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The benefits of netlabels in a (very) large country are obvious; those same advantages, in fact, were already discernible in the early evolution of the web. As a distribution device, netlabels first emerged in a consequential fashion towards the end of the 1990s, ironically as the Russian economy was about to collapse - swiftly and dramatically. Soon afterwards piracy would begin to feed - vulture-like - upon the remains of the entertainment industry. In other words, as the traditional delivery systems of high-street shops, fixed mailing addresses, and hard media dwindled away, netlabels and mp3s were well placed to fill the resulting vacuum.
Nonetheless, the freedoms of the web can be overwhelming. Connecting digital liberties to any kind of discernible consequence is a frustrating task; put differently, the challenge of attracting traffic through a small netlabel's site can be great and, therefore, some local foundation is useful.
That local linkage might be between a label's artists and a real-world performance venue, say, or between musicians who reside in the same town. Any bond to physical geography will immediately increase the likelihood that one's friends, neighbors, and even compatriots will pass through a label's pages.
Tangible geography can help to "brand" an ethereal, vagrant project online.
Nonetheless, throwing all caution to the wind, the brave souls at 7.1.6 Records try very hard not to link their efforts to a specific town, region - or nation, even. They float with marked abandon across the borderless waters of the web. Unperturbed by anonymity, they even romanticize that homelessness.
Attached to most of the label's venues is a small text in English. That same text, however, is extremely difficult to understand. Buffed, polished, and bent into shape, it could read as follows:
"Our music does not recognize today's borders. It recognizes neither frameworks nor nationality. We strive for a creative realization in sound; we even aspire to fall outside the limits of long-established styles and genres. This new age of sonic creativity allows each and every one of us to express our individuality!"
Our music does not recognize today's borders. It recognizes neither frameworks nor nationality
Selfhood, in a word, is best expressed in emptiness. It does not, we're informed, benefit from any association with a given place. (Especially if the police are watching; anonymity has its benefits.)
This devil-may-care flight from specificity is extended as follows: "Individuality is the main criterion of 7.1.6's selection process. We seek no form of benefit [from running the label]. We neither pose questions nor seek answers. We simply want to draw attention to artists who - in our opinion - are talented, despite the fact they're unknown."
The one 7.1.6 artist about whom we've written most recently is Maksim "Delmaind" Andrevich from Togliatti. When showcasing his work, we remarked that he likes to explain his creative raison d'etre with a few quotes from foreign models, each of which celebrates that same proud isolation. His favorite source of inspiration is Michael Jackson.
We noted how DelMaind uses one of those quotations as "proof that a distance from busy social spheres - or massed music - is no guarantee of peace and (creative) quiet. The opposite may be true. Solitude breeds unrelenting perfectionism."
Jackson's words read: "In the end, the most important thing is to be true to yourself - and those you love - and work hard. Work like there’s no tomorrow. Train! Strive! Really train and cultivate your talent to the highest degree. Be the best at what you do. Get to know more about your field than anybody alive. Use the tools of your trade, if it’s books or a floor to dance on... or a body of water to swim in. Whatever it is, it’s yours. That’s what I’ve always tried to remember.”
Be the best at what you do. Get to know more about your field than anybody alive
Here we can start to see the logic behind 7.1.6's happy homelessness. A total absence of colleagues or competitors might suggest that you've left them all behind in a cloud of dust. Group leaders see nobody in front of them.
What's interesting, though, is that the very same quote is also used by another of the 7.1.6 artists: Igor' Fedoseev, known as Deep Play. Although he'd rather not advertise his home address, Mr. Fedoseev can be traced to the city of Ufa, almost one thousand miles to the south of Moscow.
This is far from the only saying used to frame the work of Deep Play - or 7.1.6 as a whole. None of the other artists on the 7.1.6 roster are terribly keen on writing anything, whether it regards their location or discography. We include two of those silent colleagues in this post, LeOnid_US from Novosibirsk and Nesq from Ekaterinburg.
Instead of total noiselessness, Mr. Fedoseev offers us more quotations.
The most recent of them comes courtesy of F. Scott Fitzgerald, praising the value of fantasy and imagination over ostensible reality. This jolly outlook is then bolstered by a couple of other aphorisms, taken from unrelated times and social contexts. Leaning upon Voltaire, Fedoseev holds that: "Man is free at the moment he wishes to be." And then, zipping with abandon into an even older timeframe, he quotes Marcus Aurelius: "Our life is what our thoughts make it."
There are, however, some moments of sobering reality when we encounter the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg thrown into the mix: "Those who do not move, do not notice their chains." Only by exercising one's freedom does one realize the limits of actuality.
Freedom, therefore, is paradoxically tied to the constraints of actuality. Liberty, according to that same logic, is indeed mental or affective, whereas physical action has sobering limits.
As they say in Russian, you can't jump higher than your head.
Where, then, is the ideal line between a perceived liberty and its actual limitations? Some of Mr. Fedoseev's gathered quotes - although seemingly contradictory - do actually merge as a cohesive worldview in order to answer that question. The resulting outlook might be summarized as follows, creating a rasion d'etre for 7.1.6 in the process.
In short, these pithy truisms serve to celebrate a sensation of unfettered movement that comes from web-based enterprise, but they also admit that objective and physical reality are often a burden.
This, surely, is the core structure of romanticism: reverie over reality, together with a sobering (even repressed) admission that the latter state will have the upper hand, sooner or later.
And yet, aware of that possible - if not inevitable - failure, the tightlipped members of 7.1.6 venture forth quoting Elbert Green Hubbard as they do so: "To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing." Our musicians indeed say nothing, but their efforts are impressive. Something in the local diet provides the necessary energy.
Lest those same efforts lead to undesired consequences - and lest our musicians' enthusiasm breed mistakes - a philosophy of failure has also been sketched with a suitable turn of phrase.
Thanks to Oscar Wilde, the folks at 7.1.6 can trumpet their belief that "Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." Merging - in the strangest of fashions! - Michael Jackson, an Irish satirist, and a Polish revolutionary, we reach the worldview that stands behind the silent, often homeless operations of 7.1.6. In the simplest terms, it can be paraphrased as: Work hard and don't be discouraged by failure, since each fiasco is an opportunity to grow both fitter and stronger.
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future
As a result of all these famous thoughts, we have an operating procedure or dialectic, even, between spontaneity and organization, as Rosa Luxemburg famously theorized. That relationship between impulse and social logic was designed to advance the progress of an entire working class. It should suffice for a netlabel.
From a city that would rather remain nameless.
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