Downliners Sekt
For the people out there who don’t know you can you give us a little background on the band?
Well, we grew up in a small city which had a very dynamic indie scene in the mid-nineties, where we were playing in different bands mainly influenced by garage punk, noise and psychedelic rock. Because we lived in the middle of nowhere, with not much to do apart from spinning around a few records, we spent most of our time jamming, rehearsing and playing gigs alongside a bunch of wild local bands, setting fire around the area by playing noisy and disturbingly loud “music” sets. During this school days era several of those projects were good enough to be recorded and were released on indie labels.
Towards the end of the nineties, the easy accessibility of samplers and computers irrevocably changed the way we produced and perceived music. As we left to relocate into bigger cities, the new urban environment we evolved in was increasingly shaping and changing our moods, and that’s when we started experimenting with electronic sub-genres , raving from drum and bass, electronica, abstract hip hop and dub. Once again some of those beats were released.
Few years later we recorded ‘Statement Of Purpose’ our debut album, the result of this intensive apprenticeship period of production techniques.
‘The Satire Wave’ is a new classic in my opinion. Can you tell us about the recording process? Where was it recorded?
We don’t really know if it’s a ‘classic’ album yet, but for us if you consider the hard work, the lack of sleep, and the underpaid jobs periods we had to go through again to make this happen, yes it is a classic downliners sekt album.
Anyways, after ‘Statement Of Purpose’ was released we ended up living in Paris and decided to rent out a studio space together. We agreed that we wanted to get back to something definitely more live orientated, essentially because the mixing of ‘Statement…’ was that stressful it made us want to avoid machines for a while, and as we also had a few gigs coming up the idea of using laptops wasn’t appealing at all.
New songs started to take shape, and gradually recording them along the way we tried to methodically capture the essence of what was going to be our next album. Few months later we ended up with a large amount of live recorded material.
Straight after finishing the first part of the work we had to go separate ways, respectively London, Montreal and Barcelona. Then, as we did before for ‘Statement…’, we kept developing ideas by sharing audio files through the internet. Once the production was almost over, we hooked up in Barcelona for another six month to finish up the mixing. The hardest part by far.
The record seems to have a lot of different influences and inspirations. What were some of the influences you had on the record?
We kind of always liked the traditional song structure – that’s where we come from really – but as soon as we start to jam around we easily get caught into everlasting improvisation. So the real issue while getting all the ideas together was to bring at unison all those very specific elements we liked within each styles and finally blend them into something cohesive enough to make what we thought was an original album.
We’ve obviously been influenced by many artists and genres over the years, and albums like ‘Richard D. James’, ‘Spiderland’, Pole’s debut album or ‘Slanted And Enchanted’ really did shook us to the core but dancefloor hits like
‘Gene Sequence’ from Kemal and Rob Data or ‘The Nine’ from Bad Company also had a massive impact on us.
On your website you offer three albums for free download. Why free? How are you able to survive?
We’re free because we wanted to keep total control over our work, and therefore not wanting to compromise with any label. We’re also free because we aim to reach a maximum amount of people without money to be an issue in the process of promoting our work. And last but not least free because once you assume since the beginning you’re not gonna get any money from your music your approach is completely different.
It is obviously difficult to survive as a band on those terms, but we hope that sooner or later people would start to realize that we need their support to keep doing what we do. We offer an alternative to our public to have access to our music, and aim to create a fair system of remuneration.
Also, we noticed that you are working under the Creative Commons license. What does that license mean for your music?
On top of everything it gives people the right to legally download and share our music, but as well it fits perfectly our philosophy and allows us to protect our work and safely distribute it.
Has there been an offer from traditional labels and if so would you ever considering releasing your music via that method?
We’re too radical for them. And we’re radical because of them. If you mean ‘that method ‘ as in ‘their method’ definitely not. We took the path of releasing free music and we’ll stick to it.
On the other hand we definitely want this project to expand and so we’re open to any proposition as long as it obviously fits our philosophy.
Is there a method were people can donate to help to continue to support your work?
There is a Paypal button on our website but it doesn’t seem to work well… : ) There’s been some donations and it means a lot to us, but very (very) few people have this reflex yet.
Any help is obviously welcome, and we’re always looking for people to contribute on the aesthetic fronts. Flash designers especially.
What does the rest of the year look like for the band and the label?
Some new stuff we’re working on at the moment is scheduled to be release later on this year, but as usual it will certainly be delayed :p. We’d also love to play the new material live, and work on a ‘Statement Of Purpose’ Remixes project.
Anyway, it’s getting late and tomorrow’s just another day, the alarm clock is set early, and we will have to get our downliners asses up to work. So thanks for you support keep sharing our files and don’t buy major label music.
