Record label profile: Neu Harmony
By Glenn Folkvord

We have spoken to David Law, founder and director of Neu Harmony in the UK. The label is mostly known for it's Berlin School albums; it's 6 best-selling titles all fall into that category.

Electronic Shadows: When was your record label founded?
 
David Law: I met a guy called Jim Kirkwood at an electronic music festival in 1992. I liked him and his music very much. At the time he was just releasing his albums on cassette and I thought it deserved better so I released an album on CD for him. Tower of Darkness eventually came out in 1993. I didn't particularly have any plans for releasing anything else on Neu Harmony at the time. As for who is running Neu Harmony now? I suppose I should be, but it tends to be it who is running me.

Electronic Shadows: Has your label specialized in one type of electronic music?

David Law: I release the sort of music that I would like to listen to myself. This means the releases tend to fall in one of two styles. Many people think of us for Berlin School releases by the likes of AirSculpture, Arcane, Kubusschnitt, Under The Dome etc. but we also release albums in a more melodic and upbeat style by the likes of Otarion. Then there are ones which have elements of both such as Syndromeda, Paul Nagle etc.

Electronic Shadows: How many albums have the label released up until now?

David Law: There are 35 releases on the label so far. As for highlights, I will most definitely sit on the fence here and say all of them! I would not have released any of them if I didn't think they were fantastic and picking a favourite would be unfair on the artists I didn't pick so I don't want to really take that line any further. I can tell you which have been the best sellers though. These have been (in no particular order):

AirSculpture: Impossible Geometries
AirSculpture: Europa
AirSculpture: Thunderhead
Arcane: Gather Darkness
Arcane: Future Wreck
Under the Dome: The Demon Haunted World

Even this is misleading however as these are all earlier releases so have had more time to sell.

Electronic Shadows: Has there been a development in the type of music that the label has released since the beginning?

David Law: As already mentioned, the first album just happened and indeed so did the second, Shrine by Asana, for exactly the same reason as the first. That is I liked both the guy behind the music, Dave Barker, as well as the music itself. Both these releases sold slowly at first and it was only after releasing the third album Impossible Geometries by AirSculpture, which sold very well, that really any focus to the label developed. The styles I concentrate on have been mentioned above and I have no plans of changing.

Electronic Shadows: What is the trend in the UK scene today, in terms of electronic music? And how does Neu Harmony fit in?

David Law: That would depend on how electronic music was being defined but if we assume we are talking about the sort of music that your readers are most likely to be interested in I don't see that things have changed much at all in the UK over the last decade. The music that most people like is still very much Berlin School based. Those musicians who don't produce that style complain that people should be looking forward and not backwards, and they have a point, but then it is up to them to produce something "going forward" that people actually want to listen to. People will like what they like and it is simply no good to say that they shouldn't be liking it. There has been a very small shift to more ambient styles such as the music being produced by the DiN and Databloem labels but not so much that they will occupy high places in the Synth Music Direct charts. It has to be said though that both these labels release very high quality stuff and do such a good job that it is not an area I would want to get involved with, with Neu Harmony. They have a better feel for that kind of music than I do so it is better to leave that music to them.

Electronic Shadows: Tell us about the process of finding and selecting artists and albums for release.

David Law: I get about three demos a day, that is about 1000 a year so finding artists isn't a problem. Selecting a release is, as mentioned above, simply a question of do I like it and will it sell? It does also help to like the musician or musicians involved. Neu Harmony is a small part of what I do within electronic music and the last thing I want is an unhappy relationship with a musician.

Electronic Shadows: What are the challenges of releasing and marketing electronic music today?

David Law: I really don't think in those sort of terms. I release something I like and people buy it or they don't. There have only ever been a couple of releases which haven't at least broken even in the first year and even these two I am sure will do eventually. I am not really interested in sending out hundreds of promos to radio stations and magazines. I haven't seen that this increases sales at all. What works for me is me getting directly to the customers myself and saying, "I think this is good, I think you should buy it". As long as this is done with integrity more and more people will listen to what is said and go on the recommendation. This is my method of promoting my releases, it has worked for me over the years and is still working for me today.

Electronic Shadows: With cheap music production equipment like softsynths and home computers being more and more used by amateur musicians, is it getting easier or more difficult to find the good artists?

David Law: I do have strong views on the above and think that the softsynths are the biggest threat to the existence of a viable electronic music market in the future. It is a very complicated argument though and I could go into tens of thousands of words about it, which I don't have time to do. For an established talented musician it doesn't really matter how the sound is created, though it does have implications for live performance but my main worry is with new "musicians" and I experience this almost every day.
 
I dislike the "instant gratification" culture we seem to live in. It used to be that a musician would scrape enough money together over a long period to buy a bit of kit then spend ages learning it and the craft of creating music, moving on to the next step with his next bit of kit, maybe bought over a year later. The thing is though that there was a learning process.

Now it's "get a cracked bit of software off a mate" and suddenly someone has thousands of sounds, tools, recording techniques all at once. It is made so much easier to put something together which sounds "OK". Album after album is then churned out which sounds "OK". Then people producing this music get together and tell themselves how good they all are. There has been a whole learning process that has been missed out and to my ears it shows.
 
On the other hand though there are those musicians who do delve deeper into what these amazing new opportunities can provide and do spend a lot of time defining and perfecting their craft before releasing anything. I have already mentioned the Databloem label. Much of the music on there sounds like softsynths to me but there is great depth to it. The people who run that label know what they are doing I think.

Electronic Shadows: How does artists you want to release albums from, feel about having their musical "babies" changed or conducted so as to improve their marketability?

David Law: Some don't mind at all whilst others... well it has to be handled very carefully! It is very rare that I will say to a musician I will release this album if you change a track in a certain way but I am a very bad meddler in the running order department. I have always been able to come to a compromise though.

Electronic Shadows: Why should an up-coming EM artist release his record through a specialized record label when the music can be released easily and to the whole world on the internet, or using home CD burners?

David Law: That would depend on how many people they want to hear their music? Very few customers of the sort of electronic music I get involved with are prepared to pay for music download. Music download is very useful to get an idea if they want to buy a CD but it just isn't the same to most people I talk to having a file on a computer or burnt onto a CDR as actually owning the "genuine" article.

Personally I have no problem selling CDRs but whether a musician is manufacturing a "proper" CD or CDR there is still a major problem that I know musicians can get very frustrated about and that is the difficulty of getting the dealers to stock their stuff. To illustrate my point let me put my Synth Music Direct hat on [mail order company. Editor's mote). A musician sends me a CDR. I like the music and am sure I can sell some but that does not mean that it would make sense for me to stock it, especially if I only want a few copies to start off with. What I have to think about is the cost in terms of actual money in the postage spread over just a few items and even worse the cost in money transfer in paying the musician (this can be huge). If I am buying from a label I will also probably be buying a lot of other product at the same time as a new release. All the costs per unit therefore come down. It would therefore make financial sense for me to buy say ten copies of the new release where it would not have made sense for me to buy the exact same release produced by the artist himself or herself.

There is an even bigger reason though and this is to do with time. Imagine that there were no record labels and every release came directly from the musician. It is hard enough for me to keep stocked with all the titles I carry at the moment - can you imagine if for almost every release I have a different contact point? It would be impossible. I would have to carry less titles thus the musician would find it even harder to get their CDR stocked.

The time thing doesn't only apply to the dealer though it also applies to the customer. Let's say all the musicians didn't use labels or dealers - all sold the music through their own web sites. It is true to say that many people who are time rich are income poor and those that are time poor are income rich (OK a very broad generalisation but averaged out, fairly true). This means that the only people who would have time to search out even a small fraction of the musicians' sites would be those who couldn't actually afford to buy much product, whereas those that do have the money simply wouldn't have the time to search out for all the good music out there. There is a need for labels and dealers.

Electronic Shadows: The CDR format has made it possible for certain record labels to release low-run titles that otherwise could not be justified financially as a pressed CD, what are your thoughts about releasing music to the public as CDRs?

David Law: I have no problem with it at all. Even though I stopped doing it a long time ago because it was too time consuming.

Electronic Shadows: What are the future plans for your label?

David Law: I will be experimenting with music download and have bought loads of extra bandwidth for my site so that people can download whole albums (wav files as well as mp3) without the site falling over. This will be done as a promotional tool however and will be a free facility for our regular customers. I still don't see people being prepared to pay any decent sum for music download but it is a useful tool to generate sales.

Electronic Shadows thanks David Law for the interview.