BLEEPSTREET the label founded by Johan Kotlinski and reborn as a digital netlabel late last year is back with a new release from La Belle Indifference, “Get Ur Bleep On”
Label head Daniel F. Wehleit sat down with our inbox and answered a few questions about BLEEPSTREET and their mission in bringing chip sounds to the masses.
TCTD: How did the decision to revive BLEEPSTREET come about?
Daniel: It was late 2007 after returning from a gig in Copenhagen with Goto80 & Stu at the 8bit Klubben party, I was performing live as Computadora with Dr.Drama on visuals, after that gig it just felt right for all of us to start a label together centered on the 8bit sound.
After pondering for a few weeks we wondered what Johan Kotlinski was doing with Bleepstreet, it came out that he didn’t have the time to continue with it so we just paid him a few million dollars for the company and in return he sent us a blue package with 42 vinyls. That’s how we started… shortly after, we gathered a small team and we started planning in a semi-chaotic way from a small room in Berlin. We all met again in spring 2008 and we started to prepare the relaunch of Bleepstreet that finally happened last October.
TCTD: What do you feel is the role of a commercial label in supporting and developing chip artists, who commonly release their material for free?
We wouldn’t call ourselves a commercial label because we are a small label, but yeah we use a traditional record label model and we now have a global digital distribution deal. We still think netlabels are a great way for artists to distribute their music but we feel that a better way to develop our artists is by distributing their music through commercial channels.
TCTD: What are some of the challenges in marketing chip music to the masses?
Bleepstreet is an electronic music label with roots in the classic C64 & Amiga scenes, so the spirit is all about using homemade software, data-hacking on old home computers and so on, but the sound is not only about chip music, it is also about electro, techno and crazy data pop. Some of the early Bleepstreet stuff was made on Amiga and doesn’t sound like chip style at all, we want to continue working under that concept and to explore the use of chip music as an element and not as a whole.
BLEEPSTREET has many exciting releases in the pipeline. Check out the official BLEEPSTREET site for more information about the label and its artists.
