IMPRINTS: Smalltown Supersound

Imprints brings you weekly profiles of the most exciting independent record labels the world over, written by movers and shakers from within their own electronic music communities.

Name: Smalltown Supersound
Vibe: Day tripping on a Sunday with Brian Eno in your backseat.
Founded: 1993
Location: Oslo, Norway
Claim to fame: Todd Terje's ubiquitous "Inspector Norse" has over 1,992,700 views on Youtube. Also, they've been putting out records for 20 years now.
Upcoming releases: In the coming months we can expect a new album, More, from Arp, a new album Auto Music, from Brian Reitzell, and a new EP, the Kok EP by Bjørn Torske, as well as some compilations and possibly a book.
By the numbers: The label has put out nearly 250 releases. (!)
Artists-to-watch: Lindstrøm, Todd Terje, Neneh Cherry

What's the Deal?
Smalltown Supersound has stayed on top for 20 years because it has never stopped changing. With its intriguing mix of house, indie pop, jazz and drone, you might say that Smalltown's boundaries are drawn in chalk rather than set in stone. Label founder and owner Joakim Haugland has spent decades assembling an eccentric and diverse roster of artists, emphasizing the catchy, playful songwriting that runs through the entire catalogue. While other labels with such diverse sounds tend to be the homes for one-off projects and singles, Smalltown Supersound has managed to create lasting relationships with its various artists while remaining true to longer, full-length releases.

Smalltown Supersound contains multitudes, and many of its artists revolutionize their sound entirely from one release to the next. Take, for instance, music nerd and renaissance man Alexis Georgopoulos, aka Arp. His first release, In Light, was something of a drone-soaked homage to weird German proto-electronica like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and his second release, Soft Wave, picked up more melodic tendencies and pop contours. So far, singles from his forthcoming album, More, are more or less a complete departure from his previous albums--incorporating vocals and bluesy songwriting more akin to something Boyce & Hart, Brian Williams, and Ed Droste might write if they were trapped in a room together. This element of surprise keeps every Smalltown Supersound release as exciting and unpredictable as the music itself.

THUMP: Explain the name.
Joakim Haugland: It was a name I came up with when I started the label, when I was 16 or 17. I come from a very small town in the south of Norway called Flekkefjord. There are only 4,000 people living there. I started the label to release tapes and 7"s with my brother and his friends. So this was obviously a very ironic name as there was no supersound in our small town. I'm sometimes a little embarrassed by the name, but I have lived with it my whole adult life and I have learned to like it. And people tell me they like it. I didn't have any ambitions when I started the label, and I would never have dreamt that the name would still hold 20 years after. It was born accidentally and it lives on accidentally.

What's the scene like in Oslo? 
Its pretty good—you have nice venues like Jaeger, Turkish Delight, Blå and Badstugata. But to be honest I have never gone to clubs much. I'm not that into club music. I think I'm just a music nerd who loves the album format and the album as an art form. That is probably also why the output on the label is as it is. When I started working with Lindstrom, for example, I tried to take him out of the whole "Mixmag-dancing-on-the-beach-Ibiza" segment and into a more "Mojo-The Wire-Uncut" segment. When I go to Lindstrom's studio I see albums by Joni Mitchell laying around, not the hippest or latest 12"s. I don't think he listens to dance music at all—that is probably why he is so good at making it. And this probably also reflects the philosophy of the label, to be an artist label, and a label releasing mainly albums. I have always been afraid of being a label with one sound. These labels, they die when the sound dies out. This is what happened to Mo Wax and Glasgow Underground. My ideal label is the early days of Rough Trade when they released music by Arthur Russell, Cabaret Voltaire, Robert Wyatt, Slits. You could feel the label. There was a red thread and a special feeling. I have always been searching for this red thread. I want the label to be varied and diverse and at the same time have a common soul and feel.

As for Oslo's club scene, it is very varied. I can only speak for my own artists, but I think there is an openness to mix the unmixable, and there is also an openness to collaborations that do not seem obvious. For me it seems like the DJs are not so hung up on trends and that they in general are a little bit in "their own world." I think you can say that the Oslo scene started at Skansen in the mid 90s and it moved on to Jazid and then later Blå. These clubs have all been important to the electronic music that comes out of Oslo today I think. And musically it is built  on the heritage of DJ Harvey, Idjut Boys and our own Bjørn Torske and his friend, the late Erot. I also think that DJ Strangefruit (of Mungolian Jetset) has been important for the Oslo scene. I think that this is the foundation for the sound that is coming out of Oslo.

What's your favorite label that isn't your own?
I'm a label nerd and have probably read all the books there are about labels, so this is a favorite question of mine and it's hard to narrow it down… but let's try! Classic labels I like are BYG, ESP, Elektra, Impulse, Factory, Mute, Mo Wax, Rough Trade, Creation, SST, Touch & Go, Dischord. Of the new labels I like is 4AD (I think they are the best label around right now), Matador, DFA, Stones Throw, Sub Pop, Domino, XL Recordings, WARP, Weird World, Nonesuch.

Check out previous entries in the IMPRINTS series:
IMPRINTS: Donky Pitch
IMPRINTS: Sound Pellegrino
IMPRINTS: Glacial Sound