The Record Company’s new compilation album Beast features 13 brand new tracks from some of Boston’s best artists like Littlefoot, Dutch Rebelle, Michael Christmas & Bent Knee. Beast gives these songs a comprehensive home on a project that encapsulates the variety & fluidity of Boston’s music scene. KBX sat down with Matt & Jesse from The Record Company to talk to them about what they do as an organization, the process of creating Beast and what they hope this album does for the Boston music scene.
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KBX: Give us some insight into the start of The Record Company- how did you guys come together and decide to start this non profit business?
Matt: It was a very simple concept originally; the musician needs somewhere to make recordings, particularly in an age where recording is a primary means of artist development… The challenge to making records is the affordability…how can we make a space, a business model where artists can very professionally make recordings…musicians need studio time and studio is too expensive…”
KBX: This is the only space we’ve heard of, in Boston, that does anything remotely like what you guys do…
Jesse: There are a few similar spaces that do what we do but there’re age restrictions, usually youth programs…we’re the only non- profit music organization with studios that focuses on all ages.
Matt: We exist to incubate art itself at the artist community level. Our unique value in the community is to distill resources down to something that artists can consume…that they can take advantage of…
Jesse: Unlike other studios, we don’t have a staff of engineers here so what that means is that every artist, every band brings in their own recording engineer. We’re hosting somewhere between 750-8oo sessions a year…all sessions that are freelance gigs for engineers that may not have existed otherwise…We think its important that artists work with a technical professional that they click with…our studios make it really easy for engineers wanting practice or in audio training programs to come in and learn…
KBX: So acting as a pipeline for engineers to access professional equipment?
Jesse: Exactly, we want our studios to be as accessible as possible…
Matt: Our business model allows you to run your session how and with whoever you want to…on the other hand…it’s the psychology to be able to afford to get out of your home…to go to the studio to work…we believe emerging creators should be able to access working in a studio…We want people to realize that we’re not just a studio, we’re an incubator for creativity. We exist to make the Boston music scene as successful as possible…
The Record Company Beast Compilation Album from SapientNitro Boston on Vimeo.
KBX: What was the genesis of the compilation album?
Jessie: It came out of the process of kind of redefining our mission statement…which is currently to cultivate a sustainable music scene in Boston…we realized that studios are pointless if the music scene isn’t happy and supported…no one’s gonna have money to come to the studio…we wanted to tackle the representation piece of the music scene in Boston….when you look at LA or Atlanta …they have a sound…
Matt: When you ask people about Boston, what do they say?
Jesse: Most people not from Boston say the Boston Pops or the Boston Symphony Orchestra…
Matt: We have to keep in mind that the people here know there’s a music scene …but other consumers may not, they see Boston’s musical contribution as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as a place of classical music….we all know they couldn’t be more wrong but it’s about reaching people who have no clue who some of our artists here are. Some of the venues we have in Boston aren’t super conducive to discovery …the opportunity for local acts to hop on those bills is pretty small…we need more options.
KBX: What the process like of you guys figuring out which artists and which sounds you wanted on this compilation album?
Jesse: We enlisted some help….we had a massive Google Doc going of all the artists and bands we knew of. There wasn’t much that was left off the list…
Matt: A big thing for us (as far the artists on the list) was are these artists making a contribution here in Boston? Are they representative of the highest level of excellence in what they’re doing? How do we make a record that is representative of Boston’s diversity without it being so eclectic that it’s unlistenable?….We always assumed that this project would happen over a number of years…so this compilation album is by no means the end…
KBX: So why is the album called Beast?
Matt: What do you think of the title?
KBX: From what we just spoke about and the amount of work put into this album, it’s kind of a beast of a undertaking, it’s a beast of a compilation…Also why an elephant (on the album cover)?
Matt: We knew from the get go that the title and the artwork were going to be interwoven…we knew it wasn’t going to be visually possible to represent what was on the record…we wouldn’t be able to encapsulate the attitude of the collective…we worked with an artist named Jeff who has a personal strong connection to music…we provided him with rough mixes and he came back with a few concepts….the elephant was the one that was the most evocative…We wanted artwork that would get people asking questions….
And the title…people interpret it in so many ways…some people interpret the elephant as representing the music scene here in Boston…One thing we’re excited about is that we’re going to able to go with a different title and art direction year after year…
Jesse: We’re very pleased with how open to interpretation it (the album) is and that’s really what we needed this first year.
KBX: What were some of the challenges you guys ran into making this album?
Jesse: We started off with that huge list of artists, narrowed it down to 13….we put together a committee to help us narrow it down. G Valentino Ball from KBX was on it for example, and Shea Rose…the other thing that was important and different was that we commissioned and paid all of the artists to write and record a brand new track. It’s hard enough to do that but to coordinate that between 13 different artists can be difficult…These are tracks you can’t hear anywhere else, for right now…
Matt: We also just wanted to facilitate creating an economically viable environment for artists here in Boston with this compilation…
Jesse: Opportunities like this compilation album are few and far between…it’s a unique thing going doww.
KBX: What do you hope this album does for Boston?
Jesse: We hope that the bands and artists that are featured on the album feel even better about being in Boston…and also to give these artists different opportunities…on a broader level, it’s about allowing people to discover new stuff they might not have heard of…fans may buy Beast for a few tracks but now they’re listening to all these different artists on the album they may not have come into contact with before…that’s why we wanted to have different genres on the album…
Matt: Through this project, we sent checks all over town…there were a bunch of other studios and engineers from Boston who got paid from working on this project…that’s an important part of creating that economic viability here…so even before anyone has heard it, the project is successful in that respect, as far as supporting the scene. The long term goal of the project…is to make music sustainable and the recognition part comes from projects like this compilation reaching audiences outside of Massachusetts.
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Beast is set to drop soon! Check out Beast at www.bostonsessions.org- you can sample all of the tracks on the album and pre-order one of the many dope packages The Record Company has put together.