21/07/2016
Hello,
A lot of people are wondering what is up with Ad Noiseam at the moment. Friends, colleagues, customers or strangers have emailed me or posted public messages asking about the lack of releases, of shipments and of news since the beginning of 2016. Here is finally something which might work as a public explanation of sort. It comes late, much too late; not because I was ignoring questions, but because I had neither the time nor the peace of mind necessary to sit down and write it.
A short detail to start with: the reason why this text is full of “I” and “me” is simple. Ad Noiseam is and has always be the work of only one person, without any employee, trainee, outside funding or more support than the very welcome helping hand of a friend for a few hours. I've taken all the creative decisions, packed each and every CD and record, wrote all the invoices, kept the whole thing together and take the sole responsibility for any blunder.
After having run the label non-stop and with a lot of enthusiasm since 2001, I had the feeling of hitting a wall in 2014, for a variety of reasons. The highlights of the 2011 and 2012 celebrations had passed, I grew more critical towards music genres which were not appealing to me anymore, the business side of things was still going downwards, and the Berlin-scene (a continued source of energy and ideas) changed drastically. Closing on the 200th release on the label, I felt stuck in a hamster-wheel, working totally alone and losing the flame little by little. There were, of course, plenty of great moments in 2014 and 2015, but I had had been doing the same thing for 15 years and was finding running an indie label out of a packed-up little office less rewarding than before.
What happened in the end of 2015 was a surprise, unplanned and sudden. I didn't know what to do back then and thought that it would take me a lot longer to find a solution. I was offered a totally different job literally overnight: one evening I was volunteering to set-up an emergency shelter for refugees who would have otherwise slept in the street, the next morning I was employed to work for a massive refugee camp on the outskirts of Berlin. It all came without planning and without an idea of how long it would go for, how it could be balanced with Ad Noiseam, or exactly what it was that I was embarking on. All of a sudden and since the end of 2015, my mind was taken by completely different questions than before. The bombings survivors, the witness of massacres, the war widows, the displaced families, the threatened but hopeful political activists and the hopeless and forgotten displaced are now the people I spend most of my time awake with.
I was able at first to somewhat manage this new job and Ad Noiseam at the same time, as a lot of non-professional musicians and label owners do, but lost both the energy and the time to do so early in 2016. What I had started proved to be very time-intensive and emotionally draining. Spend 60 hours a week in the hotbed of sadness and need that is a refugee camp, you won't be able to do any actual work on a music label in the evening. And worse: you won't find the energy or the words to explain what happened to people to whom Ad Noiseam represents a lot. The music business (and even more the indie one) puts a very high value on the ability to keep face and never show a crack (in other words, it is often a “dick-measuring contest of coolness”). I knew that admitting that things had changed would make them change even more, I did not know what was coming ahead of me, and I didn't have the time to actually sit and think about it all; this is why it took so long for this text to get written.
This is what happened and what changed. As to the present: I am still busier than I have ever been, still working with people in extreme need of help and still investing most of my mind and energy for them. But I also still have obligations towards all the people who have asked me about Ad Noiseam, the customers who have ordered records, or the artists who I have worked with. And every time I think about this situation, I realize that I want to keep Ad Noiseam alive, that (good) music is incredibly important to me, but also that I still do not know how to balance both activities.
What were you doing in 2001? Chances are you had a very different life than the one you have in 2016. Most of you have moved to a new city or a new country, have changed jobs, have met new partners, or have taken another important turn. Whatever the most naive (or the most self-convinced) actors of the indie music business will tell you, things change a lot and nobody will be writing the same music or playing the same gigs at 60 as they did at 25. Plenty of musicians have quit, many clubs have turned the lights off, numerous labels have stopped. More than six months after having started something new, I realize that this kind of change happen (and must happen if one wants to stay sane). None of us who work alone in the field of music owe much to the scene as a whole. In other words, I do not intend and do not see it as realistic to go back to the days of 2014 (or earlier).
Now for what is coming ahead: on the long term, I wish to keep Ad Noiseam alive and to still have this name stand for quality electronic music in a form or another. However, I have neither a precise plan nor a calendar. I currently miss the time and energy I used to have to dedicate to music, and I hope that I will find a way to get both back. But I also need to eat my pride and admit that things will not go back to what they were. On the short term, I want (and will) dedicate more time to solve all the problems that months of imposed silence have brought. I want to ship all the records that were ordered, answer the emails that were sent, get back to all the friends who were worried and find a way to solve this all adequately with musicians, fellow labels and distributors. I do not know how long it will take, but I'll work hard so that nobody feels left out or cheated.
The fact that I can write this text today doesn't mean that I now have more time or energy than a month or two ago. My days are still extremely long and draining. To cut a long story short (and this text is already probably too long), Ad Noiseam is entering (and has already entered) a period of deep-freeze. The time I will have for the label now will be dedicated to solving the current and pressing matters. If you have unfinished business with the label at the moment, I will get back to you, but I can not yet say when. However, Ad Noiseam is not dead and has no intention on dying. There will be new music coming out, it will be good and it will be done in a way respectful of the musicians and the fans. But before it does, I need to be able to treat everybody well.
I am deeply sorry for the silence in the last months and take the whole responsibility for it on myself. Sorry for the f**k-up, people. I needed a change but when it came, it caught me off guard and swept me away too quickly. It's a mutation and not a death, though. Thanks for hanging up with Ad Noiseam so far and in the future.
Nicolas Chevreux, July 21st, 2016
PS: one of the good thing of almost quitting the indie music scene is that I am more or less not at all on social media anymore. Not checking Facebook and Twitter does a man a lot of good. It also means, though, that I will be more than sluggish in reading or reacting to answers to this text.
