A queer platform dedicated to experimental electronic music – AN INTERVIEW WITH TENDER MATTER

What were the circumstances that led you to start your label Tender Matter?

Tony: Tender Matter originated out of our focus on counterculture and DIY spaces that we were working with at the time. We were already organizing concerts before we started the label. At the beginning of our work together, we wanted to do events that focused on queer acts, and we started working with AU, when it was still alive. AU existed from 2012 to 2019 and was an important non-profit space for the DIY, experimental and queer music underground in Vienna.

And then came COVID. I was checking out different possibilities where to release my own solo project Tony Renaissance and I couldn’t find a label that fit the focus we had. So, we started the label first to release my music. Since we were lacking the physical platform to highlight queer artists during COVID, the idea developed to use the label to continue this work.

Mel: I think when Tony wanted to release his first EP, we had a look around for possible labels to release on and we just didn’t find any dedicated to queer DIY artists within this space of experimental pop music. Queer platforms specifically dedicated to electronic, experimental music…

Tony: So, we started working mainly with solo artists and it’s very interesting to see what kind of sounds people produce from their bedroom studios. This is something that we seek to support: artists who maybe don’t have the resources to rent a studio, who do stuff in their homes. It can be by choice, of course, but also sometimes, they just don’t have the resources. This has a big influence on the sound. It might be more intimate and personal.

Genre-wise the people we work with tend to work more in the direction of ambient, drone and contemporary classical music at the moment, as opposed to dark wave, which was the case when we started the label. Our taste and focus shifted as well.

Mel: I think there’s also a larger change in taste at the moment. You can see that the whole cultural scene went more to experimental ambient in the last few years. We are going there, while at the same time I can see that we are already leaving it behind. We’re leaving electronic ambient, and coming back to indie rock and band formations—actually, more acoustic, and less electronic sounds in general. Musical tendencies are like tendencies in fashion, we go in circles, in spirals of time. Our collective unconsciousness is doing the same movement right now, towards acoustic and analog sound and instruments. It started some years ago in NYC, with indie and rock getting bigger again. It’s a collective circular movement, as it happens in politics, from conservative to progressive and back to conservative again. Sound-wise it may go back to dark wave next.

Hopefully soon.

Tony: Aesthetically we were definitely influenced by dark wave in the beginning. However, we expanded towards different directions for our poster artworks. We were especially drawn to DIY zine culture and more specifically queer punk zines in the United States and Europe. The latter is a big reference and inspiration for us visually. We are working very closely with Nufolklore Studio, with Gergo Kovacs. They have been researching queer punk zines for us. There is a database archive of zines, which is one main inspiration for the posters they do for our events.

Mel: Yes, Gergo is a true artist. The way they go into a huge rabbit hole of research is really fascinating to me.

Tony: They opened up their artistic process for us recently and showed where they start, where they are going and what they end up with in the end and it’s this amazing collection of references – just experimenting with different textures, colors, symbols, and text …super cool.

The posters Nufolklore Studio do for your events really have a weight to them, they feel very research-based…

Mel: Exactly. It’s because of this history that Gergo delves into. I think this multitude of influences also reflects well the way Tony and I work together. We come from very different cultural backgrounds and very different life stories, and everything comes together in the label. The way we create and curate our events. Which also draws from many other types of art. Because we are both from arts, aka the Academy [of Fine Arts Vienna]. Tony, you started with photography, correct?

Tony: I actually started studying performance and went to photography but it’s very open anyways at the Academy. There are a lot of people who are doing music in the photography class.

Mel: I studied journalism in the south of Brazil, in a university that was leftist back then. They taught journalism but with emphasis in critical theory. Then years later I came to study in Austria and ended up in the Academy doing a postgrad in art philosophy and curatorial studies. People often ask if I’m a musician but I’m neither an artist nor a musician. I’m more interested in theory. Many different levels of information coming together, like for instance the so-called high art and art philosophy, politics and especially pop culture. It’s kind of a similar process to what Gergo does as a designer but within my own field.

How do you find financially viable solutions for your events? As we all know it is becoming increasingly challenging in Vienna.

Tony: That is one of the challenges we are facing with the label because it is our job but we still want to work with non-profit spaces like Venster99 and the late AU …hopefully Venster soon again. Venster is an important non-profit DIY venue in Vienna that was recently closed by the city.

Mel: I think a place such as Venster has a big weight in the whole European underground scene as a true representative of other ways of existing within the late stage of capitalism or end-stage capitalism. There are not many places like Venster anymore, anywhere.

So much of a show’s identity comes from the venue where it happens. For us, and many other collectives in the Vienna scene it’s difficult because there is no venue we identify with. For us it’s not only about queer representation but worker’s rights being respected and working with antiracist, consciously political people.

Tony: Our visions or wishes for concert nights also work really well at Venster. We aim for something very focused. Not a club night that takes until six in the morning but something that is very concentrated on live music, on the acts and the community.

Regarding your latest release under your project name Bogland, “Sound Piece for five cellos” – also one of the latest releases on Tender Matter – would you say that it goes toward this idea of neo-classical/composed music for you? Or is it more of a playful name?

Tony: It is definitely conceptual somehow. It has this very open and ambient character, I would say. But of course, it’s composed. I think what I wanted to do with this work is to integrate the act of listening into the sound production process as well, following Pauline Oliveros’ teachings. To bind people into the process and open up the possibilities of interpretation. You can imagine so many things while you’re listening, images come up and different sounds come up, especially with acoustic instruments. Overtones become audible and you hear different tones and characteristics in sounds after listening for a while.

What does the future of the label look like?

Tony: We already started collaborations this year, and we want to continue working with different collectives and spaces. We worked with the contemporary art gallery das weisse haus for an event last January, where Rrose and Hyeji Nam performed sound pieces and where the Bogland cello piece we talked about before was premiered.

Mel: Regarding the future of our event series, we are focusing on collaboration. For the next event on 24.8.2024, we are working together with the Viennese collective Augend&Addend which will take place at das weisse haus again, with Odete, Ãssia Ghendir, Lou Vives, Yasmina Haddad, Home & Winonah, MARAws & Oblate and Tony’s alias Bogland. We are trying to combine different artistic approaches when traversing different spaces; the invited artists will play music, but there will also be a performative lecture, and other performative elements… whilst it is also crossover between us as promoters.

Mel: We are very interested in exchanging, learning from different ways of presenting and experiencing music. That’s where this idea of working within an ‘art scene’ context at das weisse haus came from. Our second event of 2024 was again, a very classic event for us, that was originally conceptualized to be at Venster but had to be moved to rhiz. We usually invite three acts, one or two from abroad and one or two local artists. This time it was Deli Girls, biped and Karo Preuschl.

Tony: We often invite artists from this specific New York scene that we have a connection to, like Mother Cell and Prison Religion… and for our last event on 18.04.2024 we invited Deli Girls. We have also recently established a connection to SNOG. It’s a booking agency specializing in queer artists from Bristol.

Mel: I’m still searching for connections with people that are working for and with the queer community in the music field, especially focused on experimental music. I’m always in search mode. When I find a collective with a similar focus, I immediately write to them and say: “Hey, we have a label in Austria. Do you want to be friends?”, (laughs), and most of them reply immediately. “Can we be friends? Can we meet?” (laughs)

I think we really need to support each other. And of course, financially speaking, we are all in the same boat and we could do much more if we were connected.

I cannot say if it’s a European thing, this disconnection, but there is a lot of it. There’s resistance to working with people you haven’t known personally for years. Or people seem to be more closed off to strangers, I’m not sure. I come from Brazil, and I feel a lot of difference in the cultural scene. In Brazil, if we do not connect to others, if you are not open, you can’t do anything because there is no state support. There is no funding. You need the community to survive and grow. I think, of course, it has to do with a more individualistic way of living… but I guess we can still try and connect.

You regularly produce physical releases as well. Does this have a special meaning to you?

Mel: Physical releases are really expensive. Records are especially difficult because of the costs. It’s a luxury product for an independent label. And sales are really low, that’s why we actually mostly focus on online releases.

Tony: It’s really difficult to produce vinyl. You can’t even pay the production costs and the graphic designer with the type of funding we have available for music productions. And then you also need to pay for mixing and mastering.

Mel: I mean, we have to say: it is a huge privilege to receive funding, right? It is an immense privilege, but of course it’s still limited, and you have to work in such a strict way. It’s not possible to do much, and people don’t invest in music anymore, buying physicals, etc. I mean, most physical releases that we do are tapes. I had the chance to live in the 1980s, right? When I started to connect to music as a child, tapes were my format. I was that kid doing the mix tape recording from the radio, to catch the songs. Transferring to tape was such a hard thing because you had to be fully present and synced with the radio shows or other tapes. It’s actually a pretty ‘physical’ technique. (laughs)

Is there something you still want to get off your chest?

Mel: Everything is connected. Our work reflects our political views and what we stand for. The label, which today is much more a platform of engagement for artists than a traditional label, is a tiny, humble part in this equation that is the current worldwide cultural, political, and economic context we live in. But however small we are, every single one of us in the Viennese independent music scene is directly and immediately affected by what’s happening in different parts of the world right now. It’s a transitional historical period. There’s not much of a way out of this if we continue to reproduce old individualistic patterns of competitiveness and greed. We have to find new ways of working and living together. The old world will fade.

Thank you for your time and patience!