Interviewed summer 1999 at home in Rotterdam

Rotterdam, biggest harbor in the world. Second biggest city in Holland. It’s a futuristic city because during WW-II the city center was completely destroyed by the Germans. Fifty-five years later, stark reflective buildings scrape the sky. Amidst all this modernism a small music label has started releasing tracks which are very fitting to the scenery. A small label giving artists from around Rotterdam a chance to take their music out of their bedrooms and give it an audience. After ten releases DUB has proven there’s so much talent in and around Rotterdam that it is time to let the rest of the world know. Label boss Serge Verschuur explains how it all started and where it is going.

Djak-Up-Bitch

DUB, the name of the label is not a reference to the early seventies reggae variant, it’s an a abbreviation of the original name Djak-Up-Bitch. That name was meant as a dig at a successful dance label Djax-Up-Beats. Serge: ‘Best forget about the original name. The label is now called DUB and that’s a fine name. No extra explanation needed.’ Okay, we can do without an explanation. The name is short, a little vague, a subtle reference to experimental seventies reggae. It’s a fitting name, because all ten records that have been released so far are progressive electronic record, which can’t be pinned down to one certain musical style. Well, bar the first two releases. Serge: ‘We started this two years ago, because we had some tracks left from the time we still did hardcore acid tracks. We released those for fun, two releases, only 200 copies each. I’m not going to reprint them because they aren’t that good. One is by me, and one by Beverly Hills 808303. Soon I noticed I could do much more with the label, because I got offered so much music by people. It seemed fun for me to do this next to my other labels. To give some completely unknown artists a chance and to release really experimental stuff. Or just things that still have some rough edges of people that can progress by releasing their music, people who I expect more of. I just want to give starting artists a chance.’

The Roster

DUB already has plenty of starting artists. If we forget about the first two records, more than half of the roster has made it’s debut on this label. All guys who used to tinker around with their equipment in their bedroom, making music just for fun. Artists with obscure and weird names like Autophonic, E.O.G., Duplex, Funckarma and Phako. The only ones with more experience are Like-a-Tim, who released a one off live session through DUB on a beautiful self designed picturedisc, and Duracel, who used to be one of the main forces behind a techno collective from The Hague, Unit Moebius. Although the music is made by first timers, it still is of extraordinary high quality. Some of it, like the works of E.O.G. and Phako, sounds somewhere between the minimalistic ambient works of Aphex Twin, with a whiff of Autechre. The music by Duplex is more based on techno and electro. Autophonic obviously finds his inspiration from hiphop beats. Funckarma specializes in fascinating, fast but very hard to follow breakbeats and minimalistic little sounds. All music that isn’t necessarily meant for the dancefloor, but it still is a wide varied range of music. In many ways the label resembles the way the legendary English techno label WARP used to be in the first few years. Like that label DUB seems not to worry about genres and types of music. Serge: ‘That what I like about a label like WARP. They have released so many different things. But WARP started at the right time, in the beginning of the nineties there wasn’t that much music around, so it was quite easy to do many different things at the same time. WARP also has developed into a completely different label compared to what they started out to be. The started with techno and “alternative” dance, and right now they seldom release something you can dance to.’

So Many Records

At the end of the eighties it was easy to oversee the complete musical landscape. There was techno from Detroit, house from Chicago, acid from the UK and here and there a weird genre popped up: ambient, hardcore and breakbeat. These days it’s quite different. Serge: ‘It’s getting harder and harder to sell things, because there is so much out there. People can start a label themselves. Make music themselves. If you have a thousand dollars to spare you can release a record. I think that’s okay, because that way the chance something special will be created is going to be bigger. But on the other hand it is bad, because the general music lover will not be able to find out about your music, because there’s simply too much. He has to specialize himself in a certain area. Ten years ago you didn’t have to, back then you could buy a wide range of records in a certain week. In a normal week I would buy an acid record, a warm vocal club record and a record like Aphex Twin or a loud techno record. It’s not possible anymore, because in every area at least ten records are released every week. And that is also really hard on little labels, because they have to specialize and differ so much from the rest that it can become very hard to reach your potential public. Recordshops and distributors aren’t that interested in a new label, because they think oh no, not another one. So you have to do your best to be different and special so people will notice you. For the bigger labels it is going to be easier, they even got some of their power and influence back because of that. Listeners will only focus on the stuff released by bigger labels because they will release what they expect and they will have the resources to give music some attention with promotion and videoclips. One look at the alternative programs of MTV says enough, the clips look wonderful, but they are all by artists and bands on the bigger labels. The little ones you will never see, they don’t have the money for that kind of promotion, or they aren’t simply given the chance. Still, I think that through diversity more quality will come up.’

Success

Things that are obscure and unknown can be wonderful and fresh, that’s what the bigger labels know too, and so that’s why sometimes a bigger label will buy away an artist from a small label. That seems like quite a risk for DUB. Serge: ‘My artists may do as they please, but I help them and they help me. Many of my artists have been trying to get their music released, but many people didn’t want to take the risk. If I do take the risk, than that should be a token of mutual respect. But it is no commitment. I have just the simple agreement that I will spend time and effort to get their music out there. That way I hope to build a bond with such an artist and that the next time he is planning to release music he will think of me first. Because if I do take the risk of releasing a first time product. An artist like that is still very unknown, the music may not be the kind people have come to expect. It’s nice to build something together with the artist, and that’s what I want. That we become one big group of artists where everyone will grow with one another’s success.’ With the group of people Serge has now there’s a big chance that will happen. Maybe it all will become easier to finance. Serge: ‘Maybe, we would definitely have more money left, but we also have to invest more and more. The risks will be getting bigger. If you still sell around 3000 pieces on average and you come with a bunch of new artists, than it’s very much the question that you will sell as much and then you have to go back to a smaller number of copies. That’s a disadvantage. I wouldn’t mind if it would all stay small and manageable.’

If You Want A Job Done Right…

And it needs to be small and manageable for the time being, because Serge is doing this all by himself. And next to the DUB label he also has his own shop, another label and distribution company called Clone (which does the distribution for the labels Bunker, Viewlexx and Murdercapital, all from neighboring city The Hague). That means that the shop is often filled to the rafters with big boxes full of fresh vinyl, that often are put in the sleeves by the artists themselves. Serge: ‘Sure, the distribution we do ourselves and there’s a lot more things to it. We’re doing alright, because we get many reactions from people who are interested in the label and the artists. We even got some offers to release things on compilation CD’s.’ Sometimes Serge gets reactions from the strangest places in the world. Serge: ‘There’s a guy in New Zealand who has everything, including the first two acid releases and he keeps on checking our every move. And he also likes the other labels, so he collects almost everything. The world is getting smaller and there are a few ways where you can easily find the right music. And there are a few people who try to stay up-to-date and order everything that gets released, without hearing it first. The internet has helped with that. Our websites and those of many others show what’s out there and that way everyone is able to get it. It’s quite funny to get reactions from the other side of the globe. Those people can be so fanatical about it.’

Fanatic

Not so long ago Serge used to be just as fanatical. Serge: ‘I accidentally stumbled into this job. At a certain moment in your life you’ll hear music that really touches you. Just like many other people at first I discovered records through the radio, there were certain shows that played things you wouldn’t hear anywhere else. And I also started to diskjockey in discos. And then you start to hear more and more things you really like. That way you fall into this musical trap. It depends on how fanatical you are about it and that I was. There were certain records that I knew they existed and I just needed to have them. I though it was so good. That way I met Ferenc a guy who ran a recordshop in the Hague called Hotmix, which no longer exists but which is now an international distribution label, he has also become quite well known recently as I-f. He was even more fanatical then me and he was doing this a lot longer than me, so he had a longer history with this kind of thing. He had been to Chicago and he had all the records me and my friends really really wanted. We got to know each other and that way you get into it even more. It was never my intention to make a living out of this.’ Thanks to the Hotmix shop Serge got to know many more people who were busy making electronic music. Serge: ‘Back in the late eighties something started to grow in The Hague, with the labels Bunker, Acidplanet and the whole acid scene. Many of those people still come to my shop and the releases on those labels I distribute them together with Hotmix.’ Thanks to the shop Serge has met many of his artists. The Clone recordshop which is situated on the Nieuwe Binnenweg an important street in Rotterdam where youth culture thrives. It’s stuck away in the back of a sort of mini mall which is named Urban Unit and is shared by a clothes shop and a hairdresser. Serge: ‘The store is the point where I make contacts. Where all the new music is coming in. And not only for me, but also for the people who are interested in music and live in Rotterdam, The Hague and Delft and even further than that. If you’re trying to find this kind of music then I’m still faster and closer to the source than most other shops.’

Identity

Thanks to the knowledge and experience he has gotten from running the shop and playing records as a deejay, Serge instinctively knows what makes a record good. That’s why he has a say in anything he releases on the DUB label. Serge: ‘The music has to contain something of the person who is making it. It shouldn’t be just copying somebody else’s style. It does happen sometimes, and that’s usually because someone is so inspired by something he has heard that he starts making that kind of music himself. But there has to be a clear development in the way such a person is making music. Take a record by Like-A-Tim, that is so clearly his own music. Maybe a lot of people are put off by it, but there is nobody else who can make that kind of music, it is unmistakingly his.’ Is it important to release music that can not be connected to a certain period? Serge: ‘That is hard to say, because we haven’t been around long enough. But if we are still releasing music in ten years, than you would probably be able to spot the period in which these records were made. In that time a lot of the hardware and software will probably change. There’s so much going on in the world of electronic music, you can do and more and more with all these computers and instruments. It’s up to the artist now to be creative and make something of the possibilities he has been given. That is a problem for a lot of people. They will be so focused on these machines that they’ll forget about creativity. People will use this equipment in one certain way and will always make music that sounds like all the music that is made with that kind of equipment. They’ll try out all the gadgets. At the moment you can easily hear if someone has a PowerMac at home, because you know what kind of tricks can be done with those and everybody is trying to use those tricks. It was just like when everybody bought a Roland 303 (the infamous bass stations that were used to make acid with - JV) and they had to use them too. And all of them were twiddling the knobs back and forth like there was no tomorrow. Now you see it again. You hear Aphex Twin using a PowerMac, and Funkstörung, but also Funckarma. But it will end soon, because then people start to recognize the tricks and they’ll have to become more inventive.’

Scenes And Style Police

Seeing certain types of music coming up fast and dying even faster it seems like electronic musicians have a hard time staying original, they stick to one type of music and then fade away. Serge: ‘There’s one thing you have to avoid at all cost, the scene. And the problem is that a scene is easily created. As soon as your music gets some popularity people will flock together and will start making that kind of music and that is usually the first stab in the back for that type of music. Right here in and around Rotterdam we have lots of electro and certain types of danceable breakbeat, a lot of the same things. There’s a group of people here that is so fanatical about it that you can call it a scene. A good example were the underground parties in De Hemel, which is sadly no longer there. Those parties focused on one group of people and those are the guys that make one type of music that is released on some of our labels. And that is dangerous, because you get a certain style in that group and everyone is conforming to that style and starts making the same music. You also see it in the club and house scene, you’ll get a type of style police, the group will cast of any new or different idea, and that’s not good for the music. With the DUB label and the others that isn’t too much of an issue at the moment, but there’s a big risk. I try to keep an open mind when selecting the tracks and I try not to get distracted by the opinion of people around me. For instance Funckarma isn’t going down too well with the techno crowd. But if I would worry about that than I wouldn’t be able to release anything. It’s my vision and I decide which way it is going, not some kind of scene. It can be so bad to be in a smothering scene like the techno scene. Deejays stick to a certain sound and anything that is just outside it won’t be played. And that is god damn shame.’

Emotion

Many people consider electronic music to be emotionless, music without feeling or soul. Why is that? Serge: ‘Those people are correct. They will not look into something further when the first impression is that you don’t like it, that’s with almost anything, music as well. You have to have a certain knowledge to appreciate and judge music, and people who say something like that do not know the genre at all. And I can’t blame them, because you’ll have a pretty hard time finding the pearls between all the shit that’s out there. The music they’ll hear is the music that has become extremely popular and is played on the radio. And that kind of music is mostly without emotion. But emotion is not the only important aspect of music. Good music can be judged on three important criteria: feeling, originality and quality. I think that your goal in making music, is to see it as an art form, to visualize a certain emotion. And then it will be very important to be good creatively and artistically to be able to get that emotion across. Someone who can do that will probably make good music. But even if you try to put so much emotion into the music, but you won’t be able to pull it of technically, then it is still going to be nothing.’ Good thing that the artists on his own label do know how to pull it of technically. DUB has been around for only two years, it’s still small, but with someone as visionary as Serge it will become a very special label indeed. Check it out.