From delicate bossanova sounds to glitchy 8 bit Hammond!
We are independent electronic (we prefer the adjective "emotronic") label... 8 bit Hammond smashing plus mayonese melting broken beats... Artists playing after us all just pressed >play< and nodded their head for the rest of the time... Mixmaster Mike is the Bruce Lee on his turntables, I just love turntablism...
Oscilator: When did Upitup Records started to work and what is your mission?
Upitup: First of all, we're really happy to hear you're interested in our project. It actually developed a self dynamic character, as we are growing here and there, all kinds of people get in touch with us - and if we share the same philosophy (and more) we welcome anybody to our UpTown. In fact, every artist who joins us for a certain amount of time and obviously enriches our collective becomes a stable member and shall be built an own house at upitup.com (however we haven't had time yet...).
Anyhow, Up It Up Records saw the light this year, precisely in March, (even if the idea behind it has been lurking in our minds since we were teenagers?) and is an independent electronic (we prefer the adjective "emotronic") label based in Rome(Italy) and Stuttgart (Germany), managed by the four UpMayors : Pierlooqup, Isocore, Jacques MalChance and Tracky Birthday.
The main purpose of this label is to fuse emotional and played music with electronic beats of any kind, publishing albums(so far our first "All Nights Reversed" upcd01 has almost sold out ) and releasing ep's (upfrees) that can be freely downloaded from our UpTown (http://www.upitup.com/pages/upgratis/may.php) or from our Hotline server "Monty's Bar" listed on "tracker.sunwave.com".
The musical genres we propose are various, and go under the name of emotronic, since is the common element of all our artists' music? When looking at our first cd, a compilation called "All Nights Reversed", you'll find artists from most different corners of the world: Netherlands, Canada, Italy, Australia, Germany, Japan? and so are the styles: from delicate bossanova sounds to glitchy 8 bit Hammond smashing plus mayonese melting broken beats? that's how we like it! That's up it up.
Oscilator: Please tell me more about Upitup Collective project and will you expand it further?
Upitup: The "Upitup Collective" (you can hear their live debut at F.E.A.R. festival here: (http://www.upitup.com/pages/upgratis/live/upfree05.php) is a team that has been thought expressly for live acts, with the intent to play "instrumentalized emotronica", and is formed by Upitup's roster artists (pierlooqup, isocore, jacques malchance, tracky birthday, no:id_boy, ...) plus the unmissable instrumental aid provided by "The Uptowners" which is a very cute formation featuring our close friends (lele, riccardo, matan) whose only fault is to be too expensive to move! :)
For the future, Upitup records will surely release another upfree ,hopefully recorded in studio, by our beloved collective; in the meanwhile, they're currently preparing for forthcoming live acts.
Oscilator: Did you get any feedback from the audience or from the press?
Upitup: All I can say is that after our little gig in Rome last June, the people who were there were amazed by the fact that we played live instruments on stage to our rather electronic music; not only that the artists playing after us all just pressed >play< and nodded their head for the rest of the time- I think the audience felt the different aspects and styles in our music (first time we played together- no rehearsals!) pretty interesting for it came out to be original, weird, moody, good, bad etc. It was definitely fun. You can freely download it from the upfree05 page, and take a look at the pics taken that night to see our nice faces.. :)
Jokes apart, we actually had a really positive feedback, mostly from independent radio shows here in Rome, such as Radio Citta' Aperta's "The Zone" and Radio Onda Rossa's "SpaceLab" where in both cases we had a really nice interview and received many appreciations for our live debut (in some cases we've been told to be "the best live act of that festival"), which definitely leads us to get more and more willing to go on with this project. Outside Italy, we've also had a good interview by those crazy folks @ Radio Freies Stuttgart , "Hyperground" show, who are really supporting us spreading the voice across Germany, and our upfrees are still in some (all across Europe) radioshow's playlists. And we're really glad of this.
Oscilator: What are your plans for the future (releases, live performances...)?
Upitup: We're currently preparing the release of 8 "upfrees from various (old and new) upitup artists like: Isocore, Jacques Malchance, NoId Boy, Jonas The Plugexpert, Rufus Mendelbrock (new*), Moiex Beat (new), Lele (still don't have a name)(new) and Tracky Birthday. And maybe an "Upitup Collective" upfree for the late future? These upfrees are all scheduled to be released before February 2004.
On the other side, our second cd release will be "Pierlooqup - Meccani$mo ++ - Upcd02" (out Jan.2004) and it features Pierlooqup's solo album ( "Meccani$mo") + + remixes by Isocore, Jacques Malchance, Tracky Birthday, NoidBoy, Machinedrum (tbc), Moiex Beat and Jonas the Plugexpert (tracklist tbc)... Other Projects are on the way such as crossed co-operations between upitup artists (in order to create all the possible emotronic possibilities!), try to produce more videos for our songs, and of course we're looking forward to find a good way to spread our music all over the world?
In this very moment we have to self-distribute our cds , and we all wish that soon we can afford to take a real distribution! Talking about the live shows, we must say that we are playing mainly in our base-town Rome for the moment? even if some of our artists are active in their zones of influence (such as Jonas The Plugexpert that plays very often in Holland, or Tracky Birthday who ups it up in Stuttgart [Germany] which is the place where he lives)? if we'll win some tv quiz or things like that we'll surely organize a world tour no worries :)
Oscilator: Would you name some of the artists that you liked or find interesting in the last few years?
Upitup: We decided to split the answers so that everyone of us could express his own musical background:
- Isocore's influences: Tortoise, Venetian Snares (eh eh !), Team Doyobi and Prefuse 74.
- Tracky Birthday's : Kid Koala's "Some of my Best Friends are Dj?s" is the last lp i bought and it's a milestone in modern music for its a mixture of jazz and satire. Aphex Twin?s "Windowlicker" is still my favourite song, and Chris Cunningham made the best video to it. When Bodenständig 2000 came out with their "Maxi German Rave Blast Hits 3" i couldn't stop laughing for days- they were approximately the first ones to start making music in 8-bit amiga style. They rock man it's unbelievable. Mixmaster Mike is the Bruce Lee on his turntables; I just love turntablism (am a dj) like "The Invisible Scratch Piklz" or Rob Swift.
- Pierlooqup's: Nick Drake, Rufus Mandelbrock, Tortoise, Matthew Herbert, Plaid.
- Jacques Malchance's: Leafcutter John, Kiyo, Squarepusher, Super_Collider.
http://www.upitup.com
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