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Interview with Danny Jumpertz & Caroline Chisholm by Sebastian Chan
My own introduction to electronic music and to ‘proper’ music subcultures came through community radio. There was a story in the local newspaper about Radio Skid Row looking for new announcers and programmes, and for me in my final year of high school, it was an irresistible opportunity to do something worthwhile whilst procrastinating over exam study. Radio Skid Row (2RSR) was at a bit of a turning point. Based in the inner-Sydney suburb of Marrickville, the station had been set up in the 1970s as part of a wave of ‘community radio’ projects funded by the Whitlam government. Drawing on the local community’s multicultural diversity, indigenous heritage, and the strong student and leftist politics of the surrounding areas, and broadcast range, 2RSR became the radical, free-spirited, activist radio station for the inner city. However, by the end of the 1980s, the original spirits that drove this and other similar stations towards communitarian, self-governing models of management were withering. The de-regulation of the financial markets, privatisation and the beginnings of neo-conservatism coupled with a stock market crash in 1988 had also begun to impact on activism: people were burnt out, tired, and their causes were failing to get media exposure as Australian media barons Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer increased their stranglehold on local media. Between 1990 and 1992 the station began to radically change. There was a musical revolution brewing in the inner city – rave was emerging, taking over the warehouses of Alexandria and Mascot by night – and 2RSR was where a lot of the scene’s emerging DJs would pitch for shows. As in most other cities around the world, rave was equal parts entrepreneurial dog-eat-dog party drug capitalism and psychedelic, socialist utopianism. The latter fitted well with 2RSR’s history, but the former rubbed up against the older broadcasters and listeners. It was in an ideological battle of ‘70s activist versus ‘90s entrepreneur that I first met Danny Jumpertz when he joined 2RSR as station manager.
‘My early involvement at Radio Skid Row was as part of the Australian independent music collective,’ explains Jumpertz. [Having previously worked in commercial radio] it was very refreshing and I brought quite a bit of naivety, good energy and optimism. The collective management principles of Skid Row could only work effectively with everyone pitching in, but unfortunately the station was quite factionalised – there just weren't enough people working towards the common good, and when coupled with chronic cash flow problems as well as strong self-destructive actions from within, it meant the station never emerged from a crisis situation. Unfortunately, there was a gulf between the idealism people held and action required to make it work … When I became involved in the management of Skid Row I think some of the more capable ‘70s activists were becoming less hands-on. These people had done the hard yards: set up the station and given it a strong identity, but unfortunately Skid Row was always struggling due to the limitations of its license. The signal just wasn't powerful enough to reach enough people … By the time I left 1993 I was quite burnt out! It was the end of eight years working in radio, from big commercial entities to leftie community stations. I had started as a trainee announcer straight out of high school in 1984 at 3CS in Colac in southern Victoria. After Skid Row, I edited a backpackers’ magazine for a couple of years in Sydney which ended up providing the opportunity to set up Feral Media.’
Even though it was nearly five years before the dot com boom, Jumpertz managed to convince the backpacker magazine to fund him to set up a website for them as it was clearly going to be ‘the future of publishing’. Armed with a sizeable wad of cash, the idea lasted a year until the magazine went broke and Jumpertz headed overseas. Upon returning, he decided to study music at university. ‘Feral Media started as a web design company in 1995,’ says Jumpertz. ‘I fudged my way through that for a couple of years then decided to focus on music full time, which involved getting my confidence up with gear and technique, so I played my uni 'card' and started a Bachelor of Music in [the rural northern NSW town of] Lismore. The course was quite jazz focused, in a way that jazz was promoted as the high watermark of contemporary musical expression, though our composition lecturer, Michael Hannan, was very supportive and encouraging of the musical renegades on campus. [Overall] Lismore did provide me with lots of space and time to immerse myself in studio work and multi-track experimentation, and that's mostly where I would hang out with [future Feral media signings] Greg Seiler (Comatone), Ryan Gobbe (Mieli/Twotone) and Angus McCready (Plankton). We were all weird studio geeks, grabbing all the overnight bookings in the university facilities.’
Having been friends for years Danny and Caroline Chisholm both moved to Melbourne in 2000 for three years. This shift opened up new opportunities and growth for the label. Chisolm elaborates: ‘A dear friend of mine from university who I used to share a house with, Will Berryman, a bass player in Melbourne bands Studley Lush and Parp!, ended up working for SBS (Australia’s government-funded multicultural TV and radio broadcaster). He had a great idea for a music project, which SBS were working towards in conjunction with Cinemedia (now Film Victoria) and later the Australia Council. Will knew that Danny had just completed his degree moved to Melbourne, and asked if Danny would help with some of the recordings for the bands. Danny's role in the SBS Whatever music project grew from there [This ended up in the release of a CD and a website in 2003]. SBS wanted to go with an independent label to release the second Whatever compilation and then the individual releases from selected artists, so Danny put in a proposal to SBS to do these releases through Feral Media. Because of Danny's hard work and dedication to the project and his excellent relationships with the bands, established through recording 33 different bands for the Whatever project, they backed us, and the result is a double CD compilation and four upcoming full-length artist albums.’
‘The bands that are releasing albums in this deal are Sparrow Hill, Barrage, The Emergency and The Rich,’ continues Jumpertz. ‘They are signed directly to SBS, and we’ve been contracted by SBS to record, release and promote the records. They are contributing studio time and some modest manufacturing and promotion budgets for each release, it is up to us build each album from the ground up.’
Because of Jumpertz’s studio expertise, Feral Media is considerably more than just a record company – it is a studio and production facility as well, all housed in a inner-city warehouse in Sydney. ‘The studio at our warehouse is central to the label: it's the admin and sonic headquarters,’ explains Jumpertz. ‘We can mix and track in a beautiful big room, and we can present our bands to friends. We're set up and portable if need be. But there are other studios integral to us. Over the past three years I’ve spent hundreds of hours tracking and mixing in the SBS multitrack rooms in Melbourne (Federation Square) and Sydney (Artarmon). Nearly all our mastering is done by Greg Seiler (Comatone) at Blue Mountain Sound (formerly Soundview) and many of our artists are also producers who make their music at home studios. Having access to other specialised spaces is very advantageous to the label, and having that production expertise in house is absolutely essential to Feral Media because the sound of our releases is very important to the label. We want to do the right thing by each production whether it be lo-fi in its approach or super high fidelity. Often our releases are hybrids, in that they've been part-recorded in home studios on computers, then taken elsewhere to improve the sound. There are advantages in the freedom of home studios, but they often fall down when it comes to monitoring – if you can't hear it you can't fix it. In the next couple of years we'll develop the studio further and move into in-house mixing and mastering.’
This DIY, all in-house/in-community attitude is core to the ethics of the label. Chisholm has brought strong, practical eco-politics to the label’s operations. ‘Once I started helping Danny more and more, I kind of pushed my green agenda more strongly.’ she says. ‘It springs from my basic belief that everyone could (and should) be doing more (as in using less and just being more conscious and aware). The world's resources are limited: the more that I consume (or waste), the less there is for everyone else … Now, reconciling this with a business where you are producing stock to be sold is quite a feat, especially when your medium (CDs) is based entirely upon noxious and damaging petrochemicals. Despite this we are doing what we can to reduce the amount of plastics and other non-renewable/toxic resources used by Feral. We are in the process of moving towards completely plastic-free packaging, and eventually towards digital downloads for all our artists, thereby reducing physical shipping of articles and also the production of the CDs themselves … Working with Sopp Collective – our designers – has helped. In particular, Thorsten Kulp from Sopp has a heightened sense of environmental awareness. It's great when you meet people that share your concerns and you can work with them; people who aren' t just happy to consume without any thought, as so many of our generation seem to be. The same goes for working with grass-roots and community organisations (publications like Cyclic Defrost, radio like FBI and 3RRR, collectives like Sopp and so on).’
Likewise, Jumpertz’s commitment to growing emerging local artists that can be tracked back to his first ventures in community radio in the 1980s. ‘Our philosophy is to find artists and bands when they are just starting out, and help them to grow and develop as artists, as well as build their recording and performing credentials,’ he says. ‘We're not really interested in just a one album release, because all of our artists are doing debut albums, and so we'd want to work with them as they grow from the ground up … I really enjoy working with bands in the early stage of their artistic development, when the possibilities are limitless and the sonic limitations not yet defined. Greg Seiler is a good example – a brilliant young artist already, who will only get better with time, but who we feel benefits by the (dare I say) nurturing atmosphere, help and support that Feral can provide. It's a symbiotic relationship – we need these great, enthusiastic musicians to help us build the label, and we can assist them with our vision and our efforts to get their music out there and build the profile of what we, and they, are doing. As a result, our financial input into any release is usually dependent on the resources of the artist. Sometimes we pay for just about everything: production, mastering, art, manufacturing and promotion, but Feral Media's primary input is often in production co-ordination (recording, mixing, mastering) and design and packaging. We are also doing the promo work ourselves now. Of course, being a young label, we are in a building stage at the moment – investing more than is being returned in dollar terms. I think that by the time this crop of artists are on album numbers two and three, we'll be doing okay.’
Things are naturally beginning to grow. ‘We're already working with a UK-based label/distributor at the moment to do some vinyl pressings of some artists as a way of introducing the label's sounds into Europe. [It seems that] vinyl is more viable in markets bigger than Australia, and some distributors have told us they'll actually move way more vinyl for us than CDs [because the market is flooded with CDs]. Likewise Plankton have been courted by a Japanese/UK label, Third Ear, and there is some strong interest in the first two Comatone albums from the US and Europe. We’re also working on US distribution with a scarily large company … the economies of scale are just so different on the global stage and we're in no mad rush. It’s a matter of baby steps and meeting people in the flesh before we commit to things, which is why we're trying to integrate an annual northern hemisphere jaunt into our calendars.’
Caroline Chisholm’s quick primer on Feral Media artists:
Plankton
Danny's band. The impetus for Feral Media to become a record label. Recordings released so far include a self-titled EP, a radio-only release called Songs For Spring, the debut The Undertone (2003) and recent release Insomnia (2005).
Comatone
Greg Seiler. A close friend of Dan's from Southern Cross Uni, and an absolute gem, creatively and as a person. We've done his acclaimed debut One Into One Out (2003) and the recent, and also highly (and deservedly) lauded, E-50 (2005).
Mieli
Ryan Gobbe. Another close friend of Danny's from uni and a wonderful person to work for and with. Talented too; it goes without saying. His album Version (2004) is just bliss to listen to! We hope to do another with him in the near future.
Catnip
Danny played with the lovely Catnippers Richmond Brain, Nerida Trask and Greg Ryan when we lived in Melbourne. We put out their first EP Pink & Blue & Green (2003) and they're currently working on their debut album with Chris Thompson, but are going to go with a different label for this.
David Eliott Incigneri
Danny had such belief in this Melbourne producer when he heard his material that he wanted to put out his debut release I Sat On The Corner Of A Page Of The Novel Of My Mind (2004). It's different to everything else we have on the label, and I think that's a strength. It's low-fi, psychedelic, indie pop.
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