One year old and already sporting a quality roster of underground artists, Tesseract Recordings are just getting ready to drop their first paid release in the form of the Acid Rain EP Part One. To find out a bit more about the label and what they have in store this year, we caught up with co-founder D Flect for a quick chat.
DNB Dojo: Hi Cagan, thanks for taking the time to chat. How are you today mate?
D Flect: Very well thank you!
DD: For anyone who’s not familiar, can you introduce Teseract Recordings and tell us a bit about the label’s outlook?
DF: Well for the past year we have been offering all our releases as free downloads, ranging through deep, dark, experimental & liquid D&B. The aim was to get some recognition in the scene; in the end we had a total of 16 tunes which all went down an absolute storm & I’m really happy with the artists that got involved. With the label now one year old we’re moving into full “to buy” EP & single releases.
DD: You mention the shift towards paid releases, why the change in strategy?
DF: Basically that was always the plan. We will always have a large selection of free tunes for anyone who stumbles across the label, but at the same time I have a lot of respect for the artists involved and now felt like the time to offer them the chance to do full releases. They have been very loyal, some of them offering up multiple tunes for us to give away completely free! Not to mention the new artists that we will be able to attract to release with us.
The plan is to keep things growing, and at some point I’d like to see Tesseract Recordings putting out vinyl, which is an area that I’m looking into.
DD: You run the label alongside Arcus, how do you split the various responsibilities between you? Do you disagree much when it comes to signing tunes?
DF: Elliot (Arcus) has been responsible for discovering artists such as Pen & Nerv, and they are a big part of the label. We always have to agree on new signings, if one of us isn’t into it then it’s a no, but to be honest we have pretty much exactly the same taste so that very rarely happens! Other than that as well as sourcing new talent I tend to deal more with the business side of things.
The label really runs itself, we have Dave (Soulatech) who designs the artwork, we have the artists who contribute their music, & Cygnus music for distribution, all we have to do is give it a nudge in the right direction; seems to be working so far!
DD: The Acid Rain EP collects four quite different tracks from four different producers, can you tell us a bit about how the release came together and your links to the artists involved?
DF: We always knew that we were going to do a various artists EP after the first year had ended, so it seemed very fitting to get some of our favourite contributors to the label so far & do a joint release. Most of them have worked with us from around when the label started out and I have released on two of Altered Perception’s labels in the past (we have more to come from him too). Nerv, Pen & Shock Tactix have all previously released on the label too.
My ethos is, “If it sounds good it sounds good”; it always has been, we dont do pigeon holes here. No EP has to be all dark tunes or all liquid tunes, but I do believe it still has to fit together nicely,
DD: Lastly, what’s next for the label looking forward into 2016?
DF: So next up we have Part 2 of the Acid Rain EP, featuring tracks from myself, Dubtrax, Optimal, Ding & Internal, it’s going to be a heavy one! After Part 2 we have full releases from Nerv, Internal & Felix The Red Cat. Im really excited about all of our upcoming releases, we have some top quality music in store. Oh…and we’ll have a free release from Altered Perception coming very soon so watch out for that!
Check out the clips below and look out for Part 1 of the Acid Rain EP dropping Mar 29th at all good digital stores.