Symbiosis Episode 53 – Shades Of Gray – On The Road

After interviewing Beef Records head honcho, Michal, for Beat in July I asked him to get in the mix for Symbiosis. Michal (DJ Schwa and one half of Shades Of Gray) recorded this mix whilst he was on the road at the start of August. It’s a great mix and it will definitely kick your week along nicely.

The label is presenting Peter Horrervorts (Amsterdam) in Melbourne this Saturday:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=134943109876782&ref=mf

and those of you in Sydney can check out the Beef Records crew on 1st October:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=146740418690479&ref=mf

Check out the interview after the mix info..

Cheers,

Simon

Symbiosis Episode 53 – Shades Of Gray – On The Road

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Download the mp3.

“I have recorded this mix on the road while touring USA. The whole US experience is being very inspiring… I have to thank you to all the amazing people and promoters involved. This mix represents the latest Shades Of Gray as well as Beef records sound. It is also a bit of a look into the future as some of these track are not even released and signed yet. It’s is not a banging dancefloor mix so hopefully you will enjoy it while working or chilling at home.” – Michal Schwa

Tracklist:

1. Ola – Club Silencion [Beef records]
2. Cosmic Cowboys – Amor Vincit Omnia [Beef records]
3. Lele Cecchini – Joia (Shades Of Gray remix) [Frequenza Records]
4. Jet Project – Message From Chicago (Shades Of Gray remix) [Beef records]
5. SCOPE – Feel It (Shades Of Gray remix) [Beef records]
6. NTFO – Allure (Shades Of Gray remix) [Beef records]
7. Shades Of Gray – Let’s do it again
8. Nunzi & Rohin – 1950 (Shades Of Gray Nuts Bang remix) [Beef records]
9. Shades Of Gray – That Night
10. Yokoo – Sala Malecum (Shades Of Gray remix)
11. Shades Of Gray – Just Like That

Recent and Upcoming releases on Dark Energy, I records, Beef records, Frequenza, Tribal Vision and of course Beef!

www.beefrecords.net
www.djschwa.net
www.myspace.com/shadesofgraysounds

You recently released Prime Cuts Vol 3 – another slab of great sounds! How has the reaction been?

Prime Cuts 3 did really well. Better then we expected to be honest. 4 tracks went straight into top 100 on Beatport and the Peter Horrevorts remix of Australian producer JML stayed in top 10 deep house for almost 3 weeks. For this success we also have to thank to high profile Djs like Fedde Le Grand and Sebastian Leger for including the track in their top 10 charts.

Your first release was in 2006 and there has been a fairly consistent release volume each year since then. Tell me about the history of Beef – why did you start the label and how has your approach/philosophy changed over the years?

Before Beef was born I was working on a label called Tribal Vision records. We used to release progressive house and trance… that was back in 2004. When I moved to Australia I decided starting my own label. I was really influenced by the early sound of electro and minimal (before it went all bleepy and annoying). My partner from Tribal Vision records had a slightly different taste so we have decided to split and launch Beef. Nick West got on board about a year later and invested some money so we could go “next level”. At the start it was quite hard, especially being so far away from our main market – Europe. But we have managed to establish a really cool connection with oversees markets and the local Aussie market of course.

If you could go back to 2006 and tell yourself one thing you have learned the hard way over the years of running the label what would it be?

The most important thing you have to realize is that there is very little money to be made with the actual record label itself (selling records/CDs/downloads). On the other hand there is a lot of other ways how to do well. It can be anything from touring, organizing events to gigging and merchandise. So the label is really a promotional tool to get good music out there and build the profiles of the artists associated with it. Obviosly it has helped our own project Shades of Gray to get on the map and has given us the creative freedom to put out music we believe in.At the end of the day you just have to be creative, open to new opportunities and work really hard.

Is your own music and the label a full time thing for you?

Music is my full time thing…. Label, producing, playing live, djing and a few other things. You have to mix it up otherwise you would go crazy

How do you go about the process of A&R for the label?

It is very organic process. We are getting sent a lot of demos. Most of the random demos you get in your mailbox are crap. However some producers write a song with your label in mind. When we receive demo like that it is usually quite good and suitable. If we really like it we decide to do an EP or/and include track on a compilation.When we are doing artist EPs we usually secure a few nice remixes from our artist friends or we approach someone new. As the label profile has grown more and more name artists have been approaching the label wanting to work with us. This shows that we must be doing something right.i

Digital releases have got much stronger since you started the label but they haven’t quite made up for the loss of physical sales yet. I guess though that your label has been build around those modern economics right?

Absolutely… and that is the reality. The Internet has taken over the music world. It is very hard pressing vinyl these days. We still want to continue with vinyl… more like special limited editions once or twice a year. The problem is not only that no one is buying records anymore but the biggest problem is piracy and sharing. One person purchases a track on Beatport and shares it with 10 of his friends. You couldn’t do that with records. So even though the electronic music scene is massive the sales are quite low .But there is not much we can do about so there is no point whinging about it.

So what is coming up for the rest of the year for Beef?

We have a really cool EP coming out soon, it is called 1950 and it is inspired by Duke Ellington and his early jazz/funk music. At the moment we are also working on an EP with an English producer SCOPE. That should be out pretty soon too. After that we are planning to release compilation called “After Hours” presenting music we like to play at afterparties like SPICE. Deep, sophisticated house music with danceable approach. We are also working on a Shades of Gray artist album so stay tuned for that.