Kill Shaman Records

Kill Shaman is run by me (Bryan Levine) and Paul Kneejie. Paul is in LA, where I used to live, and I am in Oakland, California. The label started, as most tend to do, out of our desire to release things for our own bands. That was in 2003. As that expanded, we ended up documenting a lot of what was going on in the Downtown LA scene at The Smell in the early-mid 2000’s because that is where we hung out. Those were our first 10 or so releases. After I moved to the Bay Area in 2006, we sort of moved away from the local music scene and started to search for new and different music from all over the world. Our goal has always been to release records that we would be happy to own and listen to. Because of that, our aesthetic tends to vary quite a bit and we don’t really focus on one genre or style.

Probably just poor judgement. Running a label is not exactly glamorous. We started running the label, because we wanted to release the music we were making ourselves. That quickly morphed into doing the same for friends and bands we played with. It was very much in reaction to what was going on around us at the time. It’s quite the typical answer, unfortunately.

The naive answer is that the music we release can stand on its own enough to attract and retain a loyal fan base of record-buying shamanites. In reality, this is something that we’ve neglected to do well over the years and are starting to reassess. We used to do our own PR, book shows, send out press releases, etc. Now that we’re a bit older and work a lot more, we simply don’t have the time we used to for this kind of stuff and are getting some help to make sure that we continue to get the label and all of our releases out in front of people. It turns out that having someone to devote a significant portion of their time solely to those functions makes a huge difference. I think you’ll see that in some of our upcoming releases.

I don’t think it’s important that an artist has a public profile, but we do want to make sure that the people we work with have a desire to progress in some way. That can be as simple as making sure you play shows, doing interviews if you can, or just taking your music to the next level. Make a new album and make it way more awesome than your last. If you focus on making good music, good stuff will happen if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, who cares. At least you made some good music that people enjoy.

Essentials to good networking: be nice, remember people’s names and faces, do what you say you will, and release good stuff. People will respect that because it’s respectable. In short, don’t be an asshole and don’t rip people off.

Since there are two of us, we can afford to distribute the work. I do all of the financials, orders, distribution, manufacturing, website, and other boring crap. Paul does a lot of the PR, mail-outs, radio station stuff, and different boring crap. We tend to share on the creative aspects. We both pick bands we’d like to work with and propose them to the other before making a decision. That’s also partially why our releases are so scatterbrained, which can be the challenging part. We have different tastes sometimes.

We may go in any of those directions. It depends on the band. Sometimes we’ll pursue someone to give us some archival or re-issue material that we love, or they’ll have 10 albums worth of material that needs to be whittled down to a single release. In these scenarios, we work with the band to curate the release a bit and come to a consensus on what it will be in the end. At other times, we will receive a complete album from someone, whose band we love and trust to make a good record. This has never failed us, in fact, and is the more common scenario. We make most of the decision up front before even working with the band. Do we like their music? Do they seem like nice people? Will they make something we would listen to? Will they put in effort behind the release? That’s usually how our thought process goes.

This is actually something we wrote in 2003 when we were younger and more cynical than we are now, if that’s possible. We’re both full time “professionals” and don’t peddle soft serve as we might lead you to believe.

They seem to be a necessary evil for bands and labels. A lot of them recycle the same one-sheets and press releases that get sent to them as long as the record comes from a reputable PR firm or a larger label. I know a lot of places won’t even open a press kit unless the sending address is from a select few firms they can “trust”. At the same time, there are lots of great blogs, zines, and communities that help spread the word about a lot of the music we do. We just try to get the word out any way we can.

That’s a hard question to answer. Both Paul and I are record hoarders. Since I can’t answer for him, I think I’ll just share my favorite records that have been released on Kill Shaman. Cheveu’s “1000” is probably one of the most unique things we’ve heard. It’s an awesome combination of blues riffs, 80’s hip hop, and noise. Some of my other favorites are the Branko! 7″ (weird african-inspired surf-rock), the reissue of The Moles’ “Untune the Sky” (a perfect Kiwi pop album with Beatles eccentricities), The Dreams “Morbido” (reggae dub/noise/drugged out post-punk), and The Feeling of Love’s “OK Judge Revival” (an homage to the VU with it’s own mesmerizing twist). I still listen to Sharp End’s “S/T” album a lot. The long-out-of-print Rodent Plague 7″ (Erin of A-Frames solo project) was another favorite. Creepy, gothic surf music.

I’m not sure we could relate to a specific artist or movement. I prefer to think that we’re more like art collectors, pulling random things that suit our tastes from all over the place. There are certainly common threads (modern France, the Seattle bands with overlapping members), but then there are completely unexpected pieces (The Moles, Smalts, Net Shaker, AXIS:SOVA, Flight, Submissions, etc.).

Sweet Rot is a great label that we both admire a lot. They have really impeccable taste. Born Bad in France has a lot of great stuff and we’ve shared a few releases (Cheveu, The Feeling of Love, Crash Normal). Les Disques Steak, SDZ, S-S Records, AVANT!, Enfant Terrible, Skrot Up!, Almost Ready, Wantage, Psychic Handshake, X-Mist, Blind Prophet; there are really just too many to name. We try and keep with all of them as much as we can.

We’re currently working on two releases. The first is from a new band with Jason of Nerve City and Steven from Flight. They haven’t confirmed a name yet, but they have about 10 songs of amazing and beautifully-crafted tracks. I expect that will come out towards the end of this year. We’ll talk more about it once it solidifies a bit more and they pick a name. Second, we have a compilation LP from Novy Svet. It’s called “Doce” and celebrates their 12th release, 12 years as a band (1998-2010), and is 12 tracks. It spans their entire career and has mixes of amazingly haunting Eastern European folk and electronic music. I think you’ll see a lot more releases coming from us in the future. We’ve slowed down a lot this year and last, but we’re going to come back stronger and re-focus our attentions on the label. We’ll probably do a lot more reissues and compilations from bands long gone (since those are the most fun to make), but we’ll also be releasing music from some active artists that we really enjoy. This year marked the 10 year anniversary of Kill Shaman and we have every intention of celebrating many more.