Veronica Vasicka
New York native Veronica Vasicka has unearthed countless analog synth wave gems and single-handedly revived a forgotten musical subgenre with Minimal Wave Records, the label she founded in 2005. And, with Minimal Wave subsidiary Cititrax, a new generation of like-minded composers have found a home for their DIY releases. Vasicka’s influential sound was partly cultivated via online station East Village Radio. (She was the station’s first program director.) And her reputation cemented with the release of the compilation The Minimal Wave Tapes Volume One on Stones Throw in 2010. Ever since, she’s spread the word of this incredible sound to audiences worldwide via releases on her vaunted labels and through her DJ sets.
In her 2016 Red Bull Music Academy lecture, Vasicka discusses the history of minimal wave, founding her label, baking tapes, “mutant techno,” and much more.
Hosted by Lauren Martin The lady on the couch next to me is a producer, a DJ, but she’s best known for running two of the most interesting and influential labels in her world. Please help me welcome Veronica Vasicka. (applause) Veronica Vasicka Thank you, thank you. Lauren Martin We asked you to bring some records and we ended up having like a living room’s worth of records so we’ve got so much music to get through today. I’d like to start at the very beginning, okay? Complete the sentence for me, 8th grade would not be the same if? Veronica Vasicka If Veronica wore white, how do you know that one? Lauren Martin I’m pulling a Nardwuar on you, we’re in Canada. Why would 8th grade not be the same if Veronica wore white? Veronica Vasicka That was actually from my yearbook, as you probably imagined. That was when I started getting into really weird underground electronic music, it was around 8th grade. Lauren Martin How old would you have been in 8th grade? Veronica Vasicka 14, yeah. Lauren Martin Where was 14-year-old Veronica listening to this stuff? Veronica Vasicka I started listening to a lot of weird stuff on the radio and I made mixtapes when I was around 11. Started making mixtapes and giving them to friends and doing the artwork for the tapes, making collages. Then by the time I was 14, 15 I was going to clubs in New York City, just sneaking out of the house and, yeah, going wild at the clubs. Lauren Martin Where would 14-year-old Veronica go in New York City? It was mostly downtown, right? There were pretty important clubs for this kind of weird music downtown? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, it was the Pyramid Club, which actually still exists on Avenue A in the East Village. Then The Limelight and actually at The Limelight I saw a lot of industrial bands from Europe that came in and played shows. I mean I didn’t even know who I was seeing, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, and yeah. Then there were various, like, warehouse parties that just had addresses but didn’t have names. Lauren Martin What was The Limelight like? Can you describe it? When you walked in, how would you describe like the trip through The Limelight? Veronica Vasicka The Limelight was an old church that was converted into a club and so when you walked in, I mean, it was like a Gothic cathedral that you were walking into and they had a card room on the second floor, which was actually made out of like life-sized playing cards and you could walk through it and it was really bizarre. Each room had a different theme and then the room that I was always in was called the Chapel. That was where Dave Kendall from the UK [played], who was MCing 120 Minutes, MTV’s 120 Minutes, so I watched 120 Minutes and would see Dave Kendall playing all this alternative and indie rock and new wave music and then I would see him DJ on Tuesday nights in the flesh. I didn’t think he was, he wasn’t really an idol but I just thought it was like amazing to be able to go hear him play. Lauren Martin You would watch this stuff on MTV and then also be able to go to the club when it was happening. Veronica Vasicka With a fake ID. Lauren Martin With a fake ID, obviously. We’re doing things properly around here. What was it like to watch something subcultural on TV, on MTV, and then be able to just go to the club that it was happening at? Was that quite strange? Veronica Vasicka I didn’t have a reference point to what wasn’t strange or, you know, the fact that other people couldn’t really do that. To me, it was just, it was like my own little world of music that was an escape from, you know, going to school. I mean I did go to school but I kind of didn’t enjoy hanging out with people at school, so I met other people outside of that. Lauren Martin Also in The Limelight that was, I’m wondering about the influence that somewhere like The Limelight might have had on you because it was very, like a multimedia club, wasn’t it? They had a room dedicated to the guy who designed all the stuff for Alien, or the influential stuff like H.R. Giger, can you explain like what that looked like? Veronica Vasicka I mean it really looked like a movie set. Each room had, was kind of cavernous and there were all these little tiny rooms which, you know, were central to the architecture of the fact that it was, it had been a church. It was ultimately really fascinating. Then, of course, they would have smoke machines and all kinds of bizarre lighting and strobes and, you know, different kinds of music in each room. Lauren Martin Actually, for an example of that sort of music I’d like to play a video by a group called Front 242 that you just mentioned. You saw these guys play live there, right? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Lauren Martin I think it would be really great to watch this video and get a sense of what this sound was and this club and what kind of instruments they were playing for this kind of electronic music, so if we could have that video that would be great, please? (video: Front 242 – “Take One” / applause) Veronica Vasicka So cool. Very cool. Lauren Martin There’s so much going on in a group like Front 242, but in that particular video can you describe kind of what they were playing and the sounds that they were using in there because this was released in 1984 which was roughly the introduction of MIDI as a sound? If you could kind of explain what interests you as that band and the kind of sounds that you were hearing when you were dancing around to this stuff? Veronica Vasicka Very early industrial, I mean industrial music covers a long period but that early sound is, to me, it’s like the most attractive of the range of industrial music. Yeah, they had electronic drums and synthesizers. I know they had a Juno 60, a Roland Juno 60, and I mean I don’t know what, how, what kind of drum samples they had in their electronic drums but that performative aspect of just like being able to play a set up that is very easy to transport was like super attractive to me and still is. You know, they didn’t need to have a full band, so yeah, really cool. Lauren Martin How would you describe the aesthetics and mood of this kind of music? Because I think when you look at artists like that you think of elements of pop but also goth, industrial. How would you describe the mood and the fashion of this particular thing? Because that’s just one music video to express an entire sound. It doesn’t quite get into the whole thing, so if you could develop upon that. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. There’s something, of course, militant about it. Then, just actually something really sexy about it, too. It’s this... Hard to explain. Lauren Martin It has a sense of humor to it, doesn’t it? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they’re having fun. You can see that they’re having fun, and they’re totally into what they’re doing. As far as, yeah, I don’t know how I would describe more than that. Lauren Martin All those things were attractive to you as a teenager listening to that? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. I didn’t even know why. I just loved that kind of sound. I mean, it was obviously after listening to rock and classic new wave. It was a departure from that, which I found really interesting, because they weren’t trying to sound like, you know, a big studio band. They were just pretty primitive and purely electronic, which I liked. Lauren Martin That was from the mid ’80s, but the pop element of it is really important, I think, into what you do with your work. I’d like to play another track just off of myself, unfortunately not one of the many vinyl we have here. I’m just going to play like a sad and lonely mp3. It looks so terrible in comparison. Veronica Vasicka We have that record. Lauren Martin No, it’s actually a different one. I’m going to play one from about nearly 10 years before that one just to show the breadth of how embedded synthesis kind of music is in pop music. This is by a group called Ultravox, and this came out in 1977. I think it sounds like techno. It’s dope. Are you a fan of Ultravox? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Of course. Lauren Martin OK. Well, great we’ve got that then. That’s done. OK. This is Ultravox, “Mr. X.” I hope this works. (music: Ultravox – “Mr. X” / applause) I think it’s very easy for us to talk about music sounding weird, but weird is not necessarily the preserve of just the underground at the time. Things sift back and forth, and I think that’s particularly a fertile sound to go between underground music and pop music. Were you listening to stuff like that when you were growing up, as well as going to The Limelight? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. I mean, I would say that stuff came a little bit later, actually, because I grew up in New York and I was listening to, kind of, slightly later stuff from the new wave sound and new wave scene. But I’m thinking that, actually, Ultravox had influenced a lot of the bands on Minimal Wave, on my label. You can hear that direct link, and actually, I was thinking to play Moderne, which was a band from France who were produced by Joschko Rudas who produced Kraftwerk’s “Man Machine.” You can hear that production quality, which was actually really similar to what we just heard in that Ultravox record. Should we hear one of the tracks off of this record? Lauren Martin Yeah. This is the first of many we’re probably going to end up playing this afternoon. This came out on Minimal Wave. (music: Moderne – “Dilemma” / applause) Veronica Vasicka Yeah. This is cool. Thanks. That was an example of really impeccable production quality that came out on my label. Lauren Martin I’ll be your assistant. Don’t worry. Veronica Vasicka It’s not exemplary of all of Minimal Wave’s releases, because a lot of them are DIY, and they were recorded in home studios. This one, they happened to up the production value. It’s a special one. Lauren Martin Let’s get into your long back catalog and how it started to happen. The Minimal Wave aesthetic is really interesting, because it’s a combination of what you’ve called the cold wave and the minimal synth sounds. Can you explain what those are and where they came from? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. The minimal synth sound, it was basically artists that were making music at home with drum machines and synthesizers. Just recording everything on 4-track recorders in a very DIY fashion, where lots of times it was just one artist in his lonely home studio/bedroom recording songs. Cold wave was more guitar oriented. It was what was happening in France as a, I guess, a response to post-punk and music that was happening in Belgium and the UK. When I started the label in 2005, it was just about the passion that I had for both of those types of music and how I saw a lot of overlap between those two genres, which were very particular genres. I guess, because there are a lot of compilations that came out that had cold wave bands as well as metal synth bands, there wasn’t a strict delineation between the two. There’s also a guy in Canada, whose name was Alex Douglas, and he started a contact list of electronic music, and basically it was a zine that had addresses and contact information for artists from all over the world. Through that artists could collaborate and they wrote to each other and they sent tapes through the mail. That was ultimately really fascinating to me when I discovered a lot of this music on cassette that were results of collaborations from say, an artist in New York and an artist in Belgium. Maybe we could go right into that and play one of those tracks, it’s called The Hidden Tapes, the compilation. I don’t know if you have it over there, let me take a look, let me see if I can find it. It has a girl’s face on the cover. Lauren Martin Is that the one with Aurora Halal’s face on it? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. OK. Yeah. Lauren Martin We’ve got a few Aurora Halal fans in the house. Yeah, there we go. You kind of got devoted to putting out compilations through finding compilations yourself, and we’ll probably get into how you managed to find this stuff. This is, what track is this? Veronica Vasicka This is, it’s called “Like I Am.” Oh, wait. No, this is not “Like I Am,” “Comme Je Suis,” it’s “Microphone Connection.” Yeah. This is an artist from Belgium called Unovidual, and in collaboration with an artist from New York called Tara Cross, who is now a hairdresser. Yeah. (music: Unovidual & Tara Cross – “Microphone Connection” / applause) Lauren Martin Now this, the illustration, well, the illustration of that record that you just gave us there, is a really brief introduction into your quite slavish process and how you’ve built this label up, finding inventories of people’s contact details through mailing lists and cassette tape liner notes and all this kind of thing. Can you talk about why you would do that? I know that sounds like such a simple question, but if you can go like, here are the kind of like the Front 242 sounds in a big club in New York when you’re younger and you can buy Front 242 tracks on Wax Trax! and other big labels. Why go in that archival search to find something so strange? Some of the releases I know have been out on one 200 cassette tape run in 1982, and you found it, found them, released the record, got their permission, and you’ve done it close to a hundred times for just… Veronica Vasicka Yeah, yeah. Lauren Martin Not including the compilation. Why would you do that? Veronica Vasicka Well, I mean it’s interest really in the music, and obviously feeling an affinity to those artists and feeling some kind of similarity. I mean I was recording music myself from when I was 14, 15 on, by myself, just really as a diary and not for public consumption, just to make music. I think when I heard this, especially that last track we heard, I just felt, identified with that, and kind of this private world of music. Here she is telling him, “Here’s a track I made for you, and I’m curious to hear what you think,” and they’re doing this literally transatlantic collaboration, which I just found really fascinating. Yeah, I had in a way been keeping my own diary of recording my own music onto 4-track recorders. I mean I was, when I was about 17, 16, I discovered Throbbing Gristle and I was very influenced by them. They were doing performance art, I mean it was, they blurred the lines between what was music and what was performance and kind of causing people to lose their expectations, not knowing, going to a show and not knowing what kind of performance was going to ensue. That was really interesting to me, so I think Minimal Wave was the culmination of that, of those influences. Lauren Martin I think the aesthetic, as you say, of Throbbing Gristle and all these other bands is really interesting, because you are very, very involved in the design of everything, and you went to the Rhode Island School of Design, right? Veronica Vasicka Mm-hmm. Lauren Martin To study photography. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Lauren Martin What were like the dominant design trends of the day, like what was the aesthetic of that time like for you? Veronica Vasicka You mean when I was studying or... Lauren Martin Like what did, what was like the design of everything around you like? What was advertising like? What was fashion like, and what were you doing with the photography that was like something completely of your own... Veronica Vasicka It was the ’90s, and The Face magazine from the UK was a big inspiration, I loved the design of that magazine, but when I was in school I wasn’t doing any graphic design, I was just doing a lot of black and white photography and some color as well. I don’t think it really had to do with what was happening at school, my interest, I think it had to do with looking at old records and just collecting stuff from the early ’80s. Like that Vinyl magazine. There was a magazine out of The Netherlands, that was designed by Max Kisman, and he designed all the typography and the fonts for his music magazine. I just, to me that was like very inspiring, he did every aspect of the magazine, aside from being a music fanatic. Actually this, the font that’s used here in the Hidden Tapes, that is from Vinyl magazine. I’m trying to find the other one. The first time that I used that font was over here, for the Lost Tapes. Lauren Martin We actually have a scroll of pictures of all the different artwork and influences as well. If we could get that up, it’s like some visual candy [artwork displayed on screens]. Yes, this is a bunch of your artwork, and there’ll be some of the magazine in with that, so people can get a feel of it. Drawing from zines and ideas of design and photography that fell into how you managed, how you ran the label, because you would design the records as you were listening to the music, right? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, exactly. Lauren Martin Can you talk about your process a little bit, because that whole DIY way of doing things is something that people find very familiar and would like to get involved in and they think about a lot. Veronica Vasicka Well maybe we can talk about The Lost Tapes, because this is the first compilation that I put out, The Lost Tapes, and this was mostly European synth music from the early ’80s that was released in very limited batches. The photograph is actually a portrait that I took of my best friend when I was 16. I had painted my room black, so that background was my black room, and then it was natural sunlight coming into the room. Lauren Martin You painted your whole bedroom black just to take that photo? Veronica Vasicka No, not just to take the photo. It was just around that time. When I look at this, I remember painting my room black at that time. Lauren Martin That’s exceptionally goth of you. Well done. Veronica Vasicka I’m actually looking for the follow-up. There was another compilation called The Found Tapes, which was the follow-up to that. Let me find it... This is the American side. This is a compilation of North American synth and wave stuff. Of course, I took this photo later, around the time that I was putting this record together because I thought the European side could be the feminine side, which was already done, and then this is the masculine side, the North American side. Lauren Martin Why the feminine and the masculine? Veronica Vasicka I don’t know. I think in my mind, I just… if I were to reference the European synth scene, or whatever was coming out, I feel it’s more feminine than what was coming out of the US. We can listen to this and you can hear what I mean, if you want to do that. I’m trying to figure out which track. We can play... Lauren Martin I feel like we’re actually in your living room right now. I think this is probably what your house looks like, right? A sofa and lots of records everywhere. Veronica Vasicka Pretty much. I do have a blue velvet sofa at home. Lauren Martin Is this your sofa? Veronica Vasicka It looks a little like it. I don’t know what to play because there’s so many different tracks. Lauren Martin What’s the difference between Lost, Hidden, and Found? What’s the lineage of that? Veronica Vasicka Lost Tapes and Found Tapes? Lauren Martin You’ve got Lost, Hidden, and Found, for all the tapes. Why name them that way? Veronica Vasicka Initially, I didn’t know that I was releasing The Found Tapes later, but The Lost Tapes were lost tapes that had resurfaced, and the Found is just another version of Lost, it’s just found tapes. Lauren Martin OK. Veronica Vasicka There’s nothing deep to it, really. Lauren Martin It’s not that deep. Veronica Vasicka It’s not that deep. I like those titles. I don’t know how else to get into that. I don’t know if you want to hear this, it's a synth punk band from Florida, or this band from the West Coast called Iron Curtain, but you’ll see what I mean. This is more masculine sounding... (music: Iron Curtain - "The Condos") (music: Crash Course In Science - "Flying Turns" / applause) Lauren Martin I really enjoyed what you were saying about the romance and the sincerity of finding a lost recording from somebody who wrote basically a love letter or a note or wrote a piece of music as to how they felt, and posted to someone, and you found it. Can we possibly go a little bit back to how you actually do this as a daily operation? Where do you do it? How do you do it? Where do you find this music, if it’s so lost and hidden? Where do you go and find it? Veronica Vasicka It starts with collecting cassettes, which I’ve been doing for a long time. Just collecting obscure records, going to record fairs, zines, like Vinyl, the one that you see up there [picture on screens], there were a lot of articles about obscure bands in that magazine. Then looking up addresses that were on the back of an album and writing letters and trying to find the people behind those limited edition releases. That’s where it starts. Lauren Martin Is it as much of the story as the music, as the people that you find, because I know that the first record that you ever put out was by a nuclear scientist. Veronica Vasicka He was a nuclear weapons expert, Andy Oppenheimer, and he lives in the UK, in Brighton. Lauren Martin How did you get in touch with a nuclear weapons expert? Veronica Vasicka He was working for a consulting firm, and I wrote to them, and then at first he was, “How did you find me, and how do you know about my music?” And he was kind of afraid because he’s trying to live a different life now. He was really freaked out. But then, over time, I was emailing and calling him and we were talking on the phone, and his musical partner who ended up becoming a doctor, just a GP, in the UK as well, he was really interested in having all the music out there and having those archives. He’s the one, Martin Lloyd, ended up going into the archives and transferring everything digitally. The process with analog tape is that the tapes needed to be baked before they were transferred. Lauren Martin Baked? Veronica Vasicka Baked in a low temperature oven. Lauren Martin How do you bake a tape? If I wanted to bake a tape, could I bake a tape? Veronica Vasicka You need to know how to do it so your tape doesn’t fall apart, but what happens is the magnetic particles, over time, in the tape, can completely decompose, and if you’re transferring the tape and it hasn’t been baked, then through the process of transferring, it could just fall apart. Baking the tape makes it resilient for that transfer, so you have about three to five days to transfer that tape digitally before… Lauren Martin Before it’s actually lost? Veronica Vasicka It might not sound good anymore. It might sound warped. It actually ends up sounding better, in a lot of cases, than the original recording, which is really interesting. Lauren Martin Is that a process that you employ for a lot of the records that we’ve been hearing, that they’ve been found on these tapes and you’re at home baking them, one after the other? Veronica Vasicka I’m not doing the baking. I’m not the specialist in baking. Lauren Martin You’re not the baking specialist. Veronica Vasicka I mean, I do bake cakes, but... Not tapes. Yeah. In this case, Martin did the baking… Lauren Martin Right. Veronica Vasicka He’s a technical genius. He’s no longer with us, unfortunately. He passed away. This is the first record I released. This was after the whole... he transferred the tapes initially, before they were baked. There was a warbling sound. They weren’t releasable. They just, didn’t sound good. We talked about it and we researched and we found out that, if you bake tapes there’s a likelihood they’re going to sound better and you can transfer them. I’m talking about like, 30-year-old tapes. Lauren Martin OK. This is product of the baked tape. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. This was this track that they were known for called “The Devil’s Dancers.” Or, I mean, known in their small circles. (music: Oppenheimer Analysis – “The Devil’s Dancers” / applause) Lauren Martin Amazing. Veronica Vasicka Great. We’re the devil’s dancers. Lauren Martin There’s so much to talk about that. That was the first record you ever put out at Minimal Wave. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. This came out in 2005. I just want to tell you about the meeting, about how they met... Lauren Martin Of course. Veronica Vasicka Andy Oppenheimer. These are quotes that we put in the liner notes of the re-edition. This is a most recent re-edition of their, all their material. This came out last year. Andy Oppenheimer, “I was at a publishing party at the 1979 World Science Fiction Convention.” In Brighton. This is how they met. “I’d been trying to engage a rather tipsy pre-fame Douglas Adams, author of HHG [Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy], in conversation, as he happened to be sitting on the same sofa when I saw Andy across the room, dressed exactly as Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, I had to speak to him.” That’s the context of their meeting. Lauren Martin There’s a guy dressed like David Bowie at a sci-fi convention. Veronica Vasicka That’s Andy. Yeah. That’s the singer. That’s the nuclear weapons specialist. Then on the music, basically for this release, I had asked him to answer these few questions, these basic, interesting facts whatever, on the music. “The music was written at my home studio, Feedback Studio in London, and cassettes were sold at pub gigs.” They played at pubs. “Science fiction conventions and the Bowie amateur home-taping...” Oh wait, sorry. Lauren Martin Jumped the line. Veronica Vasicka “And the Bowie amateur home-taping boom?” Wait, no, no, no. Lauren Martin It sounds interesting. Veronica Vasicka “And the Bowie convention.” OK, there was a Bowie convention. “Where we played for our largest audience, 2,000. In all, around 200 copies were made. This was at the height of the amateur home-taping boom, when Melody Maker Sounds and NME would offer free advertising and reviews in their home-taping columns. And wanted to appeal ...” OK, that’s it. Basically, they spent between a pound and three pounds on advertising in NME and Melody Maker. Lauren Martin Right. Veronica Vasicka That… Lauren Martin So that was like the economy of how the music would get around? In these small circles, right? Veronica Vasicka Right. Exactly. In these zines and magazines. Like many other bands on Minimal Wave, the way that Martin describes success is pretty much the outlook of most of these bands. “We never set out to be commercial in any sense. We have always wanted to appeal to those who share the same tastes in music and culture, while friends encouraged us to release “Devil’s Dancers” and “Cold War” on singles this never happened, as we stopped working together.” “Decided to limit my involvement in the music business.” Yeah, no, it wasn’t about anything other than hobby. Getting together, playing music, recording and doing these limited edition tapes. Lauren Martin On that note then, if you find these people who are nuclear scientists and doctors and they sometimes haven’t talked to each other for years, haven’t made music for years, and you turn up out of nowhere, and go, “I want to release your music.” Are you, was there ever a sense that you were intruding on their lives? Wanting to do this? Did you have people that were very resistant because, I think possibly, the ideal like, “Oh, you found my music after so many years, I’m so grateful someone bothered to care.” But, there must be people out there who were like, “Just please leave me alone.” Veronica Vasicka Oh yeah, there are plenty of people that don’t want their music to be re-issued. But a lot of times, I mean, I don’t go further and bother those people. Because… Lauren Martin Don’t bake my tape. Veronica Vasicka It doesn’t work. If the initial response is like, “I’m not interested.” Then, because I did of course try certain artists that I really wanted to release. Yeah, it doesn’t work. Lauren Martin It just doesn’t work. Veronica Vasicka I think maybe we can talk about
In Aeternam Vale from France. Because… Lauren Martin He was pretty keen. He was pretty keen to get his music out there, wasn’t he? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Lauren Martin He was pretty good. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Exactly. Lauren Martin I was wondering, just before that, I have kind of a question about, your kind of like, responsibility in that regard? Running a label? I know it’s a personal endeavor, but when this music was recorded and heard in a certain form, early on, and now you’ve gone through the process of baking a tape, re-doing the artwork yourself, re-presenting it in this context, along with, eventually a large back catalog of other records quite like it, do you ever think about how you may or may not be presenting it in the way that it was intended? And how much of it is about an aesthetic that you particularly enjoy, and you want to find music that fits your personal tastes, does that make sense? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, I get what you’re saying. Lauren Martin How in control are you of other people’s music when you take it away and do other things with it? Veronica Vasicka I mean, I often do several different designs and ask them which design they prefer, but I also think they were never really given the chance at the time to have their, an aesthetic, out there, per se. Aside from when they played live. I think it’s just about expanding upon what they’ve already created. Lauren Martin The popularity of this label, the sounds that have come from it, it’s actually, you know people use minimal wave very interestingly, as almost like a genre term? Which I find fascinating, because I don’t really know any other labels where people do that right now. Where they say, “Oh, it’s like minimal wave.” It might be a record that’s not on your label. But they use the words minimal wave to describe it, and it’s actually had an impact in techno, in recent years. Which, maybe people in the room who like techno, might have heard fragments of? All the different strands of this is actually fed back into current techno culture, right? Have you seen that yourself? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. I think, I do a sub-label called Cititrax, and Cititrax is pretty much like, new artists who have been influenced by Minimal Wave and they’re making dance music, they’re making like mutant techno, and… Lauren Martin Mutant techno? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, mutant techno. Because it’s not techno in the traditional sense? Lauren Martin Mm-hmm. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. I think having these influences it just kind of shifts, if you just listen to Minimal Wave for, an entire year and then you make a techno record, it’s not going to sound like traditional techno. Lauren Martin It’s not going to sound like Jeff Mills. Veronica Vasicka Yeah, no. But, I mean we do have a record of that example. Lauren Martin Yeah, let’s play a techno record. Let’s go for it. Veronica Vasicka I think we should start… Lauren Martin Oh, god. Oops! Veronica Vasicka We can start with In Aeternam Vale. Lauren Martin Yeah. Veronica Vasicka Then we can go to A-ni, which is a Cititrax release, that is a friend of mine who actually, he’s like a perfect example of, he didn’t know what he wanted to make. I knew I wanted to release something of his and then he was asking me about that weird Belgian shit. Lauren Martin What’s the weird Belgian shit? Veronica Vasicka Like early Front 242 and stuff like that. Liaisons Dangereuses. “Los Ninos del Parque.” Do you know that track? Lauren Martin Yes, I do. They actually just reissued that. This looks so complicated. Here you go. Veronica Vasicka He was just referring to music that I was listening to. I ended up sending him a bunch of stuff and then three months later, he recorded this incredible track that we ended up putting out, which I’ll play in a little while. Lauren Martin Who’s In Aeternam Vale? Am I saying that right? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Lauren Martin I’ve had conversations about how to say that right. In Aeternam Vale. Veronica Vasicka Well, I say In Aeternam Vale, but it’s Latin and in it should be In Aeternam Vale. Lauren Martin What does it mean in Latin? Do you know? Veronica Vasicka “Until the end,” or something like this. Until the end. He’s from Lyon and he’s an artist who was making a lot of synth-punk in the early ’80s. Really frenetic-sounding stuff. Discordant, noisy. Over time, he started making other stuff. In 1987, he made this track that’s just like a pure techno track and he didn’t have a context for it. He hadn’t been listening to techno, so I think that’s like extremely fascinating. Lauren Martin It’s so interesting when people make techno but they don’t really listen to it and it ends up sounding like techno. Veronica Vasicka Yeah, yeah. (music: In Aeternam Vale – “Highway Dark Veins” / applause) Lauren Martin You get the idea. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. I mean, this is a 13-minute track. That track keeps going. This is a 13-minute track, so you really need to hear the whole thing because it gets heavier and heavier as it goes on. I actually totally wanted to flip the script and watch a video, if we could, of something else that you put out. I want to watch it and talk about it, with ideas of what is cool and what is not, and what is pop and what is not. Could we have the video from Pas De Deux please? This is 1983, I believe. (video: Pas De Deux – “Rendez-vous” (live) / applause) There’s a few things within that that are fascinating. This is the record of that song. This is the album that that song is on, right? Veronica Vasicka “Rendez-vous” is on there. “Rendez-vous” was never my favorite song. That’s a song they did for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1983. That was why there was so much production going on, because they wanted to win the song contest. Lauren Martin We went from techno right to that. But I think a video like that is so interesting because contemporary ideas of what is musically and artistically of value and interesting are not always what we look back on and think are of artistic value and are interesting. I think if you were watching Eurovision at the time, you’d be like, “What is this? This is rubbish.” But you really stay on a level, in the context of post-punk and synth-pop and techno and industrial music, and I love the idea that we can look back on footage and really romanticize what’s going on at certain points in history, particularly with music. We use nostalgia as an aesthetic, but actually you look back, and a lot of music that was going on at that time was kind of mad, and that was on Eurovision. Can you tell me about the journey of that going from Eurovision to Minimal Wave? Veronica Vasicka This band, they’re a band from Belgium, and it was Walter Verdin, and these two women in the band that you saw dancing in the video. I first heard this track called [foreign language] off of a cassette compilation that a collector in Germany had made. They had a few 7”s in the early ’80s, and amongst minimal synth collectors, it was really cool to play one of these tracks, way too slow. Lauren Martin Why way too slow? Why was the slower cooler? Veronica Vasicka I’ll show you. We’ll play it. That’s the speed of the track, but on my mixtape that I had, it was like this ... (music: Pas De Deux – “Lits Jumeaux” / applause) Lauren Martin We had a lecture with Tim Hecker the other day, which was fascinating. He had a line where he said that, “There’s this malaise of the archivist.” You’re an archivist, originally the label was started as an online archive, where you’re just going to upload pictures, and videos, and clips, and artwork and stuff. You decided to turn it into a label, but you very much ran the label with the mindset of an archivist. Do you ever get overwhelmed by how much there is yet still to hear, and to learn, and do you ever get possibly overwhelmed by the idea, the knowledge that you’ll never hear everything? Veronica Vasicka No, no, I feel like there is this untapped world of very similar music. Other bands that were doing the same thing, or not the same thing, because I don’t think any of these bands are doing the same thing exactly, but I don’t really feel that. I feel in order to move forward, it’s important to just do that, to move forward. For example, like what I was talking about, about Cititrax, and artists that are making music today, that are influenced maybe by the sounds, these old sounds. Maybe if you’d asked me that, like six years ago, I would’ve answered differently. Lauren Martin Interesting. Do you think nostalgia plays a role in what you do? Are you looking for something that you didn’t possibly grow up with, were from different countries, and that were lost and hidden, and underappreciated, and this is a romantic gesture to run a label like that? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, I think nostalgia definitely plays a key role. I think a lot of these mixtapes that I was making when I was 11, I was 11 years old, and making mixtapes. I didn’t even know what I was recording off the radio, but that was a really important time, because it was my escape from everything else that was going on around me. Maybe it’s nostalgia for that time, where I didn’t have adult responsibilities, and just as a teenager, it’s like everything’s your own world, everything you get into. When I was 16, I was working at a record store, and they had bargain bins and stuff like this, and stuff they couldn’t sell. I discovered a lot of stuff through there. Lauren Martin Do you think nostalgia’s healthy to keep moving forward? Do you think it’s a healthy thing to have as part of your work? Veronica Vasicka Not in excess, but I think to the degree that I have it, I don’t think it’s a problem. Lauren Martin It’s not a problem so far, you got all this to show for it. I actually wanted, before we take questions, I wanted to put somebody in the room on the spot... Hi, Marie, we’ve got something for you, you want to see? It’s Marie’s record. Veronica Vasicka Surprise, Marie’s record, yay. (applause) Lauren Martin I feel like this is the coolest version of QVC ever, I’m like, Hi Marie. Veronica Vasicka Yeah, we just want to get the insert out. Lauren Martin How do you know Marie? Veronica Vasicka There’s Marie. Wait, it gets better [holds up record]. Lauren Martin It gets better? Marie’s actually never seen this, have you? You haven’t seen it, physically yet? This is the first time you’ve seen your record. Yeah, of course, you can have it, it’s yours, go ahead, it’s yours. There you go, have a look. Now, Marie’s released on your label, Cititrax, right? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, this record’s coming out on Thursday. Audience Member Sick. Lauren Martin We have a world exclusive in this room? Veronica Vasicka We just got the copies, yeah. It turned out really well. (applause) Lauren Martin I would quite like to maybe end, before we go to questions, could we play “Naïve to the Bone”? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Lauren Martin Which I know you’ve opened your set with at festivals, and in mixtapes. I know it’s a fantastic track, well done Marie, you, you did it girl, did it. (music: Marie Davidson – “Naive To The Bone” / applause) Lauren Martin OK. Does anyone have any questions for Veronica? Shall we start at the front? Have you got a mic for them? That would be great. Audience Member Hello. First of all I wanted to thank you for coming here. I’ve been listening to a lot of stuff that I’ve never heard before and I’m making all these connections in my mind from Kraftwerk to Electroworks to Cybotron, and then from Pas De Deux, and I’m so excited I can’t even tell you. One thing that I’ve noticed making all these connections and stuff is how important I feel it is that these bands from all these different places, they had something in common. They had a common language that they could speak, which was, in a way, the language of machines. This thing that had been starting to happen all over the world, where we are living in a mechanized time so to speak, and I think that’s the best way that globalization could go, that we still have our own thing but that we can have a common language to speak. I wanted to ask you, what were your thoughts on this issue and if this is something that you think about? Also politically, because it’s so important that we have something in common with each other so that we don’t kill each other and stuff. Veronica Vasicka Yeah, no definitely, but your question is where do I see...? I know what you’re saying. I totally agree this is the machine, music was the common language, but what is your question a second time? Audience Member I mean if when you are selecting your tracks, if when you’re thinking about music, when you’re doing a DJ segment, when you’re doing your work, as an archivist and also a label getting this music out into the world, if you are thinking about this kind of... How do you say? If it’s a value to you, how do you feel about... I’m sorry. This is hard kind of to say, but how do you feel about the fact that these people from different parts of the world were exchanging music. They have this thing that they could speak about and that they could connect with... I don’t know if I’m making sense. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. I find it very romantic that they had this common language and they were doing very similar things in different parts of the world, especially when it comes to the collaborative thing. I think the main difference is that we have the Internet today and so people can collaborate through sending files to each other online. I think it’s only grown, that inter-connectivity between people on a global level. It had just started for them musically through the mail by sending things through the postal service, and now it’s grown exponentially with the extremely fast file transfers and this technology in that sense has brought us all closer together. Lauren Martin Do you think that perhaps that your work as in archiving these physical formats in the best ways that you can, do you feel that there’s almost a new thematic angle on it now because of the Internet, and there’s a sense of maybe urgency to preserve even more of the things of that common language? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah, because everything’s kind of a slower form of artwork, even in terms of design. When I’m scanning in fonts and doing cut-and-paste, and doing that for album covers and then hand numbering. Audience Member I noticed that. Veronica Vasicka A lot of these are hand-numbered editions, so each one is physically hand numbered. It’s just a slower process overall, and I think it’s important for us to slow down, because with technology, phones, Internet, and everything, air travel. Everything’s super fast, and maybe too fast for us as human beings, like our capacities as humans. I think it’s unnaturally fast. In terms of artistic process, I get a lot from doing things in a more DIY way, where I’m even recording. I do record my own stuff. Even doing it in the most primitive fashion is sometimes more comfortable. It’s better. Lauren Martin You like the physical labor of it as part of the process, right? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, and of course having limitations is important. Lauren Martin Anyone else? Did you have one? Yeah, cool. Audience Member Hi. Thanks for coming. Veronica Vasicka Thanks. Audience Member I was wondering if you had any practical advice for people like us who might be looking to start their own DIY bedroom labels to start documenting our own scenes and stuff? Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Well, I think at first, by collecting content, gathering content of what you feel is key, and what you feel is most important to you, and what you’re passionate about. I think it’s important to keep with what you’re passionate about and not think about how it would be received to the world because that never works, as a starting point. Then decide your format. Are you going to release things digitally or are you going to do it, do you want to release things on vinyl or cassette. Lauren Martin I’ve actually got a new one here [holds up vinyl]. Veronica Vasicka You could do a cassette label at home. You could produce everything at home on your own cassette deck and you could do mail-order cassette label and nobody would know that it’s just you in your bedroom doing it. I can give you practical advice depending on what, if you want to do vinyl you could just call the pressing plants and ask for a price quote and say, “I want to do an issue of 300 copies.” You may be better to do it without label art. Just do white labels and you can hand stamp things or... I saw this really good record recently that had holes punched through it. That was the artwork. It had this die-cut pattern that was punched through it, and it looked great. There’s many different ways that you could do it. Audience Member Cool. Thanks. Lauren Martin There’s one right there. Audience Member I thought Felipe’s question was really interesting about the tension between globalization and the commonality of music expression across the world, and in the pile of records, I noticed one called Invitation to the Dead. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Audience Member How did you come across her work? I only discovered that record a few weeks ago, and I looked at it because I liked the cover. What’s your relation to her? Veronica Vasicka It’s actually a guy that made the music, Tomo Akikawabaya, and the woman on the cover is his muse. She was a fashion model in the early ’80s in Japan. He actually, aside from making the music, he actually sewed the dress that she’s wearing. He hand-made her dress, which I found so fascinating. Audience Member It’s really beautiful. Veronica Vasicka Thanks, but yeah, so he released on his own label called Castle Records. In Japan he released a couple albums, and I had been looking for him for years because I was obsessed with some of those tracks. I was really, really blown away by a lot of it. He was totally unreachable. I actually thought he had passed away because nobody knew where he was. Then about two years ago I was talking to a friend of mine who’s Japanese and he travels to Tokyo a lot. He actually knew the engineer for the record, and so he got me in contact with Tomo. The first e-mail that I got from him, which was in broken English said that he had been following Minimal Wave on Facebook for years now, and I was just like, “What? Really?” So he already knew the label and he was like, “Of course. No problem. You can put out my music. I have this great photograph of this woman that had never been published.” He’s an incredible photographer. Audience Member It sounds like synchronicity. Not just that record, but I guess the way that all of your, all the records that you put out, work. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Audience Member When you went right to someone, that’s really cool, thanks. Lauren Martin Anybody else, here at the front? Audience Member Hi, how are you? I think some of us, or most of us here, whenever we travel, we try to look for a record stores, and buy some stuff that we can never get back at home. Do you do that, when you’re traveling to a small country, or wherever you travel to? Do you do that, and bring back all the things, and try to re-release a new compilation, or something like that? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, I used to do that a lot more, but I found that, now that the Internet, and Discogs exists, it’s really hard to find stuff that’s untapped, or unknown. Because it’s like everybody has researched it to death, to actually find something that’s like a rare value... I gave up on that, unless it’s about going to a massive record fair, where there’s bins and bins of stuff that people actually haven’t looked through. Yeah, I went to a record fair a few years ago in The Netherlands, in Utrecht, and I came across, there was these sellers that were the sons of the label owners. They didn’t even know what they were selling, they were from France, and they said, “We do a jazz label, but this is our father’s music from the ’80s.” They had, it was Celluloid records, and they had all these rare, new wave records, for five Euro each. They were selling them all for 5 Euro each, because they didn’t know what they were. These kinds of instances, I think, are great. They were like, “Yeah, this is garbage that we’re selling.” It was great. Lauren Martin In that sense then, do you feel that your label, and when it started, and the work that it’s done over a certain period of time, is a product of its time? In that you started it before, like a Discogs boom, or something like that? Do you feel that you were able to do it at your leisure, without feeling the need to chase the Internet realm of it, as it were? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, definitely, I think it’d be really frustrating if I’d started it now. I think I would go nuts, like trying to... Lauren Martin You should still start a label now, that’s fine, you can still do it. It’s fine, don’t let us put you off. Veronica Vasicka It’s not an archival label. Lauren Martin Anyone else? Audience Member Can I ask another question? How did you find Marie? Veronica Vasicka We actually met a year ago here, in Montréal, we were playing a show together, and then we were doing a conversation that was recorded by Anthony, who’s right there, for Never Apart, and before that, a friend of mine, who I’ve released, called Silent Servant, from Los Angeles, he played me her old record, and he was like, “Listen to this girl, you’re going to really like her, and keep your eye out and stuff.” Then we finally met, yeah, exactly a year ago. Lauren Martin Then exactly one year later, you’re sitting with a record in your hand, it’s great. It takes about a year to get a vinyl out anyway. Anybody else? Audience Member Actually I was really curious to know, because you clearly dedicate your life to music. You’re a DJ, you have a label, you run actually two, a label and a sub-label. Your partner is a DJ, where do you find the time to listen to music, and appreciate it, and judge it, and what kind of music do you listen at home, like on your free time, if you do? Veronica Vasicka Recently it’s been like children’s music because I have a child at home. It’s been really basic children’s music, but I find there’s always time to listen and research. I just find moments to do it at home, I like Italo disco a lot, and I listen to that. I like soundtracks, stuff that you like, like horror movie soundtracks. Yeah, there’s all kinds of stuff that I like, most recently though, it’s with limited time, I really just have been going back into the archives of music, that artists that I’ve already released have sent me, because each of them had sent me so much music. It’s just investigating the archives I already have. Lauren Martin Was there anyone else? Others, one at the back? We’ll probably just do those last two. Audience Member Hi, I just wanted to know if you ever worked with the band Deux? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, Deux is one of my favorite bands that I released. I have two of their records here. Let’s find it... There it is. Lauren Martin That one, there’s one there [pulls out records]. Veronica Vasicka Yeah, and the other one is over there. Yeah, they’re an incredible band. Audience Member Yeah, I know, but I didn’t know it existed, like physical. Veronica Vasicka Yeah, this is going to be reissued, this record. We have repressed it twice now, there’s already 1500 copies in circulation, or 1600 copies. It needs to be repressed, because it’s one of our most popular ones. Lauren Martin Who are Deux? What is the act? Veronica Vasicka They were lovers, and sing duets, and make really beautiful synth pop music. Lauren Martin Hence the Deux. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Lauren Martin You can buy one at a fine music establishment soon. Veronica Vasicka Yeah. Lauren Martin You’re the last one, hi. Audience Member Doing all this research, and archiving music for the last two years, do you feel that around you, like on these days, there’s the Internet. Everyone is able to know everything, and every day there’s a new release, around the world. Do you feel around you, I feel that, but you as a researcher, and doing the stuff you do, do you feel around you, people are losing passion on knowing new stuff? Veronica Vasicka You mean because of the interest in archival stuff? Audience Member No, sorry, maybe I was too confused... I mean there’s so many things being released nowadays and every day. If you feel like around you, while you are on the last two years, archiving music, and researching every day in a different way, not depending on the Internet, and on Spotify, on stuff like that... Do you feel like the people around you, or maybe even you, can lose a little bit of passion because of something like Internet, and Spotify, and iTunes? Veronica Vasicka You mean because there’s an abundance? Audience Member Yes. Veronica Vasicka Too much saturation? Audience Member Yes. Veronica Vasicka Yeah, I mean it really comes down to your own perspective, and how much you let come in. For example, a few weeks ago, I had so many, in my email accounts, I was blasted with all these new releases, like from so many different sources. I just thought, “I need to unsubscribe to all this stuff.” Because it’s really about what you allow to come in. Yeah, I got totally overwhelmed, there’s just too much music, there’s too much new music out there, I can’t even keep up. Then when I’m DJing, I’m DJing a lot of new stuff, and of course I’d like to keep relevant with what’s new. It’s just too much, I think it’s important to limit that stuff, to just unsubscribe from... Lauren Martin Unsubscribe from life? Veronica Vasicka Many, many, many websites, and just on your own time, if you want to look at Juno, or Boomkat, or whatever, just go look at it. Do you know what I mean? Instead of being bombarded in your email box? Audience Member Yeah. Veronica Vasicka I think you have to create your own reality there. Lauren Martin Because there was actually a quote on the back of the Oppenheimer Analysis record that you pointed out to me earlier. What was that quote, if we could possibly find it? Veronica Vasicka Yeah, that one. Lauren Martin Actually reminds me of that, just choosing your own pace, with sound, and music. Have it, as a whole, being not a job. Veronica Vasicka Yeah, Martin Lloyd, the quote is, “To my mind, music is always about creating an alternative soundtrack to our real, and fantasy lives.” Yeah, I really like that quote. Lauren Martin I think that’s a great one to end on, and Veronica, thank you so much. Veronica Vasicka Thank you, thanks, thank you. (applause)