Searching for the last remnants of vinyl culture in the Balkan music scene, iCrates came across Eastblok Music. Based in Berlin, a city which knows all about the collision of East and West, the label specialises in seeking out the finest Eastern European sounds for an increasingly interested Western audience. iCrates caught up with co-founder Armin Siebert at Eastblok headquarters to talk about the label and the economics of sustaining their unique “cultural activity”.
Could you tell me a bit about the history of the label?
I started Eastblok Music six years ago with my partner Alexander Kasparov. We had been working for EMI in the Eastern European office promoting Western music in Eastern Europe. That was interesting and a very good experience but what we noticed was that there was a lot of good Eastern European Music that no one knew of in the West. We tried suggesting that Western EMI companies should release the bands we thought had potential but no one was really interested. So we decided to quit EMI and start our own label promoting the other way around: Eastern Music in the West. We decided there was a market because there were already some parties going on in Berlin like Balkan Beats in and Russendisko.
So we got in touch with Robert [Šoko] from Balkan Beats and one of our first releases was a compilation called Balkan Beats. We started off mainly doing compilations because we felt that there were millions of bands and for people to decide to buy a whole album is a big step, but to buy a compilation of something new, gives a good introduction. That turned out to be the right strategy and we checked which bands on the record had the best reaction with the people and then released the albums of these bands.
All Jawala – Heymischer Bulga, from Balkan Beats Vol.3
Do you only release them in Germany?
No. We have distribution all over the world, including Eastern Europe. We bring their own music back there. The sales are not as big there but still it’s cool. It’s interesting that especially with Balkan music that it was not so successful back in the Balkans at first. Western DJ’s started to make it popular, especially with regards to gypsy music which was considered in many Balkan countries as something for weddings and not really for cool people or for clubs. We proved that this can be cool music, and it’s something unique that they can be proud of. They started to re-listen to their own music and it’s sort of became fashionable in the Balkans – not only in wedding circles.
What is interesting is that the music you would hear in the Balkans is completely different to what we would consider ‘Balkan music’.
Yeah it’s mixed. You have this gypsy stuff and you know for them it’s folk music. And for us it’s exotic and wild music and something to dance to in a club even. But especially with these DJ’s there was a sort of cross over happening. Tradition was taken into a different context of beats mixed with rock and ska and punk music and so something new came out this. Taking the roots but adding something modern.
How do you go about finding the artists?
It’s constant listening, constant searching on the internet. Our network grows with every release. So we get sent music from the musicians from the labels from Eastern Europe but it’s also the other way around. I write to people to please send me the music, because I also have two radio shows. They’re the only radio shows for Eastern music in the whole of Germany on the big stations. That’s radio Fritz in Berlin, and YOUFM in Frankfurt. And this is like 18 hours a month so I need a whole lot of music even if we don’t release it. So my piles of CD’s are never shrinking and I’m listening from morning to evening.
Do you find that the difficulty lies in finding a good album among a whole bunch of CD’s or in choosing only one from many great bands?
There’s more good stuff than we are capable of releasing because we are solely independent so we invest our own money and this business is in a very bad state so sales are really poor. Sometimes it feels more like a cultural activity than a business activity, but nevertheless we do release like three, four CD’s – not only CD’s but vinyl and download – a year. There are certainly twenty CD’s I would release a year, especially considering that we cover, theoretically, a territory with 25 countries or something.
If you take only one country, with all the scenes we know in any country; a hip-hop scene, a rock scene [etc] and you take one music style, you still have ten bands. Then you have 25 countries and you multiply, there’s a lot going on. Especially also with differences in the percentage of Western and local music being popular. If you have a countries like Czech Republic, the mixture of local music and Western music being played on the radio is probably 50/50, and then you take a country like Russia where I would rather say 70% local and 30% Western.
How does this influence your work?
The Western world is our main market because we have the expertise to pick the best stuff from Russia for example and then to present it to the West in a nice way. And so people begin to trust us. It’s always a taste question. I like this little factor of anarchy and unknown, uncertainty. With regards to taste, it’s our company and our money. We release only what we like.
Leni Kravac – Zajednica, from Balkan Grooves, EastBlok (2010)
As a label, would you say that specializing increases your chances of surviving?
I would say that, yeah. Certainly people know, it’s Eastblok so it’s stuff from Eastern Europe and if they have a few of our CD’s they know that it’s quality, both in the artwork and the content.
Would you say your label is quite unique in the European market?
Yes it is. There are a few labels in the Western world that also release music from Eastern Europe but they don’t cover the whole region as much as we do. And I think, especially with Balkan, because Balkan is the most successful out of all Eastern European music styles. In the last three-four years there are many Balkan compilations out there, so there’s more in the market there. However, the whole thing is still a niche and it’s so small that we are still friends and colleagues and support each other.
But with regard especially to Russia and to most other territories in Eastern Europe I would say that there are not so many experts around in the West. Me and my partner we both speak Russian so we are a bit further ahead. But then there is Russian-Ukrainian music especially in Germany. You know Vladimir Kaminer, he’s a famous writer and he got this Russendisko event twice a month, and this seemingly small thing made the whole Russian-Ukrainian in music popular here. He did it single-handedly.
Boban Marković live in Berlin, 2003
You mentioned that Russendisko was something that pushed the Russian-Ukrainian music forward. What would you say was a similar event for Balkan music?
The first wave was connected to a few gypsy brass orchestras. There was Kočani Orkestar from Macedonia and a bit later Taraf de Haiduks and later Fanfare Ciocărlia from Romania and the Boban Marković Orchestra from Serbia. For example, Kočani Orkestar started touring Europe in the early 90′s and they became famous because of their great musicianship and their energy and this very special music which was new to Western ears. It attracts not only people who know music very well but it also attracts people who just want to dance and have a good time. Then Robert started Balkan Beats as a DJ series in Berlin in the late 90′s. So that became popular around 2000 and then we released the first Balkan Beats CD in 2005. That was a major step and it’s still our bestseller. Then came Shantel who transferred it into almost mainstream level, and with the help of Shantel, it is now a phenomenon.
How many artists do you actually have signed up?
We have, I don’t know, 8 or 9 or something. We have like twenty or something releases now and half of them are compilations and half of them are artists. The next one is going to be a band from Serbia called Shazalakazoo. They are basically DJ’s but they also play instruments and they invite real gypsy musicians into the studio. They are very, very fresh.
You know due to the fact that the means of making music are cheaper now, you can download the software to make a song in pretty much the same quality as it used to be in Abbey Road Studios in London 20 years ago.
That’s a huge step because for the first time, poor people have access to making music and that’s very interesting. It is happening at the same time in the favelas of Brazil and in the ghettos in Angola. You have Kuduro music, you have Baile funk and you have all this sort of music mixing danceable electronics with their local folk music.
Shazalakazoo is basically doing the same, taking the music from the gypsies and mixing it with really tough electronic music and as far as drum & bass and stuff like that.
As far as vinyl goes, have you seen an upsurge in sales in the last few years?
Yes, at least it didn’t go down very much which is very nice so we started to press vinyl again like three years ago.
So you had a gap?
We started only with CD’s, then came the download stuff which is developing well. We started vinyl because of requests from DJ’s and from collectors and I think they are the two main target groups. It’s not big numbers but we’re doing it as a limited edition of five hundred or one thousand. We do sell out, but that’s OK.
A lot of DJ’s and people who dig for vinyl, Balkan vinyl in this case, have a very tough time finding albums.
Absolutely there is some old stuff you can find on flea markets, but of our new stuff there is not much.
Do you think it’s a gap you have to think more about?
Yeah absolutely. I can see that, because I love to DJ with vinyl and when I pack my bags unfortunately it’s mostly CD’s and of the maybe 10-15 vinyls I take with me 5 are my releases, so there’s not much coming from other companies. There are a few in the electronic scene, there are some Balkan drum & bass releases from the UK. In general there is not so much vinyl, but it’s picking up again.
How do you see the future for vinyl?
I think it will stay stable and maybe even grow a little bit. I mean we’re talking about 1% of market, and it has been 1% for the last 10 years. It’s nice that it’s not going down.
What are your plans in the near future as far as the company goes?
Surviving. Yeah it’s really tough, really tough surviving basically. It’s still fun and we’ve been around for 6 years at a time when many, many long established companies were forced to close down, so we’re not doing badly, but it’s one part of the mosaic. I do my radio shows, I DJ, I write as a journalist and living solely on the record business is not possible anymore. But thanks to our fans we are keeping up the spirit!
Eastblok’s latest signing Shazalakazoo will release their first record for the label, Karton City Boom, on 4th November on vinyl and CD. You can buy it HERE or check out the album preview on Soundcloud HERE.
Photo by Olga Baczynska.
