This time I interviewed Arturs Pavlovskis and Mr. Prolix, founders of the based out of Riga, Latvia netlabel INQB8R. Find out why INQB8R differs from all other netlabels, and why they avoid experimental releases.

1. Could you tell me a few words about yourselves. Who are you? Where do you come from?

- The chief executive officer for INQB8R (a.k.a. “incubator”) producers is Arturs Pavlovskis, from Riga, Latvia (by the way his roots deeply goes down to Poland), who was this cool idea initiator, he was also an engineer for drawing a layout for the label’s net page, content manager and a director who builds official contacts with the musicians. The list of his tasks is on approx. 100 pages, that we are offer to buy for $7 rather than publish here. Another person behind the label is Mr. Prolix, from the planet Earth, who could be considered as a veteran on the Latvian blogging scene. His amateur reviews and enthusiast views page in 10 years was so impressive that he was asked to compose special reviews for many well known russian web-projects like zvuki.ru or extra-qualified Moscow label lagunamuch.com; recently he got luck to picture cosmopolitan Tuxedomoon band and publish his kind of multimedia article about them, in which the author includes not only his text, but the pictures, video and audio as well. Mr.Prolix was the author of the concepts, as well as a technical engineer for the website and a PR-builder.

- Other people behind the label include the Lonely Band of the webhosting virtualis.lv, and of course all our musicians at the moment - The Pale View Of Hills from Spain and O.v.d.k. from Japan; and yes, Rabbeat of course, a.k.a. Andrejs Furtats from Riga who makes some pioneeric masterings here and there.

2. Why did you decide to open your own netlabel?

- We wanted new troubles in our life, because all troubles are exciting. Basically, creating a net label is a new form of qualifying the music, as an addition to something global… There are so much talented persons and creative musicians worldwide these days that the standard music industry can’t handle all of them, so part of them always supposed to be freely released. Until it gets to the daddies who’s gonna pay for your crashed car and your music… We suppose if we are interested in the music which “comes other way”, not the music who’s paid by magnats, and we are ready to qualify the music from our own position… how this could be called then?.. It’s just an example of the new musical culture, it shows how the “worldwide brain” grows via Internet, and hopefully our part also brings something new to it.

3. What kind of music genres do you accept and distribute?

- We accept all kind of music and audibles, specially because genres doesn’t matter today as the new music always brings something new in developing them. However our label has other kind of concept - all works should not last longer than 30 minutes, i.e. they should be as most impressive as most short as possible. INQB8R is an EP-only net label and it follows to collect all presentable music genres on Earth in such format. In the recent past, Extended Play (EP) was the name typically given to vinyl records or CDs which contain more music than a single, but are too short to qualify as albums. On our web label we give this name to the records which are being abnormally expressive and conceptual within the shortest time possible.
So one of the big elephants holding our label is the principle “no styles, no genres” for determining a music. As you might see on our web page there are only “possible definitions” which are as most subjective as we are ourselves. We let the music flow freely and independantly from its impress. Briefly we called it “breathed music” that is open for everybody, lives a life in its own and sounds even in the silence. So, any kind of music genres are welcome to our “incubator” that helps this music to produce its own special oxygen.

- However we would specially mention that we are avoiding experimental releases which sound more cacophonic else human and are not pleasant for the ears. It means you can’t release on our label if you have just took some LSD then plugged in your radio to the PC and expressively tuning up the button recorded an awesome noise which can’t be called music at all. Most likely we will not release such experimental drug poison, and you must qualify for releasing on our label proving your music is the one you have worked on at least.

We are not sure by now EP-only net labels exist, so we are claiming we are first… but if you doubt it, don’t hesitate to report the reason to us.

4. How do you distribute music? Is it available exclusively in the form of MP3/OGG/FLAC downloads? Are there “the real-world” (i mean CD/vinyl) releases also available?

- Currently, all music distributes freely in MP3 format (we accept at least 256 kbps/44 khz), there is nothing unusual comparing other net labels. It’s kind of “de-facto” these days. Talking about “the real-world” - there wouldn’t be a problem to release something out there if the material would be really interesting and qualified, however it should come first… Closest to this is to release various-artists cult compilations, you know… we are very interested to pay our artists, actually. And we can’t pay if they do not work on it themselves. Whatever needs to be checked, it should be created first.

5. Money… Is your netlabel a not-for-profit entity? Or do you think that the netlabels should earn some money for artists?

- Until now we are non-profit of just-interested-group, however depending on how it goes we have giant plans, of course. We are not sure we can precisely tell you about such plans right now, else we will be out of this huge web labels business.

6. Did you encounter any particular difficulties in starting the netlabel?

- The most difficult part is to find a time for it. Anything else is more than achievable. Oh yes… and it should be different from others. Else what sense is to create an online thing if it already exists? We are not sure by now EP-only net labels exist, so we are claiming we are first… but if you doubt it, don’t hesitate to report the reason to us.

7. How do you promote your netlabel?

- Here we’re giving interview for calm-down-relax.net… and we are publishing in web catalogues, turning up the SEO, following qualified web page rules… we’re working on whatever takes time and possibility… not sure I will publish here our 154-pages promoting brochure. Wait a bit, here is our business card, you are an exclusive owner of it as much as everybody who gets it:

We like the exclusive things and we hope our label is the unique form of presenting the music as well.

8. How do you encourage artists to become involved in your project?

- We’re telling them we are the hidden sect of the Mushroom Ears and if they will release on our label, they will become millionairs (not saying they will become millionairs if they will kissing Hank’s ass). Seriously, we are just knowing each who experiments with music has few good tracks in his collection, but has not time or wish or possibilities to release a full album… so - why not to utilize these tracks correctly right now? It would be a good step-forward for beginners, being released means a lot for any musician and artist… And as for professionals - it would be just a good move to leave the trails on the first and only EP-only label.

9. Do you accept demo tapes? Where demos and/or links to music should be send to?

- We accept even if you come to us and sing your music with your mouth in our microphone. If it will gualify we will release it. We are ready to accept any kind of sources: demo-tapes, CDs, vinyls… If you don’t have a possibility to publish on the web on such bulky sites like esnips, i.e. post the files straight away in the requested MP3 format, then feel free to contact us and we will give you the postal address, so you can become famous and rich sending your demos to it. Unfortunatelly we can’t provide the public web address here because anonymity has long been a quality positively associated with the music so we want to be the legends in such area straigh away.

10. Do you have any specific plans for the future?

- We would like to fly to cosmos and record a soundtrack there. It would be a really nice trip. Besides, if we talk about Latvia, in the net labels area they rarely survive for a long time. So INQB8R just supposed to be a “long-term” as long as possible, that is our main specific plan; and not only in Latvia but also worldwide of course. We also wish this page to be a long-term as well, it is so rare online event past years. Thank you for the questionnaire, we like them. Whoever asks us, we will reply on our community page.