1.For those that have never heard of you before, can you tell us a little bit about the record label?
We have had the idea for this record label for a while now and were just waiting to get the right people together at the right time. Not sure if it was the best of ideas to start a record label in the middle of a pandemic but we thought we would go for it and see how it goes! The main idea behind Submersion Records is that we release limited edition cassettes of music that we like and we don’t see being represented as much at least in Greece, our home country. We aim to support musicians that play drone/ambient/experimental music spread the word about their work. We take care of different aspects of the production like designing artwork, producing the tapes, digital distribution as well as promoting the releases online via various websites and playlists. We also have started a series of live stream album presentations for our releases on our YouTube channel. We have two releases out and the third one is coming in December.
2.So far you have put out 2 releases, can you tell us a little bit more about these recordings?
Our first release called Sublimation was a split album featuring two great bands from our hometown Thessaloniki, Six Steps Above The Earth and I, The Chaos. This release is more on the drone side of things offering a journey through various emotions such as fear, loneliness and in the end deliverance. It’s a release featuring heavy music that is based on the idea of experimentation and pushing the boundaries of what heavy music can be with an interesting mix of guitar sounds with noise elements in the case of Six Steps Above The Earth and bass with noise elements in the case of I, The Chaos.
The second release is Altas, an album by the improvisational duet The Coal based in Athens. The Coal enter the studio and play and record at the same time which gives the album a feeling of freedom and intense creativity. It’s a very unique result that we felt could fit within our concept of releasing interesting experimental music.
3.So far you have released your music digitally and on cassette, are there any plans for any other types of formats on future releases?
Yes, we have considered other music formats for future releases such as CD and vinyl but they require a bigger financial risk which at the moment we are not ready to take. We are looking to first build an audience for our work and slowly take bigger risks releasing music in CD and vinyl.
4.Your main musical styles for the label are drone, noise, post and avant garde music, can you tell us a little bit more about your interest in those genres?
Two of us are musicians as well and these are the kind of music that we listen to and also play. The need to create this record label was born out of the need to have a home for our own music and also support other musicians that make similar music. We felt that there is a lot of good avant garde (experimental, however you want to call it) music that is worth trying to promote more and get out there for more people to listen to.
5.What is it that you feel that makes you different than other labels that deal with experimental and noise music?
That is a hard question to answer especially because we are a quite young label and our identity as a label is not 100% defined yet I think. In my opinion what potentially sets us apart from other labels is that we try and do as much as we can on our own so we try and make artwork for the release, release physical copies, have digital distribution as well as some promotion activities. Perhaps our online events will also set us apart from other labels as we do live stream presentations of our albums and we are trying to put together a small online festival with performances from bands whose music we have or will release soon.
6.Some of the noise, drone and experimental labels will put out at least 10 releases a week and can get up to 500 releases in one year, do you feel this would of been impossible back in the days when there was only psychical releases?
Digital distribution of music has made this possible where like you say, record labels can have loads of releases in a year. I don’t think this was possible in the past where you had to pay and produce a minimum amount of CD or vinyl or tape copies. Big record labels were obviously able to press thousands even millions of copies of big records and a lot of different releases per year but for small labels that was impossible and still is impossible to have 500 releases on CD for example if you are a small label without a big budget. We aim to release around 10 albums per year on physical form and a couple of compilations digitally on Bandcamp and YouTube channel as well as Spotify and other streaming services.
7.What was the decision behind starting 'Submersion Records'?
I think it was a need for us to stay creative during these difficult times and create a small community of people that have similar musical taste. We had the idea for the label for a long time and needed to test if we can actually make it happen. It’s a realisation of a “what do we have to lose” attitude which I think came because of the self-isolation of the quarantine.
8.Besides the musical genres that you work with what are some of the other musical styles and genres that you are into?
All people in the label listen to different kinds of music from kraut rock and 60’s – 70’s rock and prog rock, to metal, to funk and jazz as well as acoustic/folk music. We try and listen to music from different countries as well which I believe is important if we want to reimagine a fairer music industry. Listening to music from just the US, the UK and all of these big traditional giants of the arts industry limits our imagination of what good music is and what it can be. I think that now with the Internet as listeners we have the responsibility to explore countries and music that was hard to get to in the past. Nowadays its not hard to listen to a couple of playlists of math rock from Korea or Japan and then change to Romanian jazz or Sahara blues.
9.What is it that you hope to achieve with this label/
We hope that we can find an audience that will appreciate our musical taste and will help support us to make this effort sustainable in the long run. We hope to be able to have some bigger releases in CD or Vinyl as well as work with musicians that we admire and support them in making their art more sustainable. Art workers are going through a very difficult time right now and we hope that we can somehow support them in any way that we can. What sometimes consumers of music and art do not realise is how expensive it is to make an album both in terms of money and in terms of time. The same goes for other arts of course which we believe should be better supported so they can keep being creative.
10.On a worldwide level how has the reaction been to your releases so far?
We have been active for just a few months so we haven’t had huge amounts of feedback back but the feedback we did have was mostly positive. The question is of course, would anyone give you bad feedback to your face? We try to not think about that even though critical feedback can also help us improve. We are at the moment trying to spread the word about our releases and listen to what people think about them and what our future direction as a label should be.
11.What are some of the other releases that you have planned for the end of 2020 or early 2021?
We have a release coming out in December from a band named Kalabrian Syndrome from our hometown Thessaloniki. They are an instrumental trio and play vintage Avant-garde instrumental jazz rock. We have other releases planned for 2021 some are ambient, some are more in the Avant Garde side but I don’t want to give any details yet as we do not have specific dates for these releases yet. We are also looking at releasing some compilations with different musicians and put together a small live streamed festival with pre recorded live performances.
12.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?
First of all thank you so much for your interest and the interview. We would also like to thank all of your readers that are interested and support small labels and musicians that play out of the mainstream music. We are strong believes in diversity and playing and listening to different kinds of music that challenge their boundaries is important. Have a look at our social media and stay in touch, maybe you can find some interesting band or musician that you like. Please send us a message telling us about some music you think we should have a look at!
https://www.facebook.com/SubmersionRecords
https://submersionrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk2aAdtMIIzw-62xkGbxaQg
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