Known to most of you as the drummer from the Midnight Juggernauts, Daniel Stricker is a man of many distractions. Aside from his skin wizardry with the Juggernauts, as well as serving as one of the founding members of local open plan super-group FLRL Daniel also helms Siberia Records, and independent record label that releases the Juggernauts music as well as a selection of other local acts, including Music Feeds favourites Kirin J Callinan and Danimals. The label have also been trying their hand at promotions running Siberian Nights at GoodGod in Sydney, the shows serving as does the label as a platform for emerging and experimental artists to display their talents.
Their latest project sees Stricker and co teaming up with Lo-Fi Collective residents Welcome Stranger to present a performance designed to compliment a retrospective/remix project of the last 9 items the group produced. The performance will see multiple drummers playing together, running the sounds through digital equipment, looping certain elements and creating… well creating something although whatever it might be I don’t really know.
Excited by such an interesting project we caught up with Daniel Stricker himself to ask him a few questions not only about the performance but also the ethos behind Siberia Records as well as what we might expect from them in the future.
Music Feeds: So tell me about this upcoming project with the Welcome Stranger collective at Lo-Fi, what should we expect?
Daniel Stricker: Our friends at Welcome Stranger wanted us to create a performance to compliment one of their items, it was focused on drumming so we couldn’t really say no… we’re going to get a bunch of drummers together, creating a looping, ambient piece (by running a bunch of acoustic gear through digital equipment) using strictly drums, in a configuration that makes the performance surround you
MF: Who’s going to be involved in the performance?
DS: You’ll just have to wait and see. There’s 5 of us so far.
MF: Siberia Records have built a bit of a reputation for putting on events and supporting artists that step around the edge of the expected, what motivates you to work out of left field like this when, considering the profile you have built through Midnight Juggernauts, you could easily run some more mainstream style dance nights and probably be more commercially successful?
DS: I guess we’ve always liked to explore different aspects of the world you can create within a band or a collective. We’re trying to (and it is very early days yet!) explore an open model of popular consciousness and subversive ground swells, and where they meet. We do it because we enjoy it, not to make heaps of money – otherwise yeah, we’d be some unethical business or something destroying raping and pillaging. Plus there are a lot of people with good ideas in this community, and it’s fun to collaborate and explore those with others.
MF: It’s obvious that with the success you have experienced, you feel it’s important to turn that to try and help support local music, which is something you don’t often see other bands doing. Have you found undertaking such a task to be a difficult one? What makes you want to keep going with it?
DS: There’s a lot of great music out there, we get genuinely excited about it – it’s more a love of wanting other people to get excited about it too, and hopefully giving younger artists a platform. That and putting together the best possible collectible item to capture the whole experience. These days it’s so great to get something in the mail, especially when a lot of effort has gone into it. It’s a labour of love, so it’s not really difficult – it’s time consuming though.
MF: This event seems to me to be very FLRL inspired. With you guys having played your first gig together in a while a month or so ago, as well as releasing those recordings, are we about to see more action from you guys?
DS: Yeah. We’ve all been quite busy with our respective projects, but seeing as it’s a model for an open group (no set musicians or songs) we’re starting to get together with whoever is interested and getting it out into the world.
MF: What else do you have in the works with Siberia? I know Erik Omen in Atlantis was your last project, on top of the Kirin J Callinan and Djanimals 7″s, what’s happening with all of those guys?
DS: Erik Omen and Kirin’s cassettes sold out – now we’re doing a 12″ with the Erik Omen guys (coming soon) – Kirin’s in the studio working on his debut album, Djanimals are about to release their debut on Stones Throw and we’ve started collating a bunch of recordings documenting temporary existence – ie. we’ll be releasing a series of vinyl’s and cassettes of ‘seasonal’ events (including the Welcome Stranger exhibition and live recordings by our and other artists) in locations you wouldn’t really expect… I’m really excited about it. I can’t tell you more than that for now.. but it’s going to be a really fun project…
You can start to pre-order the series from this Friday at the event.
For more information visit the Siberia Records website.
The performance will take place at Lo-Fi Collective above The Kinselas Hotel in Taylor Square on Friday the 25th of March
For more information visit the event page http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=131115206962465
WS010
Friday 25 March
Lo-Fi Collective
Lv 3, 383, Bourke St Darlinghurst, above Kinselas
