An article from Mess + Noise magazine. Embarrassing, but good…

Label Of Love: Part 1

From a bedroom in North Fitzroy, Ash Miles and Sophie Best have developed Mistletone into one of Melbourne’s most successful indies. Ahead of their Summer Tones series of gigs, DARREN LEVIN speaks to Best about Mistletone’s unique collectivist spirit.

Indie labels through the ages have always been painted, unfairly perhaps, with a unified sound. Flying Nun had jangle, Sub Pop grunge, early SST was synonymous with hardcore while K Records made its name with twee. But mention the “s” word around Sophie Best, former music journalist and co-founder of Melbourne indie Mistletone, and she gets noticeably uncomfortable.

“I’d hate for there to be a Mistletone sound,” she says from her North Fitzroy home, which also doubles as the label’s office. “Our last few records that we’ve put out have been all really diverse. That might be confusing, but that’s okay. I want people to judge each record on whether they like it. Not whether it’s a Mistletone thing.”

In just over two years, Mistletone – the brainchild of Best and her partner, former music retailer Ash Miles – have built one of the country’s finest emerging labels and touring companies. They began with an international release – House Arrest by US pop oddity Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – but Melbourne bands have come to define their roster.

Mistletone have released acclaimed records by Kes Band, Fabulous Diamonds, Actor/Model, Beaches, Panel of Judges, Ross McLennan and Mark Barrage. And while there’s little stylistically uniting those acts, there seems to be a shared ethos; the kind that comes from living in the same city, moving in the same social circles and being inspired by one another’s creative energy.

“A lot of it is home recorded and a lot of it is coming from a very individualistic place,” Best explains. “People are being true to themselves and doing whatever they want to do. If there’s a similarity in sound and aesthetic, I guess that’s where that comes from. A lot of the music on our label has come from people following their own creative spirit.”

Mistletone might not have a sound, but that’s probably because there isn’t a name for it yet.

I wanted to start off with The AMP nominations for Beaches and Ross McLennan. Did you ever imagine you’d get two?
We were quietly hoping that we’d get one, but we never in our wildest dreams imagined we were going to get two out of nine. It’s a really big thrill.

How do you rate your chances?
I don’t know, I don’t really want to think about it [laughs]. We are all going to go to the awards night because that’s probably the only chance we’d get to go to an awards night. So that’s really exciting. It’s such a strong field this year, so it’s hard to be overly confident really.

Were you surprised with the success of both those albums [McLennan’s Sympathy, For The New World and Beaches’ self-titled debut]?
Yeah, totally. It surprises me when people say that there’s hype around Beaches, because we’ve never really spent any money on advertising. We just got it out to the right people. A lot of journalists particularly fell in love with it. It’s really struck a chord with music writers. I think that Beaches are a really likeable band. A lot of people connect with them. The band haven’t even been feeding it [the hype] either. They haven’t played live that much.

Is that the philosophy at Mistletone, that you let things grow organically?
I think it’s the only way to go. Even if we had the big budget to spend, I don’t think we would. I don’t know if that sort of stuff [advertising] works anyway … Ash and I both believe that good music finds its audience. Our job is to facilitate it by doing practical things like giving it a release, sending it out to the media and having a website. That’s really the extent of it … You don’t have to force stuff.

Tell me about the label’s beginnings in 2006.
We decided to tour Ariel Pink, just because we were a really big fan of his. Ash and I had organised a few tours, and worked on other people’s tours before, but this was the first tour that we did ourselves. Then we realised that his albums didn’t have a release in Australia. We had an opportunity to start a label because a friend of ours works as a distributor, and so that was the catalyst really. We’ve both always dreamed of running a label. I guess all the stars aligned.

When you started out in 2006, the industry was in a real state of flux. Was that a concern at the time?
Not really, and it’s still not really. The industry is still in a state of flux, it remains to be seen what’s going to happen. Making money has never been a big motivator for us. We’d ideally like to make our income from Mistletone, but like a lot of people who work in entertainment/music that’s a dream, it’s not what really drives you.

It’s really just the opportunity to work with something that we both really believe in. From that point of view I think it’s a really exciting time for people like us, who don’t have any external funding support, to get in there, get involved and be part of all this exciting stuff happening. And it’s happening all over the world. People in their bedrooms are starting up labels and organising tours and shows. That’s the great thing about the breaking down of the music industry. Everything can happen at grassroots level.

It’s interesting because all the things that major labels perceive as negative things – downloads and MySpace – smaller labels like Mistletone actually embrace.
It’s only negative if you perceive it purely in terms of money. Money’s important but it’s a very small part of what makes all this happen. It’s easy to have a negative view of downloads, because it’s depriving you of income. But we totally encourage people to download. I mean, we download music. Pretending that downloading is the enemy seems really weird to me.

Are you guys still operating out of your home in North Fitzroy?
We are, but we’re reaching breaking point. I think we’re going to have to get an office. Ash and I can no longer handle the workload, so we’re going to need to get people to help us. And the only way we can do that is to get an office because we can’t really get people to hang out in our lounge room. I think we’re going to have to become a bit more professional this year. It’ll be a bit of a challenge [laughs]. When you’re working at home and when you’re a couple as well, it’s very easy to do things in your own ad hoc way. If we have to bring other people in, we’ll have to smarten up a bit I think.

Have your respective backgrounds played a role in the way you approach things?
I think so. I guess for me, having been involved in community radio for quite some time and then working as a music writer, I know a lot of people in that world. It probably gives you a bit of insight into how that world works, how to get music to people and how to send out press releases. And Ash, working his whole life in music retail, just knows a hell of a lot about music and also understands the whole retail side of things. So I guess in hindsight, our lives were leading up to this point.

Label Of Love: Part 2

In part two of our interview with Mistletone’s Sophie Best, we discuss the label’s unique collectivist spirit, trans-Hume expansionism and the state of the Melbourne music scene.

There seems to be a real collective atmosphere at Mistletone; a diverse line-up of like-minded bands. How important is that and how do you maintain it?
We don’t think about that when we sign people. But, especially with the Australian bands that we have, there are a lot of connections and friendships. That’s probably how we discovered those bands or fell in love with their music because of those circles of friendships. I love the fact that the bands on our roster are friends and they collaborate and organise shows together.

Did you initiate that or does that happen on its own steam?
Both. A lot of the people were friends before we came along. They’d been doing things together and continued doing things together. I think Melbourne is a pretty friendly place for people involved in music. There are strong social networks that make things happen. Most people in Melbourne are in three bands [laughs]. It’s just because people keep finding new ways to work together – and it comes down to friendship.

What’s your take on the Melbourne scene at the moment? It seems to be a particularly fruitful time.
It’s amazing. I keep discovering new bands and getting blown away by the creativity in the scene, and also the diversity of it. But also, there’s a kind of purity among Melbourne bands. The really good bands in Melbourne have received very little recognition outside and even within Melbourne. People are doing things without commercial expectations and that’s why there’s such good stuff coming out of this place.

Was it always the intention for you to release records from your hometown?
Yeah, totally. We started off by licensing overseas stuff, and we’re going to continue doing that. But we wanted to target the local scene. We want to release bands not just from Melbourne as well. We definitely want to release some Sydney music because there are some really great bands in Sydney that we like. Ash is from Sydney so we spend a lot of time there. It’s kind of like our second home. We want to see more action in Sydney. We organise shows there, but now we want to get more involved.

If there is one criticism of the label, it’s that it’s pretty Melbourne-centric.
It’s natural when you live somewhere and you want to be part of your community. But we definitely want to start doing things in Sydney as well.

There’s a real New Zealand flavour about your roster as well with bands like Lawrence Arabia and Bachelorette.
There is. Lawrence Arabia, which is our latest New Zealand release, contacted us through mutual friends … He sent us the demos for his new album and we were completely infatuated with them. We also put out Bachelorette’s last album. Our label has distribution in New Zealand so we’re building a bit of a fanbase there.

Does the camaraderie in the local scene extend to rival labels as well?
Yeah, totally. We’ve been inspired by a lot of Australian labels, and continue to be inspired by them. People who run indie labels are a certain breed. We have a lot in common. We do share a lot of information, we go out for beers and talk about stuff. It’s really important to do that because knowledge is power. You have to share it.

Label-wise, who are your benchmarks?
I guess initially Spunk was our first role model. We always admired what Aaron [Curnow] did. Sensory Projects is another one of my favourite Australian labels, run by Steve Phillips. He goes about things in his own quiet way and completely follows his own tastes. That’s something that’s important to us. I really like Aarght! Records, their whole philosophy and the way they approach things is really cool. Alberts Basement is great as an up-and-coming label that are doing thing on a totally grassroots level. Also, all those small labels and CD-R labels that are around that are doing things in a really pure way. Lexicon Devil is another one that we really dig. We appreciate their aesthetic and their approach.

Moving on to Summer Tones. How did the concept start? Was the initial idea to bring Melbourne bands to other parts of Australia?
Even before we formed a label, Ash and I were organising shows in Melbourne mainly as a way of bringing different bands together. I guess sometimes Melbourne can kind of be, not cliquey, but bands can sometimes stay within their own circles. They’re reluctant to ask other bands to play with them who are outside of their normal circles. So we got a kick out of organising shows that bring together bands from different spectrums. Once we had a label we’d invite bands on our roster, but also curate the line-up, so there were other bands as well.

The last three Tones have also been vehicles for our own overseas artists. It means that if we’re touring relatively unknown artists like High Places, Lucky Dragons or Beach House, we can put them in front of a larger audience and in a more interesting context than just playing a show at The Tote [in Melbourne]. Booking shows is probably the most fun thing about our job. Thinking who you want to have on the bill and putting it altogether is really fun.

Is Mistletone a full-time thing for you now?
Pretty much. It is for Ash and I still do some external work for other people to pay the bills. We’re kind of hoping that it’ll get to the point where we can pay our rent from the work we do with Mistletone.

How far off is that? Are you seeing a profit for what you do?
We always break even, or make a small profit on what we do … But we’re not going to be settling into retirement anytime soon, put it that way [laughs].