IF100: 15 Years of IF?

This is where I hang up one of those warning signs like the one in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy - you know, the the inscription at the entrance to Hell that says "Abandon hope all ye who enter here", or at least something superfluous along those lines.

Because this is where I get all self-indulgent, nostalgic, biased, and parochial.

Y'see, I'm from Melbourne. Sure, I may have lived in Tokyo these past eight and a half years, but Melbourne (Australia) is my hometown, and it's the city whose electronic musicians were so cool - and so unappreciated - 15 years ago that it inspired me and two mates, Mateusz Sikora and Brian Huber, to kick-start our own record label to help support these people.

At the time I had a penniless indie movie-making company called Industrial Form, so I dumped that idea, took the initials, added a question mark for quirk-factor, and we called the label IF? Records. A few months later we released Zeitgeist, a compilation CD of purely Melbourne-made sounds (including a lush remix from Thomas P. Heckmann), and licensed that baby to Nova Zembla in Belgium to get it on to vinyl as well.

Yeah, yeah, I know - "zeitgeist" was a bit of a corny name, but at the time it didn't sound quite so bad. Our hearts were in the right places.

After that over the next three years we did two more of those Zeitgeist compilations in 1996/97, focused always on the Melbourne crew, with guest remixes of local stuff by two more Germans, Biochip C and Jammin' Unit, along with the debut releases for Soulenoid (aka Adam Raisback from Sense) and Guyver 3 (Scott Armstrong, alias G3).

We also focused on a rather long string of live performance gigs in Melbourne and Sydney that lost more money than gained any returns, but were always aurally mesmerizing - usually featuring the likes of Voiteck, Zen Paradox, Honeysmack, Soulenoid, Guyver 3, Blimp, Son Of Zev, Isnod, Sonic Voyagers, Frontside, TR-Storm, Q-Kontrol, my own hack project Little Nobody, the LN Elektronische Ensemble, DJ Fodder, and others.

Somewhere along the line 15 years passed continuing to do very much the same - weird, I know; I think the only thing we really changed was the logo. And although more than half of that time I've been based here in Japan, while Brian is in San Francisco and Mateusz in Kraków, we've continued to stay in touch and to work with and be inspired by our brethren back in Melbourne - a city and scene that's unlike any other in the world, even if half the time the people themselves in Melbourne don't appreciate that fact.

Which brings me, after a less-than-satisfactory opening disclaimer and a lot of subsequent hullabaloo, to the reason for this particular entry: IF100, our latest IF? release, which is also the 100th release by the label - at precisely the 15 year mark since the label was conjured up.

Count yourselves lucky... with one-and-a-half decades under the belt, I could've rambled on a hell of a lot more here, waxing insensible about experiences no one else can relate to and channeling insanely confused memories that make no sense in print, let alone in my own headspace.

Instead I'll just desist, leaving it at the first couple of years (as mentioned above), then pretend the subsequent decade has been a blur of motion and activity.

IF100 came out this week and for the compilation we went back to our roots, bringing together a collection of 30 tracks produced entirely by Melbourne artists, with some bonus remixes of their work by international producers thrown into the mix.

On top of this we wanted to toss around a selection of Melbourne that reflected the history - getting hold of new tracks from pioneers Zen Paradox, G3, Son Of Zev, Isnod, TR-Storm and a new DJ Fodder remix from Sydney's Dsico - along with the new(er) kids on the black like Ben Mill, Craig McWhinney, Kultrun, Alkan, Enclave, Koda and Rysh Paprota.

Then we lobbed into the fray some juicy remixes by Bill Youngman, Patrick Pulsinger, Shin Nishimura, DJ Warp, Secret Surfer, and a Little Nobody remix of E383, just for fun.

Anyway, enough rambling and innate navel-gazing. If you have time, trundle on over to the release itself, which we're running exclusively through Juno Download here, and check out some sample sounds of a city I still rate as one of the best in the world, even after having lived in Tokyo and London.

Let's hope that one day Melbourne itself realizes the cultural nuggets it has in its own backyard.