sub:marine : the first year editor's note: this section has been adapted and expanded from the old sub:history page.  i have decided to use some of this space we have at sub:marine to share some thoughts and experiences about running this label.  my hope is that through this, other people will understand what sub:marine is all about, and understand what running a small label is like.   let it inspire or discourage you-- maybe equally. sub:marine started simply enough as two ideas who's destiny it was to become one.  jeremy had this name "sub:marine" that was spawned by his fascination with punctuation and a tie-in with the underwater song "sub:space".  quite conveniently, sub:marine and underwater were synonymous so it just had to be given birth at some point. some time after sub:marine (the name) had been willed upon us, the underwater record contract with RISK records gave us confidence that we'd "make it" in this music business.  we had grandiose plans for side-projects and other things we wanted to do musically that didn't fit the idea RISK had for us, and thus, the notion of a small side-label was born. enter henry's ghost, a simple but moving song written by dan rosen and recorded with jeremy.  i heard the song and thought it would somehow make good remix fodder for LARVAE.  before we knew it, underwater was covering the song, LARVAE and jeremy's studio persona, u-RAD had remixed it, and we were more than half-way to an EP worth of versions of the song we all somehow loved. it was settled then, that henry's ghost would be our first release for sub:marine.  it was just the kind of indulgent, self-satisfying but (we thought) important release that the label would be based around.  we knew it would have a limited audience, and we didn't care.  we'd make 300 copies and hand-print the artwork and it would be great. it was great.  it was all those things in fact, limited, self-indulgent, hand-made (if i only had a picture of all the artwork drying in our dining room!)  but with the separation of underwater from RISK, suddenly, the label was less of a pet-project and more of a way for us to continue sharing the music we made with others. the sub:sampler was our first release, an introduction to our catalog and it actually came out BEFORE henry's ghost (hence the sub:000 cat #).  even though it contained new tracks from stillife;gaijin, underwater, and LARVAE, it wasn't so much of an announcement of intent as it was a way to bridge the past with the present.  we didn't just fill it with any old thing, but we wanted to demonstrate the transition from old projects to new.  it even featured the first sub:marine appearance of miles tilmann in the form of a remix.  a label looking for artists we did not, (and i can't stress this enough) want to be just another band with a "label" in name only, tagging a logo on the back of self-released cds that no one cared about.  we aspired to much bigger heights, and wanted sub:marine to be a place where like-minded people could find the kind of music we liked, and they liked.  4AD had to start somewhere, right?  from the beginning, i think we've modeled the label's ethic after the labels we knew and trusted as we first discovered the music we would call our own.  4AD, Wax Trax, MUTE, and Warp come to mind.  You couldn't always tell what a Warp record was going to sound like, but you kinda always knew it would be A) challenging and B) good.  we wanted that. with that in mind, we began looking for people who's music we felt compelled to release.  underwater was recording a new album and that would be our first big sub:marine release, but we wanted to follow it quickly with some others.  i'd been getting demo cdrs from miles tilmann around the same time, and i was liking his music more and more.  i also liked miles!  that was (and still is) a big concept in the sub:marine ethos-- we only release music by people we like.  so miles tilmann was the next up to bat, and he was followed quickly by audomobil? who's twisted symphony of noise pop we'd grown to love from some joint shows with underwater.  but before we get into all of that, let me break down for you how underwater's this is not a film worked. this is not a film : the making of and breaking of this is not a film was a difficult record to make in a number of ways.  it wasn't difficult in the VH1 Behind the Scenes kind of way, but it took a toll on me in the sense that i was never sure what the point of releasing it as an album really was.  from the perspective of a member in the band, it was great to see ideas come together in a way i was proud of.  from the perspective of the label, i thought this would be our signature release-- the thing that would really kickstart the label and get us in the door with radio/distributors etc. instead, what i found was that the business of running a record label isn't just the idealism of putting out music you believe in.  sure, we had that.  we were missing some of the other stuff. one of the first things we did was get a map of the US and a couple boxes of flag push-pins.  this was to be our visual stimulus for working hard to promote this is not a film.  and it worked insofar as it was designed to inspire us to see the fruits of our labor.  we had flags planted wherever radio stations had told us that they'd put the underwater record on the air or into their catalog.  it was fun to see where other  people were listening to it, and to see where our efforts at radio promotion were paying off.  still, the map stalled at a certain point and subsequent investigations of airplay told us that not that many people were really listening to the record. we had hoped that a good showing at college radio would be our foot in the door with distributors.  as it turns out, charting an album on college radio is as political and big-business of a venture as there is. that's not to say little startups don't or can't have success... it might just mean not many people really were into underwater.  but the whole process of tracking down people at radio stations and asking them to remember to play your disc etc. was somewhat disheartening. a bit of advice: don't be an artist and a salesperson at once.  it's hard enough to be a salesperson, but when you can't divorce your own creative feelings about your work from your need to sell sell sell, it's nearly impossible.  that's what labels are for!  if i had it to do over again, i'm not sure i would release something like that on sub:marine simply because the backlash is THAT MUCH HARDER when it flops and it's your own work! we tried to get underwater reviews and radio spins and into the hands of record stores and distributors as much as possible.  we sent out nearly 500 copies to people, hoping to get somewhere with it.  to understand the economics of this, it's fruitful to do some math.  we went all out with a 12 page booklet for the cd, which meant that our unit price per disc was a lot higher than something like, say the miles tilmann disc that has a 2 panel black and white insert (his choice, not ours mind you!)  add on top of that the fact that it's heavier and costs more to mail, and you have promo packages going out to 300 radio stations and nearly 200 magazines, stores, and distributors at $4-$5 a pop!  was it worth it?  well, the band didn't help matters, but that's a whole other story. after promoting the record for 6 months with no full-fledged tour, no booking agent, and no manager, underwater broke up and the label was left looking at quite a few unsold copies of this is not a film.  we took out ads, sent out promos, did the shmooze thing the best we could, but to little avail.  what we can say is that we are still very happy with the record, we still think it's worthwhile and think that there are people in the world who'd like to hear it, but they just don't know it's out there.  alas. miles tilmann : the great experiment so, unwilling to rest on our laurels and undeterred by the relative lack of commercial success and subsequent breakup of our "flagship act", sub:marine pressed forward with the plan we had established prior to the release of this is not a film, namely-- to release music by other people! miles tilmann's underland ep was an interesting experiment for us.  the radio/promo blitz hadn't really worked for underwater, and we needed to find a more cost-effective way to promote underland.  not only that, but miles' music while similar in tone to underwater, was a completely new ballgame.  people who liked underwater, in our estimation, SHOULD have liked miles tilmann, but there was no real easy way to explain that or prove it.   additionally, miles was unapologetic about making electronic music that wasn't focused on bleeding-edge technology or the newest reaktor plugin.  i love underland, and completely agree with miles and his position: he just makes music that makes sense to him, and if it draws comparison to old aphex twin or even vangelis, he's not too worried about changing.  but from a business perspective, this all made me a bit nervous as the music review sources i thought would be most into covering underland, (places like grooves and the wire and pitchforkmedia) seemed almost obsessively focused on the newest in-sound of the exact moment.  "autechre is so LAST SUMMER", if you get my meaning. so our strategy was to promote miles online as much as possible.  reviews began to trickle in, always good and always sure to mention that "this is not the next big sound in electronic music".   fair enough. still, with some moderate success on college radio RPM shows and a burgeoning interest in miles in his own hometown of chicago, the real trouble was getting stores to carry underland.  miles was a tireless promoter.  he did two major tours across the country, the first set up by myself and jeremy, the second booked mostly on his own with a little help from me.  it was scary and also amazing to watch.  here was a guy with a record that no one had really heard of, that had sold less copies than records i used to sell out of my backback in college, that didn't have an overwhelming stage presence or tremendously energetic live show--and yet he was willing to put it all on the line, rent or borrow a car, and trek across the country trying to get people excited about it.  i've never had the fortune to work with anyone else so dedicated.  but, did it work? i'm happy to say that miles has moved on to some bigger and better things.  though his sub:marine release underland was his first, he has gone on to release tracks on compilations for Six Records and Tyke Records, has put out a well-received 10" on the Consumers Research label and a sold-out 12" on the vaulted UK label, Toytronic.  not only that, but he's gotten a lot of the attention he deserves, he's made friends, put out some wonderful tunes, and he's still going at it and learning and making new stuff all the time.  to think that sub:marine helped in that is certainly a point of pride.  sure, we got screwed over by a distributor (Joel, if i ever find you...) and sure, the subsequent split 7" cost so much to make that break-even was the best we could ask for, but it's been a great success story.  one day, i'll be opening up the last little box of underland cds and thinking "wow, we sold all of them!" audomobil? : self-destruction 101 our next release was from audomobil?, a once-great band from birmingham, alabama.  well, truth be told, it was never so much of a band as it was the solo project of its leader masquarading as a band.  but we'll get to that. it should be stated that while jeremy and i picked the releases together up to this point, we definitely came at them from different angles.  miles was my choice for a release, audomobil? was jeremy's.  we both agreed about both albums/artists, but he was certainly the one who brough audomobil? to the table. the phone conversation where we offered to put out a record for audomobil? was kind of strange.  it started off with the lofty goal of a conference call, with nick, andrea, and vic on phones from birmingham and jeremy and i on phones in the house in atlanta.  it was soon clear that the conversation was really between nick and us, so the other audomobilers dropped off the phone and we got down to business.  we had heard audomobil?'s recordings, seen them live, and we had a great deal of faith that they'd be a shoe-in at college radio.  at the same time, the label was sucking up money and not making any and the idea of spending a promotional budget on top of a production budget for the record was daunting.  so, it went like this: we offered to produce and release the audomobil? record, but we wanted to let the band promote it by being a band... by touring.  we felt like it was a shot in the dark to send things out for distribution and radio coverage without a band that could show up and play places, because unlike miles, audomobil? was a really fun, captivating live show that would be easy to book.  it was a BAND, and we wanted all the indie rocker kids in their ringer t-shirts who liked american analog set and those kinds of things to get a whiff of audomobil?, but we knew it would have to happen live.  so, agreed on that point, we pressed up 1000 copies of the record and got to work helping audomobil? book some shows. in the beginning, things were slow, but hopeful.  jeremy was acting as booking agent and the birmingham-atlanta route was easy enough to fill, but we wanted audomobil? to get out on the road and in front of crowds at least around the southeast.  a tour was booked, a tour was cancelled.  a show was booked in atlanta, a show was cancelled.  the band was set to open for a big band, the band cancelled.  all of these cancellations were troubling and if it weren't for the fact that we felt honestly like we were sitting on a terrific record that people ought to hear, we would have probably tossed in the towel much earlier. the band's inability to mount anything that resembled a tour, and seeming reluctance to be more aggressive about 'getting its shit together' was downright maddening.  here we were, having sunk over a thousand dollars of personsal money into this project only to have the band sort of wimp out on us.  soon, andrea was in another band and loving that, and vic was gone--unable to deal with a band where his creative input wasn't needed, and we were left with a solo musician with a great ear for the studio but no way to perform. as it turned out, our initial plan for audomobil? went belly-up.  had we sent out those hundreds of promos and tried a couple weeks of radio promotion and gotten ads in magazines and on websites, would they have been more motivated to get it together?  it's hard to say.  eventually, things broke down completely, jeremy and our silent partner gina left the label, leaving me to fend for myself.  nick was pissed at the label for not trying harder to promote a band that didn't want to promote itself, and i was trying to figure out what the point was in pushing all of this forward when no matter how we tried, or how much we worked, things seem to go disasterously wrong. now, at least 700 audomobil? cds sit in a dekalb county landfill somewhere.  i gave away more copies of the first book of electricity as a promotion for my garage sale than i ever sold online.  the vast majority were tossed into the dumpster when i moved because i couldn't imagine carting around that many bad memories anymore. magicicada : the gluttony for punishment you would have thought that a label with not one really successful release in 5 tries would be sensible enough to realize that it's time to move on to something else.  if so, sub:marine was not such a label.  some time in 2002, i met christopher white aka Magicicada and decided that this would be a chance to start over with more music that i really felt strongly about.  without jeremy or gina to have a say in deciding what the label would do, i made a deal with magicicada to release an album of dark, textured and fractured songs that i knew would be a tough sell. this is the kind of thing you do when you are motivated by art rather than money.  when the music just needs to be heard, even if it will cost you to get people to hear it... even if it will cost more than most would consider reasonable.  the magicicada disc slowly found supporters, though never in the numbers that we would have liked.  it wasn't destined to be a chart-topper, but there's an accessibility to magicicada's organic brand of looped noise, drone, field recordings and instrumental fragments that people who are outside of that insular world of ambient music can still enjoy.  i always imagined that magicicada would be the artfully obscure opener for godspeed you black emperor or something.  it's got that kind of tone and feeling, but it's obviously nothing really like that.  anyway, i couldn't be happier with the disc, and everyone reading this should give it a chance if you trust my taste in music at all, but then again, isn't that what the label is all about? still : a brush with greatness i met still at a dalek show at some point, it's hard to say when now, but the dalek guys always struck me as the most awesome, successful, and down-to-earth guys ever.  the kind of act i'd want to be in some day: making amazing music and having incredible success and not compromising, but also not forgetting about the little guys who had been there from the start.  still, the turntablist from dalek, mentioned to me at a show that he wanted to put out his own record and since he knew i had a label, thought i might have some advice.  at the time, i was working out the final details of the magicicada record and i had plans for a compilation, but beyond that, nothing.  i saw an opportunity, so i spoke up: "i could put out a record for you" "really?" "uh, yeah, i have a label.  let's do it." and that was that.  it was a lot of exciting energy for both of us.  here was still, with the ideas for a record of layered turntable compositions that would use the turntable as an instrument in an expressive way unlike anything else that had previously been done, and here was me with a guy who's work i completely admired, getting in on the ground floor with something i was sure would be breathtakingly good.  still appreciated the diy ethic of the label--the fact that i wanted to hand-print the 7" sleeves and that i took a personal stake in the work of the artists.  i appreciated that still toured, a lot, and that even without a huge success at radio or with distro, we could sell units that would justify the expense.  we talked about a 7", a 10" and then finally said fuck it, a CD is cheaper and lets you do more.  so a CD it would be. some time later, after hearing some early demos, seeing the rough draft of the artwork, getting the quote from the manufacturer and getting ready to print up the stickers, i got an email.  then a phone call.  it was bad.  the record was irrevocably fucked because of some technical thing and dalek was about to go on another massive tour and there would be no time to hit the deadlines and even if the record COULD be finished later, it wouldn't necessarily be a fun thing to recreate and so maybe it would just be scrapped altogether.  oops. this is the kind of setback the label didn't need.  not that still's record would have been an unqualified 'hit' for sub:marine, or that the turntablist in a relatively small hip-hop group is a big draw on his own... but there was a certain 'sure thing' about the record to me.  from what i had heard, i knew it would be an uphill battle to sell it to people looking for dj shadow-esque work, but i also knew it was going to be so solid and so inventive that it would MAKE people listen.  since dalek was going to europe to tour at big festivals, it also meant an opportunity to sell a lot of units to the rabid europeans who seemed to 'get' dalek more than people here, and certainly embraced the avant garde aspect of their work more than anything.  that the record would be shelved before it ever got out into the open was a kind of devastating setback: the kind of thing that makes you want to give up. dealing with someone in an established group was tough.  though i felt more like friends with the dalek guys than i did like a business person, there was a certain amount of label/artist tension there where it didn't seem like still and i could get on the same page about sub:marine's intentions.  this is tough, because again it reminded me that good intentions and warm feelings and a true passion for music are not the only things it takes to make a record label work.  they are probably ultimately the things that make good labels great, but they aren't enough alone to build an empire.  still got a better offer and took it and one day, we'll see his record that could have been recorded for sub:marine and we'll all be thankful to have the music in the end.  i couldn't be happier for him and the way that he's going to get to expose his work on a larger stage than sub:marine could ever provide... but there's always a casualty, and this time, we were it. calling it a day sub:marine is on permanant hiatus.  i still own the name, the domain, the records, and the idea and one day, it'll probably be back.  one day.  but for now, there are other things to focus on, and there's still some time before a boutique label like this can get off the ground.  we need the internet to catch up and become a viable marketplace for downloadable music.  we need distributors to understand the changing roles of small labels and to share in some of the risk of releasing great music.  we need listeners to understand that it isn't all free and that there are things worth supporting.  we need radio stations to listen with their ears and not with industry trade magazines and top 10 lists.  but most of all, we need people not to give up hope.  we need them to keep creating and seeking out great music; music that affects us, that speaks to us, that moves us, that gives us a soundtrack to driving in the rain, or to breaking up with loved ones, or to the imaginary movies we'd like to make some day.  sub:marine will be back at some point, i'm pretty sure, but thankfully, miles tilmann, magicicada, still, members of underwater, and larvae are still out there trying to make music that moves us if we will but listen.	an old tape reel and an old t-shirt screen           a photo of this boy is included  with each copy of henry's ghost.                   the back of the henry's ghost package hand printed with the print gokko!                   the sub:marine world domination map the underwater discography "this night has opened my eyes" on Godfathers of Change Vol I:  A Tribute to the Smiths 24 HR. Service Station, AUDIO.7, US, 1996 i could lose - full length cd RISK Records, RSK4104, US, 1999 "where is my mind? version 2" on Pixies Fuckin' Die Lifelike Records, VIDA1CD, US, 1999 RED. - cd single sub:marine, sub:002, US, 1999 "sub:space FM" & "wasted" on sub:sampler sub:marine, sub:001, US, 2000 EP1 - damcd/cdr ep sub:marine, sub:301, 2000 EP2 - damcd/cdr ep sub:marine, sub:302, 2000 this is not a film sub:marine, sub:003, US, 2000 "henry's ghost" on henry's ghost sub:marine, sub:000, US, 2000 EP3 - mp3/cdr ep sub:marine, sub:303, 2001   miles tilmann's unassuming stage presence!     this is what it looks like when stores haven't yet caught on to how brilliant the audomobil?  and miles tilmann releases really are.