Janushoved

Back when I was first introduced to the more experimental side of music I would spend hours digging around online for obscure tape labels, and this way of finding music as well as often being able to have conversations with the people who actually made it really stuck with me. So before starting Janushoved I had a very clear idea of what I wanted it to be and what it should represent, and I’ve since tried to operate it following the same ideas that I’ve personally found joy in. I’d been toying around with the idea of starting a label 2-3 years before actually doing it. In 2014 I was sitting on so much material I wanted to release, and the idea finally felt ripe enough to commit to. I love making music and apparently I also love cutting and folding paper, so the two combined became the perfect basis for starting a label.

I’m not particularly fond of the idea of ‘limited for the sake of limited’, so I actually try not to make the releases too limited, but instead make editions I feel suit a particular release. Most of the releases now come out in editions of everything between 100 and 200, which I feel is pretty fitting for a tape release. I think the workload of doing more copies would be in danger of tipping over to being not so enjoyable, so I’d rather not.

Admittedly the least fun part about running a label is without a doubt packing and shipping orders, so a big reason behind keeping editions relatively low is also that I won’t have to keep going back and forth from the postal office with orders on the back catalogue dripping in from time to time, but instead I can move on and focus on new things.

As much as I love vinyl, I don’t think doing vinyl releases on Janushoved would make as much sense as releasing tapes, one of the reasons being that a lot of the work would be done by someone else, which I don’t think would interest me the same way as working with the tape format.

The depersonalization of the music was one the key principles when starting out and still is in a large extend, although some projects has been ‘found out’ along the way. One of the obvious reasons behind this is that I simply want people to spend their energy on the music instead of the person, but I also think I just want to do add a bit more mystery to the world. All music released on the label is done by the same handful of people either solo or in various constellations, so in that sense it’s not so much a label as it is a platform for presenting different masks and languages.

Copenhagen is a very odd sized capital, in a way maybe more like a large village, so I think the size of it may have had an impact on the many collaborations and internal influences taking place, which I guess ultimately leads to it having a certain sound.

Being a contributor as well as curator of the label, coherence within the releases is very important to me. I’ve always thought of it as a sort of continuation of a developing narrative, and all releases therefore always come through this certain scope of purpose and progress. I’m very lucky though to have a group of people around me who both understand what Janushoved is about but who are also capable of developing and building upon the narrative.

I like to think of the fragments of text as a guide vaguely pointing you in a direction or like building the stage and scenography for the listening experience. I really enjoy this part of running the label, it’s sort of an extra magical tool to tie everything together. Especially with this kind of music I think it’s important to also build textual worlds around it and not be limited to only communicating in a sonic language. I also like the idea that people will probably interpret the texts differently most of the time, and in that way they will scatter any notion of a singular interpretation of the work.

I like for the music to initially be connected to a physical object, but I do recognize the fact that most people will listen to music digitally, which unfortunately may exclude a lot of people from accessing it. However I still haven’t found a way of merging the two that would make sense to me.

In order to purchase a Janushoved release you have to write an email with your order, and even though it’s admittedly a pretty archaic process I’m glad to see a lot of people have no difficulties with this. This is perhaps the most satisfying aspect for me, being able to have an interaction with the people who buy and appreciate the music, and it’s one of the things that really makes me want to keep going.