Among the current lively Parisian scene, Antinote has been marked out from the pack by a fluctuating release schedule and stunning artwork. Founded one late afternoon of 2012 by Quentin Vandewalle aka Zaltan, the label took form around a glass of wine at le Baron Rouge – Vandewalle’s uncle bar – where he ended up meeting his partners, Gwen Jamois, a crate-digger and friend of Aphex Twin, and Nico Motte, a graphic designer and synth collector.
Raised on the banks of the lower river Loire in the lovely city of Blois, Quentin Vandewalle is a child of 1981’s liberalization of the FM band. His parents were employees of one of the leading French radio stations, RTL, and soon after the then-president François Mitterrand legalized the radios libres, they moved from Paris to Blois to supervise a newly created local station, Radio Val de Loire.
Vandewalle grew up on the eclectic mix of funk, pop and rock on the playlist, with a privileged access to all the promos his parents’ radio station would receive at that time. This is a musical heritage he recently paid tribute to with a tape, Quartier Choc, released on Low Jack’s Editions Gravats but that he first totally dismissed after discovering techno at the age of 10. “I have no idea how I first came to techno. It’s a total mystery.” Vandewalle confesses. But while his older sisters and their friends were into punk, young Quentin was obsessed with electronic sound and would try to find some traces of it as he dug through his parents’s records collection.
Later, spending his weekends in Paris, he recalls going to buy some Underground Resistance vinyl on the advice of the vendor of Faubourg St-Antoine’s shop Vibe Station. “I was 15 and this guy put in my hands really good records while he could have sold me any lame top-selling singles. It was really nice from him. Since I grew up outside Paris in a small town, the only techno I could come across was either the bullshit Eurodance played on the radios or alternatively the freeparty hardcore sound, which I’m not into but can be interesting though”.
Vandewalle eventually moved to Paris where he started DJing under his Zaltan alias after meeting French/Belgian DJ and collector Raphael Top Secret. Together, the two friends caught Etienne Menu’s attention, and got booked on his Radio Campus radio show. This became a regular slot, which got the attention influential figures from the Parisian scene like Gilb’r, Cosmo Vitelli and Patrick Vidal. Up until now the duo had only played in small bars but from here on in they got to play in every major club in Paris.
Vandewalle was still hungry, though: after 10 years of collecting records and DJing, his urge to diversify its activities just became more and more pressing. “I had this desire of doing something else, contributing to the scene through another medium. Since I’m not a musician, starting a label was what I had in mind”. His encounter with Gwen Jamois will accelerate things.
Introduced to each other through Vandewalle’s wine joint-owning uncle, the two men quickly became closer through their shared obsession with crate-digging. Living in London, Gwen Jamois had been connecting with artists like Mixmaster Morris, Ramjac, Shamen, Luke Vibert and Aphex Twin while he was working as a sound engineer for a reggae studio, circa 1991. He was also behind the re-release of Black Devil Disco Club 1978’s eponymous EP on Aphex Twin’s label, Rephlex.
“I was very curious how he got to work with Aphex Twin and Black Devil Disco Club” explains Vandewalle. “Gwen told me this crazy story of him tracking down Bernard Fèvre [aka Black Devil Disco Club] in the phonebook after finding a stock of very rare Black Devil records”. One thing leading to another, Vandewalle became aware of some early techno recordings Jamois did, without never releasing them. Recorded in the early 90’s, these tracks were commissioned by Aphex Twin but were considered too obvious by their author, as a consequence he never showed them to anyone and eventually shifted towards another, more improvised, field of music writing.
It took 4 months to Vandewalle to convince Jamois to take back these tapes out from the plastic bags they’ve been resting in for years at his mother’s place. As soon as he finally listened to them, Vandewalle immediately wanted to release this dark and stormy techno which was undimmed by age, hassling Jamois until he eventually said yes. Jamois said later Vandewalle reminded him a bit of himself a few years before trying to reach Bernard Fèvre.
“I was nobody to release these tracks,” says Vandewalle, “but I guess that’s also the reason why Gwen said yes. Releasing 300 copies on a confidential and brand new label, that’s less pressure than getting signed on Aphex Twin’s label. I wasn’t feeling too confident when a few months after we released the EP, I ran into Gwen and Aphex sharing oysters at le Baron Rouge on a Sunday morning. I guess I stayed less than 5 minutes… (laughs)”.
Gwen Jamois early works as Iuke was, then, the foundational release of Antinote. As Vandewalle confessed it, there was no master plan behind the label creation: “Gwen gave me this incredible music, found a name for the label and introduced me to Nico Motte, a graphic designer friend of his. All of this was very informal”. Motte, in partnership with Mathias Po as Check Morris, would take care of Antinote’s art direction, and the label gradually started rolling. If their initial idea was to tap on the archives market as record labels like Minimal Wave or Vinyl On Demand do, things went differently as soon as they released their second record, an EP by Syracuse.
“I was having a drink with my old friend Antoine,” recalls Vandewalle, “when, randomly, he played me some of his demos. He wasn’t trying to sell me anything, but since we didn’t get the chance to see each other for quite a long time, he just wanted to let me hear what he recently did. Among what I heard, there was this 808 loop with an old piano and a Brazilian-like choir, I told him to finish the track and to send it to me after it was done. And 6 months later, Syracuse was born”.
Syracuse’s Giant Mirrors EP, with a piano banger and a dreamy ballad among its tracks, may sound far away from Iuke’s obscure techno but it reflects Vandewalle’s tastes, as someone who can deliver a techno set one night and a bossanova set the day after. The following release by Albinos sees the same story repeating again, with Vandewalle again releasing music from an old pal, and everything continued branching out through natural connections.
Nico Motte’s EP, for example, was a happy surprise, since the label’s art director also turned to be a synths collector. “When Gwen introduced me to Nico Motte, he never mentioned this,” Vandewalle says; “it’s only when I went round to Motte’s place for some reason that I saw this huge studio with all these synths. Obviously, my first reaction was to ask him if he had been recording anything which he answered to vaguely.” Again, Vandewalle pressing on Nico Motte to listen to his music worked, leading to Antinote’s 8th release.
There’ve been a flurry of releases through 2014, but Vandewalle’s A&R method still consists of the exploration of his friends’ or friends-of-friends’ nebula. “I receive a lot of demos since the label got some exposure,” he says; “but I tend to like working with friends or people I can meet in person. D.K was introduced to me through our common friend Low Jack, for example, and Geena is a guy I met in Paris after chatting with him on the internet. It’s not a strict rule since I’m gonna release this Japanese artist, but I like the idea of building a small Antinote family.
“I wasn’t in Paris at all this past summer but I learned while I was away that the artists on the label hang out together, without me. It’s cool since they were all my friends but from different circles. I really hope it’s gonna lead to some nice collaborations”. In a world where social networking is so often about a “click-and-forget” mentality, Antinote is a powerful reminder that IRL networks can still sometimes be the most rewarding.
– BR’s Label Spotlight on Antinote takes place at Monseigneur Paris on Tues 6th Jan, 2015. More info over HERE –
