarinet, composer Douglas Wadle as a narrator, and is being recorded and mastered by Nicolas Tipp, who has very much been a part of the creative process for that project. It’s also interesting that both Tom Johnson and Nicholas Deyoe are originally from Colorado.

After that things are a little open, but we have several projects in the works. It is extremely likely that we will put out an album with wild Up (in collaboration with Chris Rountree and again, Nicolas Tipp). Also, we will at some point put out a duo CD of the two of us featuring composers who have come out of the CalArts community, a CD of Andrew Tholl’s experimental/improv ensemble touchy-feely, maybe a full length from the Formalist Quartet, and possibly some Morton Feldman. Oh, and in the indie label tradition, we’re toying with the idea of a single of the month club that would allow us to put out some shorter things that we think should be heard but don’t necessarily work on a whole album.

That would be amazing, please do that.  Is there anything else you’d like to add?

We’re really thrilled at the response we’ve had to the label so far. It’s encouraging that so many people are interested in what we’re trying to do. We hope you’ll check out our first release, enjoy it, and continue to follow us as we try to build something great.

You can check out all that populist records has coming up at populistrecords.com, and order (or download) a copy of with throbbing eyes here.