(This article was originally
written for North and South magzine, but is unpublished)
Kog Transmissions is the
name of a collective of enterprising young long haired musicians, who
specialise in making and releasing dance music.
Within an astonishingly short space of time, they have established themselves
on the local music scene, with little or no help from the music industry.
They have done it all their own way, setting up their own recording studio,
releasing their cds on their own label, and selling them at their own
cd launch gigs; you pay $15 to get into the gig and get a cd to take home
with you. It's great value for money, and a great night out. The business
equation reads like this: they manufacture 500 cd's, get 500 people along
to their gig, and hey presto, their cd sells out in one night, rather
than sitting in record shops for months and months. Last year the Kog
team released one cd a month, a very ambitious plan, but one that paid
off handsomely, rapidly building a loyal following for their musical activities.
This clever technique bought them to the attention of major record label
Universal Music, who offered to step in and help with the distribution
of their cd's around the country.
"We started the studio about three and a half years ago", says Chris Chetland
of Kog, "when we moved into this warehouse (situated in Kingsland, Auckland).
Back when we started the studio we had a Metal band at the time (the delightfully
named Raw Meat For The Balcony), and we wanted to record our own album,
and were getting more into the technology side of music. All the people
here knew each other for quite a few years before that, because we all
went to school together, and had been in bands together." They mostly
went to Sacred Heart, aligning them with a musical legacy that includes
such local music luminaries as Dave Dobbyn, Tim and Neil Finn, Rikki and
Ian Morris, Peter Urlich, who also attended that school.
Fellow Kog member Andrew Manning says that "Kog is a place to pool talents;
we try to enjoy what we're doing as much as we can, we don't work with
anyone we don't like. It's a group of friends, basically." Chetland notes
that "By the fact that you're enjoying doing something, you do far better
at it." The Kog collective is comprised of six people, most of who live
and work together in the Kog warehouse.
Overseas dj's who have visited Kog have been amazed to see them doing
everything in-house, unlike the standard methods where the tasks of music
production get farmed out; recording, mastering, cd-rom, artwork, video
etc are all done on site at the Kog warehouse, hence, they have a lot
of creative control over what they do. Also, having their own studio means
never having to pay for studio time, which usually costs up to $150 per
hour. Chris estimates that to set up a computer based recording studio
would cost $10,000 for new equipment and software, or under $3,000 second
hand. This is where computers are making it much easier for musicians
to have their own home studio, bypassing the traditional methods of recording
in expensive studios, where your creativity is hampered by constantly
watching the clock, as your money ticks away.
Musically, the Kog releases have been exploring various musical styles
within the dance genre: Chris says "Every release we do is in a different
style, which from our point of view is interesting, because you get to
learn a different style of music each time, and you get to meet people
out of that particular scene. And if someone likes say one of our releases
that is in the House style, then maybe they'll trust us and try another
one of our releases, like Pitch Black, so it breaks down a lot of those
barriers."
That diversity runs from Mark de Clive Lowes jazzy dance to Pitch Black's
reggae/techno, to Epsilon Blue's melodic trance, to Baitercells drum n
bass. They have also ventured into commercials, doing music for Sky TV,
Saatchis, Telecom, and tv shows like Havoc, Queer Nation, and even reworking
the Holmes Show theme for their feature on dance music.
Chris has studied complex systems theory and philosophy at university,
which has influenced their business approach. "It's like looking at it
more from that angle, rather than the standard, strict hierarchical business
structures that a lot of businesses operate on. It's like the elephant
and the mouse; one is big and lumbering and can squash you, but if you
can keep on moving around, you're always evolving, continuously and and
quickly there is never a fixed point, you never become a dead state. being
able to offer new angles means you can offer a fresh perspective.
"It's the number 8 wire
approach; you might not have all the super slick gear, but you just find
different ways of doing it. We're putting it (the music) out there in
the first place in ways that are unconventional, but also getting really
good placement in that environment. We could've done it the standard record
company way, where you do one release a year, put huge amounts of money
in, and wait for it to trickle back in over the next year, or you can
pay it all off in one night. We just reconfigured the rules to suit ourselves,
rather than just do it like any other record label.
" When you look at any system, you assess what anyone else has done,
then you look for different pathways that you can bypass the things that
don't fit what you are doing. We wanted to get lots of music out there,
and there was no way we could do it using the standard mechanisms that
record labels operate under, or most businesses, in fact. By treating
it less mechanically and more organically, it grows itself."
Kog are currently putting together a cd for The Gathering, an annual dance
party held on Takaka Hill out of Nelson. This is the second year they
have compiled a cd for this event, highlighting some of the leading lights
in the local electronic music scene, who have also played at The Gathering.
The first cd was supported by tv advertising from Universal, and sold
over 3,000 copies. For more information on their releases, visit www.kog.co.nz,
or check out your local record store.
© 1999 Peter
McLennan
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