This is an e-mail interview with founders of the Moment Sound netlabel. Moment Sound stems from a collective of Chicago musicians that love to make and perform their music. Currently they are focused on releasing talented Chicago musicians that have not yet had any formal releases to date.

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

We are Garo, Lokua and Slava. We come from the city of wind - Chicago. We play live electronic music using a combination of hardware machines and computers. We organize many shows in Chicago, mostly booking local and obscure talent but sometimes also established musicians from Europe and elsewhere. We are also also involved in and collaborate with a variety of art and multimedia organizations such as Deadline Projects (http://deadlineprojects.com) and Motion Graphics Festival (http://mgfest.com/)

Why did you decide to open your own netlabel?

While organizing shows in Chicago we have discovered a huge amount of talented musicians that are virtually unknown and are lacking a platform for getting their music out to the rest of the world. It seems these days regular labels are signing fewer and fewer new acts while they way people listen to and find out about music is drastically changing. There were no netlabels in Chicago, and few people (including musicians) even knew what a netlabel is. So starting Moment Sound seemed like the perfect solution - a new and efficient way of getting the music to the listener. This also gave us the opportunity to do things our way and create our own community of like-minded musicians, as opposed to trying to fit into a pre-established category.

Garo

What kind of music genres do you accept and distribute?

We mostly focus on electronic music, however there are no genre limitations. I think the three of us were drawn to one another because of a mutual understanding of what it means to make music - that is making music for the sake of music as opposed to making it for the sake of a genre. So we ourselves make, as well as appreciate, a wide variety of genres. If we like the music and we think it’s good we will release it.
At the moment we are focusing on Chicago artists that have not released much music and are relatively unknown. Out of just the people we have booked for shows we have about 20 - 30 releases lined up, so we’ll be keeping busy for a while

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?

Right now it is only digital, but we are planning to do some special releases on vinyl in the near future.

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

Right now it is non-for-profit (hmm… we should file for the official status!). At the moment our main goal is getting artists a good amount of exposure. I think its kind of silly selling mp3s since you can download everything for free from places like soulseek anyway. It keeps the music more honest that way too I think… the money doesn’t have a chance to spoil it. I think if we do end up having stuff for sale it will be things you can touch - records, merchandise, art, CDs with specially designed booklets, etc - collector type material.

Did you encounter any particular difficulties in starting the netlabel?

Not really. Things happened rather naturally. Of course we have had to work very hard in other areas - like event promotion and various music projects, but putting the site together and getting the releases up was fairly smooth.

Lokua

How do you promote your netlabel?

Our friends and audience in Chicago, and various blogs and online publications. The response has been very good. There seem to be a lot of people around the world interested in and looking for quality music, so sometimes all it takes is sending a few emails with some basic info about the releases.

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

Invite them to (or book them for) our parties so that they see how cool we are… haha!
Joking aside though, we put a big emphasis on creating and fostering a community of artists. I think it is very important to balance the global trend toward homogenization through small local communities that promote and generate (aesthetic) culture. We are always on the lookout for new talent and try to get everyone involved through various events.

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

Yes, we are always interested in hearing new music via links. However right now the roster of upcoming release is so long that we cannot promise a timely release.
And we are looking for a web/graphic designer to help us with the look of the page!

Slava

Do you have any specific plans for the future?

• Releasing more great music
• Living up to the Chicago electronic music legacy
• Moment Sound world tour - Summer 2009!<\li>