by George Glikerdas

Yes, we started to get together to screen for ourselves, short productions that we would make. It was basically myself, Hisham Mayet, Robert Millis, my brother Richard, and Charles Gocher. We would usually get together once every couple of weeks and no less than once a month. Sometimes it was weekly. And we just prepared these thirty minute videos we had been working on just to play for each other, so there would be at least two or three hours of material that we would watch. As soon as one person's short was done the other one would go in and we would just sit around and smoke and drink and discuss things. A lot of times it was catered to be entertaining for everybody. It was a trade off of different ideas and that's what developed into the concept of starting a label. That was being done maybe as early as 2000, but it was really happening a lot in 2002 and into 2003.

It is always kind of changing because there really is not a particular method or particular agenda that we have, so we are basically open to allowing for things to develop. So I think it is a natural process because change is inevitable. When it comes to trying to find different releases or coming up with different ideas for releases, we are not only depending on ourselves or our own projects, but also other people's submissions and ideas.

We do not refer to Sublime Frequencies that way. Mostly everything that we are doing is highly specific and generalizations do not work with us. Generalizing just simplifies and negates the beauty of the specifics. Specific does not mean that it cannot be mysterious, and I do not think simplifications are mysterious at all. Once you get into the heart of specifics then it can become quite mysterious because it just opens up a million more questions, because of some of the details that come out of that.

We are still comfortable with the term “exotic” just because it has been politically correct to not be used by so many people. We prefer to embrace it as a positive term, because it sort of gets the point across. If it is “exotic”, it is mysterious, it is foreign, it is from another dimension. They do not think that anyone should use the term “exotic” because maybe it leaves a perception of being disdainful towards a group of people or an area in the world, or looking at them as being less of something. For me it is just the opposite; it makes them more powerful, it makes them much more venerable.

A lot of it is subliminal and in my own mind and I am not really always trying to be conscious of making statements. I do appreciate the fact that you can relate to it in a million different ways and the quote you gave is fair enough, it makes sense to me and I can understand why that is said and I can understand a lot of other people's interpretations as well. I'm sure there are things that are happening in my own way of transmitting information and ideas that are subliminally happening that I am not even aware of, and then some that I may be aware of and it changes or it moves around and that is the beauty of it.

It is almost impossible for me to find really great music from the West out there other than the classic stuff that I will always like. You can find normal major label stuff from the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's in these countries, but it is obviously not as widespread as it is here. There are mp3's available made by the local bootleg industry that is compiling them their way. Sometimes you can get the entire 1960's classic rock library on twenty mp3's from many peoples' favorite groups for a dollar or two. So people can find this stuff. But when it comes to post-70's, which I tend to favor things that were done by independent labels, underground music, experimental music, as being anything of true value since the 70's, then that stuff is really not available. For the average person to access, it is not played on the radio very much. It is there, but you have to look for it, and it is not nearly as accessible as it is here.

One of the things that I have been doing especially in Southeast Asia, is I bring a hard drive with a lot of my favorite music, whether it is Brazilian music, Italian soundtrack music, American underground, European underground from the past twenty to thirty years, punk, experimental, free jazz. I download it for people into their computers and give it away, and I have given stuff to radio stations as well. It is important that musicians who are younger are influenced by that stuff instead of Top 40 and everything that is going to get there on the cultural export, this mega machine that is just pumping it in day in and day out. I do not know how much of a difference it makes but it does for certain people and that is all I can do. I do it for friends and people that I think are going to be interested.

It was a two year process from the time we began to the time the tour occurred. It was a massive production and a group effort. The main idea was concocted by a production company in the UK called Qu Junktions. A friend of mine from Bristol approached me two years ago with the idea of doing a UK tour of Group Doueh and Omar Souleyman and wanted to try to apply for funding because this would cost a fair amount of money. So I wrote a proposal for it and we sent it to the Sound and Music (SAM) Arts Council in the UK. We were laughing, going “yeah that'll be the day that somebody funds something like this”. But a week later it was approved. To put it together, it took us through the last year and a half, sending people twice to both Syria and Morocco, to assemble things, to work on their visas. We did not have any help from the Syrian government or the Moroccan government, we did not use an immigration lawyer. It was a total success attendance wise, most of the shows being sold out or highly attended. There were a mixture of club shows and festivals, and we basically took these groups through the same clubs or venues that would book a show by Sunn O))), Acid Mothers Temple, or in the past Sun City Girls.

We put those guys through a long, arduous, five-week tour, playing almost every night and moving every day. And we had to consider if the groups would get along because they had to live together for five weeks because they never met before, how we are all going to react with them, how they are going to react to being in a new environment for five weeks. Before the tour began, maybe one or two hundred of each of the groups CD's had been sold in all of Europe combined. There was really no promotion other than word of mouth and the minimal advertising that we did. We did get sponsorships from a couple of magazines, The Wire and Vice. It had many great twists and turns, interesting moments and we documented it. We have well over a hundred hours of footage, audio recordings of every show and more. There is definitely going to be a documentary on it at some point.

Right now we are trying to bring Omar Souleyman to the States because there seems to be some interest. I am not sure about Group Doueh. But I think both bands will be back to Europe as well. And there are talks of other places in terms of touring, but until we can work it out, I do not want to get anybody's hopes up by getting specific on it. But I think it is going to happen, I think next year there will be a fair amount of shows somewhere, so we will see. I am quite confident that at least Omar will be coming to the States next year.

Let's start with the second one. No, I am referring to the fact that I think that there is a constant propaganda that never ends that is trying to tell people that they are completely different organisms. Because of class, separation of financial concerns and due to the geography, the culture, or the religion, there is a false controversy in everything. Because it is to keep everybody in conflict with each other so that we do not figure out that the people that have all the money and the guns are the ones that need to be annihilated. Not us. What I am saying is we are all the same, except for the elite. It is the people that are running the media machine and the money machine, the banks, everything. It is elites behind them and the people that are running it for them.

What was the first question again?

Yes.

That is true as well.........They are both true. And everything in between and beyond both extremes. People are too willing to settle for an absolute and that is another reason why most people that you will come in contact with when you walk the earth are not aware of what is going on around them. Back to your question, sure you can have that scenario being sacred and you can look at it and have it not being sacred. And nothing is absolute in terms of these things......that......can you read that question one more time for me again?

Okay, so I am going to ask you (laughs), why is it important to you to ask me that question?

Maybe the quote.... I was trying to remember what the situation was that I would have been reacting to, like what was the question. The way that people try to get so specific about a certain quote or whatever, there is always different fundamental moods of moments, in terms of things, like I will take a tradition like gamelan. To me gamelan is not sacred and I think that is what I was actually referring to. So I think we have got a little difference here. You are referring to a religious ceremony, like say the Nat Pwe. Within themselves they are sacred. But not to the point where you cannot evolve these traditions, especially with gamelan. I do not look at it as being the only way you can play it is to do it the way that the Javanese are performing it. The reason it got to where it is because before it sounded entirely different than it does today, yet now you cannot say that it is sacred the way it is now thirty years ago it was different and seventy years ago it was different than that. So I think that the quote may be taken out of context. It is hard to really say what I was referring to.

People are developing a sense of pride because of the fact that anywhere in the world one can access anything that is on the internet. It is closing the gap so quickly that there will be collectors of music appreciating their own legacies in places like Thailand or Burma and doing things that we are doing here. There are a few people doing it in certain places. But all the vinyl and the cassettes have to be dealt with. There may be a record that you put on from '73 and the first half of the cassette is not doing anything for you. You turn it over and you gotta go through it because that last song on Side B could be the coolest thing you ever heard. And if you were too lazy that day or not persistent enough to go through all of Side B, then you will never know. It is important that this stuff gets dealt with in the same way that we all have access to stuff here. And there are things that have slipped through the cracks here as well. But we are not the only ones doing this. We are in the way that Sublime Frequencies operates, but there are other entities out there that are like-minded, exploring some of the same areas that we are exploring and doing it their way. I'm not saying there's going to be a Sublime Frequencies type of situation going on in Thailand or in Indonesia but I think just in appreciating their own music and legacy and looking upon it as something that they value, instead of this sort of throw away culture that seems to be prevalent around the world, in everything that is new and that is current is best. That again is being pushed by the elite oligarchy for lack of a better word.

The situation is economical. People have approached me that want to do these worldwide networks, some pretty heavy duty guys that are household names in the music world. They want to do these networks so they can sell and/or distribute these Western produced CD's in these countries where people are paying what to us is fifty cents for anything they want on a CD-R or an mp3. We would just have to do bootleg mp3's over there. That is the only way that it can be done. Until those countries develop their economies to the point where their standard of living matches what the standard of living is in the West, it is not a prudent way of operating. There was a guy who bought EMI Pakistan in the '90's and went bankrupt. He went bankrupt because no one was going to buy a CD for four or five dollars and get the same thing for a quarter down at the bootleg market, which are everywhere. They do not care, if it came out on vinyl they would laugh a guy out of the country, 'what are you using that for, yeah my grandfather used to listen to that, you are an idiot'. Omar was just ripping on the photographers in the photo sessions for using print film. 'Yeah my great grandfather used to use a camera like that, get with it buddy'. It's a different mentality and a different economical situation. I would love to open up an office and start making our CD's over there but it is just a total impossibility right now and that is why major labels are not doing it either.

We are working on a lot of releases and we have two Thai releases coming out next month. There is a Thai Pop Spectacular Vol. Two called “Siamese Soul” and the Shadow Music of Thailand is coming out on CD. We have a production called “Singapore A Go-Go” coming out in October, and some of the LP's that we did, like Group Bombino and Group Doueh's second LP are both coming out on CD later this year. We are working on a lot of productions, I am working on a huge amount of material from Indonesia which I have been working on for six years now. I have been going every year and I am going back next month. Hopefully by 2010 I can start rolling that stuff out. There are also people working on post-production right now but I cannot say what they are yet because anything can happen.