Altered Zones

By Jenn Pelly

MP3: Rene Hell: "E.S. Des Grauens In Fifths"

For someone who has been putting out ambient, drone, and minimalist pop records for nine years, Type founder John Twells is surprisingly upbeat, a self-described “morning person” who flecks his emails with exclamation points and emoticons. Since founding the label as a 21-year old art student, Twells has been responsible for cinematic and often challenging cult favorites from Khonnor, City Center, Peter Broderick, and Yellow Swans, as well as Grouper’s definitive Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill LP (2008), and last year's blistering Love Is A Stream LP, from San Francisco multi-instrumentalist and Root Strata founder Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Type offers all of its releases-- plus "Typecasts” by artists on the label-- as free SoundCloud streams.

AZ: You started Type in 2002. What were you doing in Birmingham at that point?

John: I lived just outside of Birmingham. I was 21, an art student, doing music in my spare time. A couple of years earlier, I had started DJing with a guy named Stef. I was DJing a lot of hip-hop, and we’d integrate electronic sounds. We started a night called Default that ran for four years; by the time it got really established, we were focusing on experimental music. We were getting artists to play in Birmingham at different venues we DJed at, and they would give us demos. We thought we should take it to the next level and release the music. And in 2002, I was playing my own music as Xela, and started touring with friends, to Germany and Israel. The more people I met, the more music I felt wasn’t getting out into the world. So I gradually felt like it’d be good to curate a label. Stef was a graphic designer, so he dealt with the website and the design of the early records. I dealt with curating. Now it’s only me doing the label.

MP3: Yellow Swans: "Limited Space"

AZ: How did your tastes shift toward experimental and electronic music?

John: I’ve grown up with music because my dad is a record collector. Iron Maiden and the whole new wave of British heavy metal was a really big thing for me at 11 years old-- my first real love. Then I got into punk, then riot grrrl and the fanzine scene. When I discovered Sonic Youth, it took me into a whole new way of thinking around experimental music-- just buying that back catalog, working out what the hell they were doing. I started hearing about electronic stuff-- my dad had Brian Eno, and Tangerine Dream-- but not really understanding it. Then I saw this band Broadcast in 1996-- one of their first shows, because they were a local band. It was just life changing for me. I thought it was the most interesting type of music. I bought anything I could related to that; I found out about Stereolab, lounge music, different kinds of electronic, music, like Aphex Twin. A lot of people came to electronic music from dance music, but that wasn’t what I had. As the label was springing to life, I was listening to a lot of more ambient music; Thomas Koner, and the 12k and Mille Plateaux/Ritornell labels, were crucial.

AZ: Was there a particular artist whose music inspired you to start the label?

John: Andrew Tilliander, who does Mokira-- he gave me a demo that had been rejected from a label we both really liked, and he had been a real inspiration to me musically. This other label asked him to modify it, so it was more en vogue with what they were doing. I said, "That’s ridiculous! Let’s just put it out how it is." That was the second thing we released.

AZ: What would you say has been the label's most successful release? The most overlooked?

John: The most successful, in recent years, have been the Grouper albums, specifically Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill. It had such a groundswell of support. I heard her first CD-R right when it came out, and wrote to her and was like, "This is amazing music. It really would be good to have on vinyl." People went crazy. She’s done really well from it. I think we release quite a lot of stuff that’s small-run. The Geoff Mullen record that I reissued last year-- everybody should listen to that. It’s beautiful. He’s not well known and people don’t know how to approach it. It’s hard to gauge things that people don’t get. I want more people to hear that one, definitely.

AZ: Would you say there's common mood that unites your releases?

John: Definitely. I’m a huge film fan. When we started the label, we both had this idea of really beautiful cinematic music. We were both obsessed with film soundtracks. That hasn’t left. Really good records always have a narrative, whatever kind of music that it is. I review a lot of music every week; it helps with my understanding of what I want a record to sound like.

MP3: Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: "Stained Glass Body"

AZ: What soundtracks in particular have been important for you?

John: I’m absolutely obsessed with Goblin; they’re one of my all time favorite bands. That’s film soundtrack heaven for me. I’m a horror movie fanatic, so any horror movies, like Fabio Frizzi soundtracks, soundtracks from Umberto Lenzi movies, Lucio Fulci movies. Obviously there’s a strand of Angelo Badalamenti’s work with David Lynch as well. Anything that’s super creepy. The only access I had to that music in the little town I grew up in, Walsall, was hearing weird sounds through the television. It was an early influence that’s stayed with me.

AZ: With Type, would you say you make a concerted effort to put out music that is “challenging”?

John: Some music is challenging to the point where you feel like you can’t understand it without having done four years of music, and that’s not where I’m coming from. I don’t want to put out records that alienate people. But if you want to challenge peoples' expectations, you want to make them have a strong opinion one way or another.

AZ: You live just outside of Boston-- what appeals to you about the city musically?

John: I live just North of Boston, in Malden. There’s quite a healthy experimental music scene around here: Keith Fullerton Whitman, for one, and a whole excess of synth music. There are so many students coming every few years; it feels like quite a breathing scene. I’ve been working with a few artists here-- one called Reuben Son. He’s just released a few tapes on his own label, Private Chronology, and on Digitalis. I’ve got him working on an album for Type at the moment. My favorite place to see music is probably the Goethe Institute, and as for favorite local label, Barge Recordings, who put out the amazing Fun Years album and Animal Hospital.

AZ: What’s next for Type?

John: The new Rene Hell is coming out in a few weeks; he’s an artist from California based in Portland, Oregon. This new album, The Terminal Symphony, is a reworking of minimal classical composers’ ideas. He wanted to imagine himself composing in a symphony hall. It’s 100% electronic, but the compositions sound like they could be played by an orchestra. It’s quite unlike the last albums. We’ve also got a record from Jon Mueller, a percussionist who plays with Bon Iver in Volcano Choir: super intense, 20-minute snare drum resonant drones, recorded at Steve Albini’s studio. That should be out in March or April. We’ve got a record from Ezekiel Honig, a New York guy. He runs a label for more techno-ish stuff. Then more reissues of Thomas Koner’s classic material that’s been out of print. A record from Red Horse: super frenetic beats, insane sort of DIY punk guitar playing. Really, really intense music.

Rene Hell’s The Terminal Symphony is out March 15th on Type