Interview with Vrangsinn of Misantrof ANTIRecords 2007

By Bradley Smith

 

You recently founded Misantrof ANTIRecords.  What was the whole concept behind forming it?  How does it function and why did you take it in a direction that is basically opposed to all that a normal label stands for?

 

Fuck. That’s like 3 questions in one.

 

First Misantrof was just supposed to be a place you could download the Hatepulse releases.  I found the new album too good to remain unreleased so I put up a simple web page to offer the album for free to the public.  That was basically everything!

 

After a while we decided to also put up material from A Waste of Talent.  Then we released the EP from Eirik Skrangle and Misantrof ANTIRecords were officially born.  Misantrof was started January 2007, but it did not fully become Misantrof ANTIRecords before the summer of 2007.

 

The concept you say??  As this is both an experiment and a label, the concept will always be changing.  The site has been constantly developing since the first version was put online.  The concept will continue to change all along the road.  The main concept however is to be an environmental friendly and fair way of distributing music.  User-friendly & bullshit free.  The music is free to download and share but the users are encouraged to pay what the music is worth to them. And the money goes directly to the ones doing all the work  - The artists.

 

Why??  Cause most of the music coming out these days are worthless pieces of plastic crap presented to you by greedy multinational companies, created with the sole purpose to feed a massive consumer market blindly buying whatever is advertised on TV.  Real music is slowly dying you know.  Can you give me one good reason not to start the opposite of this nonsense?  By removing the money from music you also remove commercial prostitution.

 

I have noticed you have quite a substantial roster of Artists.  Can you name some of them and how did you approach them about signing and what did they think when they first heard you ideas?

 

You have to understand one thing about this zero profit (anti)label.  There are no SIGNINGS.  There are no boundaries, restrictions, nothing.  The artists own the rights to their own music, and the artists are 100% free to do whatever they feel like with their own material at any time.  Dirge Rep does most of the artist related work.  Dirge Rep is doing a lot of great fucking work to get all this quality music online!

With so many great Artists already working with you, what are some of the of the artists you still would like to get to work Misantrof ANTIRecords?

 

As much as this is a label it is also becoming an archive of music.  Hard to find classic releases, live concerts, collector items, demos and full-length studio albums. 

There is a lot of material missing in this archive and we’re working on that.

We want this to become a massive archive of music you will find nowhere else.

 

What is your opinion in general on Open source programs and peer-to-peer file sharing on the internet?  Do you think that basically all the stuff on the internet should be available for free?

 

I think if you use commercial software you should pay for it if you can afford it.  Before using a cracked version of the software you should always look for open-source alternatives.  Everything on internet is already available for free.  The moral question is whether this is wrong or not.

 

The Music, Movie, Software and Game industry has to start dealing with this reality and figure out a way to co-exist.  It’s not possible to stop it.  The pirates will always be ahead of their hunters.  Their supporters greatly outnumber their enemies.  Misantrof is just one way to deal with it.

 

You stated in an interview that one of the reasons you started Misantrof ANTIRecords was to satisfy you own ego?  Is your ego satisfied now?  If not how are you going about satisfying it?  Will it ever be capable of being satisfied?

 

Hmmm. I think I have to go for option D - Will it ever be capable of being satisfied?

 

Being as you only take donations that go directly to the artists, how do you intend on promoting the Anti-label?  What do you do about the overhead that you have to put into Misantrof?  Do the artists give you anything in return for you time and resources?

 

It's not my job to promote this thing.  That's your job.  You, your friends, their friends and so on.  This method is working great I think.  The only thing pissing me off is the fact that almost no one is giving the bands money for their art.  You know.  If you really like the music, I think you can afford to pay them 50 cent or whatever.  Don't you?  But is seems a lot of people are spreading the word as we receive more than 20.000 hits every fucking week.

 

I expect nothing in return from the artists.  Just glad to have them all aboard. Doing this work is very fascinating and gives me a lot of satisfaction.  That's all I need.  It is an experiment you know.  A very personal one.

 

Now let’s switch gears a bit and turn to your main band these days, A Waste of Talent.  What is it like and how did the band form?  Why that name in particular? 

 

If you knew us you would know why that's the only name this band can have.  It basically describes all people ever being involved in that band very good.  We're just here to tell you what kind of fucked up freaks of nature you and the rest of mankind really are.  We play Groovydepressive Poprockmetal with a lot of doom in it.  It's sort of related to metal I guess.  It will not be hard enough for all the die hard TRUE blackmetal people out there.

But our message is a hell of a lot darker than most of the crap passing as blackmetal these days.  We're basically just doing what we want and do not really try to make a specific style or anything.  We are making music so we finally can get ourselves some good stuff to listen to.  That's all.  If you or someone else likes it, well... Good for you!!!

 

You have been involved with Carpathian Forest in the past.  Is that relationship at an end?  What were some of your favourite experiences with them?

 

Carpathian Forest gave me so many good and bizarre times, it's really hard to point at any specific moment.  It was some fantastic years and I wish them all the best for the future.

I'll always be a fan of the band.  And Nattefrost still remains one of my closest friends.

 

Aside from the bands already mentioned you still have several other projects you are involved with like Secht and Hatepulse.  How are they going?  Will you ever try and resurrect Hatepulse?

 

Hatepulse is dead.  Forever burried in the shadows, It was a cool project as long as it lasted, but due to extremely different ways of seeing music, life and everything we just had to kill it.  Regarding Secht – Time will tell

 

Back to Technology a bit, it always appears to me that with black metal there is an Aesthetic in general of Anti-technology and it is rooted in nature and such.  Do you view it that way too?  What do you think of these people who claim to hate the internet and such yet have a myspace page advertising their band and such?

 

I love/Hate technology a lot.  The things I am doing – like producing bands, create graphics artwork, making webpages.  I need technology for that.  The anti-technology people will be like retards in a few years time when technology has evolved to the stage you can't really live an ok life without it.  Sad for them.  I decided very young that I would always master the technology available and use it to get where I wanted to go.  I would anyway choose nature over technology.  No doubt there.  Don't know really.  Can't seem to agree with myself on that matter.

 

What are some of your upcoming plans both personally and in regards to your bands and Misantrof?

 

The next step will be to get magazines like yousr to take our releases just as serious as the releases from any other label.  And to get you to write reviews, do interviews and basically just get the public acceptance for the fact our releases are just like all other releases out there and need all the same privileges as the rest of music industry.  This is just another way of doing it.  More labels will follow the same principles in the future.

Probably not 100% free and as extreme as we do it.  But this is the future whether you like it or not.  The only reason we do it this extreme is to give our message the credibility needed to actually get through to you all. 

 

I will leave any Final Anti-Words to you?

 

One mouse click away from here you'll find loads of quality releases for nothing at all.  If I were you I would really go check out this new weird way of distributing music.  You sure as hell have nothing to loose. UGH!!

 

For more info on this extremely interesting musical experiment/Label visit:

http://www.misantrof.net/