Jeremy Bible is a Renaissance Man. Not only is he the founder of the Experimedia label and the associated on-line store, he often photographs and designs the art for the label’s releases , not to mention finding the time to record his own compositions. The title of the label, and its reference to “sound objects” describes its mission in shorthand, but here’s the longer version-“releasing inspiring work by artists with unique voices blurring the lines between the genres of Ambient, Drone, Noise, Electro-Acoustic, Classical, Shoegaze, Folk, Avant-Garde, Microsound, Sound-Art, Phonography, Americana, and Psychadelic”.
The label has just been recognized with its second consecutive Qwartz Award nomination; this one for Flyover Sound by Billy Gomberg + Offthesky. We caught up with Jeremy for a few questions:
How did you become interested in the type of music your label produces?
My earliest strong influences towards the esoteric had to have been industrial bands such as Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Skinny Puppy. Around the age of 14 I started regularly visiting a little independent record shop in Canton named Checkered Records and speaking with the owner who pointed me towards a broad scope of semi related music from the earlier classical avant-garde to more modern left field electronic and noise. I spent a lot of time exploring as many genres as I could during that time too… punk, reggae, classical, folk, psychedelic rock, and all the in betweens. I couldn’t buy a lot from him at first coming from a poor family… but the owner was kind enough to let me explore and listen in the store quite a bit… but at 15 I started my first jobs washing dishes, mowing lawns, delivering papers…. which then all my earnings went towards buying music. I would also dig through music magazines and sign up for all the catalogs I could from when you would find labels and shops sending out snail-mail catalogs and promotions.
How long have you been in business and what inspired you to start your label?
That’s kind of a tricky question which will require some background story. Having been involved with music related activities since I organized my first event in 1994 when I was 14 Ive always pictured what I do as being part of a ‘community’ more than an ‘industry’. I’ve been involved in many different ways over the years such as organizing events, djing, designing fliers and album covers, organizing tours, doing promotions for artists, recording and performing myself, and putting out tiny run DIY cassettes early on of local bands and mixtapes of stuff I liked…. passing them around locally for free essentially. So most of my years being involved have been spent pro-bono… purely for the spirit of it… to support music I found moving and important.
Experimedia was founded in 2000 originally as the name of a weekly event at a gallery space in Akron I organized events at. After the gallery closed I carried on the name for anything I was involved in. I pressed a record or put out a cdr here and there… had a netlabel running for quite sometime where releases were available for free download. It’s not until the past 3-4 years that Experimedia has actually turned into any kind of business. I started putting out more releases and built a nice online mailorder cart to sell the releases through… then I started buying a couple copies of related releases from other labels and artists I was friends with from countries around the world who I had made contact with over the years. Things have just kind of snowballed from there and has been picking up speed rapidly especially over the past year. The record shop catalog has expanded … offering around 3000 titles from several hundred small labels from all over. At the moment I ship out about 100 packages a week between retail orders and the label releases to my distributors… 80% of which are primarily for vinyl.
As far as what inspired me to start a label… well quite simply… just the music itself… ever since digging through all the records, cds, and cassettes at that record shop when I was a youngster I’ve known exactly what I wanted to do…. do everything I can to support and be surrounded by the music I love…. regardless of profit or not. So essentially my interest and persistent involvement supporting music evolved into a business without much thought ever being put into being a business until one day I woke up and realized it had become a business. Still even now the lines between industry and community are continually blurred as I am friends with a good percentage of the labels/artists I continue to work with…. and the business is still strictly about supporting the community at large.
Why do you offer your releases in the vinyl format?
I pressed my first record in 2003 which was afforded by student loans (which I will finally have paid off in full this year). Part of is admittedly nostalgia… going back to digging through my parents record collections to digging through and previewing shelves of used records at Checkered Records. Then in the late 90s when I was involved quite a bit in the electronic music community most of the good tracks were coming out only on vinyl. Another part of it is I am a firm believe in music as a physical object… the presentation of music is important to me… holding it and looking at the album art and reading the liner notes. So the large format of vinyl appeals to me greatly. Not only that but I feel it honors the music with an analog physical artifact that could in fact be played via a Victrola type device if the entire world lost electricity. Then there is the sound quality which many will debate… but especially with modern pressings I truly hear the difference. Comparing the sound of an album on vinyl vs cd… the vinyl edition often sounds as if the performers are right in the room with me whereas playing a cd and other lossy digital formats through the same set of speakers just sound far away and empty. So overall a nice big physical slab of vinyl simply makes me personally feel closer and more connected to the music…. for many reasons.
What is your opinion about the NE Ohio music scene for your type of releases?
There is actually quite a bit going on here in terms of esoteric music… while many of the participants seem to be disconnected though somehow. Little pockets are artists and labels here and there. But that’s pretty much how this kind of music exists everywhere it seems. So networking globally is a big part of it. We kind of exist in this global community that the internet has facilitated. For instance I’ll have an order from Texas followed by an order from South Africa or Turkey. Honestly I’ve had me head so focused on promoting the label globally, gaining distribution and press, that I haven’t been as involved with the local scene as I used to be but I have been working with a few people on getting some events happening down around Kent and Akron where I live. I know there are a lot of shows going on in Cleveland and Oberlin that I would enjoy but my hands are always so busy with the label and shop I rarely get out to check them out at the moment…. so living in Kent I hope to work bring some things a little closer to home. I’ll also be releasing a few Ohio based artists on the label this year.
What is the Qwartz Award and what does it mean to you to have another release nominated?
Qwartz.org is a Paris based international network for new and electronic music. Every year Qwartz organizes and hosts an awards ceremony… this year being their 7th. Every year they call for submissions… the submissions are then presented to a blind jury consisting of creative luminaries… last year for instance included Chilean film maker Alejandro Jodorowsky and pioneering electroacoustic composer and member of Groupe de Recherche Musicales Bernard Parmegiani. So the submission and jurying process goes on a good part of the year leading to the nominations which are then voted on by the public leading up to the awards ceremony in April.
Last year I had the pleasure of attending with my friend and artist Ian Hawgood whose Koen Park release on Experimedia was nominated for best album. The 2 day event was held at the historical Parisian stock exchange Paris Bourse and involved not only the awards the ceremony but the new music market where nominated labels and other music organizations could display booths, network amongst each other, and speak to the public about their work. Performances also took place throughout the weekend. It was truly an amazing weekend for me standing next to and meeting not only many of my contemporaries but many of the pioneers of avant-garde music from the 60s and 70s such as Francois Bayle, Bernard Parmegiani, Sophia Calle, Laurie Anderson whose records all have had an impact on me. So its a really unique event that brings together several generations of the exploratory music community.
Being nominated two years in a row (the only 2 years I have submitted) is truly an honor and a testament to my years of dedication and the work of the artists which I release. So its just a bit mind blowing that out of 1000s of submissions, releases I’ve had the privilege of selecting and presenting to the world were blindly put up on a pedestal by names which I know and highly respect. It reassures me I’m doing something of merit… which is a great thing to have on those days when my efforts are feeling more challenged than others.
What was your first vinyl record?
Well my first memories of vinyl were of course my parents records… I always wanted to play with Pink Floyd’s The Wall... and the Beatles White Album. First vinyl I purchased for myself was a used copy of a 1980 live performance bootleg LP by Throbbing Gristle recorded at Rafters in Manchester. That kind of industrial noise live performance had a huge impact on me. I still have that record.
Is there any one recording you can’t live without?
No and yes to all. The diversity and eclecticism of music is what draws me to it. I’m always hungry to hear a new album. So if there was only one record to choose I don’t think it would be as interesting to me. I’m trying to imagine what records I would grab if I only had 2 minutes to grab the only records I could keep or something … and I can only picture myself running out with as many as I could fit in my arms with records spilling out as I ran. Hmm one recording… hmm… oddly enough I couldn’t imagine living without some Billie Holiday in my collection…. songs like Strange Fruit, Gloomy Sunday, They Cant Take That Away From Me.
