The word immersive is over-used. But listening to new recordings of Milton Babbittâs âPhilomelâ is a disorientating, vertiginous experience. The listener finds themselves plunged, instantly, into an all-encompassing sound world in which bloops and gurgles of electronic sound appear to come from all possible angles, anchored by the central node of Juliet Fraserâs soaring solo voice.
Along with a cut of Luigi Nonoâs âLa Fabbrica Illuminataâ sung by LorĂ© Lixemberg, itâs one of a pair of digital-only releases from the new label all that dust, recorded using binaural microphones. âBoth of those pieces were originally for solo singer and four channel surround, so the audience member is right in the middle of this 3D experience,â says Newton Armstrong, who engineered, mixed, and mastered the releases. âWith binaural microphones, you can actually create this 3D impression in headphones. This has never been done before. So thatâs why we say that these are for headphone listening. Please donât play them on your loudspeakers.â
Along with Mark Knoop, who produced the recordings, Armstrong and Fraser are the founders of all that dust, which is based in London and focused on contemporary music. Artist run (Armstrong, Fraser, and Knoop are all performers or composers themselves, with an extensive catalogue of their own recordings), and with an initial burst of funding coming via Kickstarter campaign, all that dust is a determinedly grassroots venture, deeply embedded in the community its recordings represent.
The plan is to release a small batch of carefully curated releases, once a year, across both digital and physical formats. Alongside the digital-only Nono and Babbit, their first crop also includes CD releases of âFor John Cageâ by Morton Feldman, performed by Knoop and violinist Aisha Orazbayeva; Matthew Shlomowitzâs âAvant Muzakâ performed by Norwegian ensemble Asamisimasa; and solo cellist SĂ©verine Ballonâs debut playing her own compositions, âInconnaissance.â In each case, these are new recordings, produced in-house by the labelâs founders with an emphasis on the highest possible quality.
That attention to detail is evident across the initial batch of releases. âFor John Cageâ has a clarity and physical presence absent in previous recordings. âInconnaissanceâ offers up a heady susurrus of gritty and grainy string textures, all brought to the surface with extraordinary clarity. Avant-Muzak sounds as effervescent as the varied popular styles it draws on for material. Itâs an achievement all the greater considering how busy all three of the labelâs founders are doing other things. I was fortunate to catch up with all three of them recently over ice-cold lemonade in a North London cafe, on one of Londonâs hottest ever days .
VAN: How do you three know each other in the first place?
Mark Knoop: Newton and I have known each other for 25 years. We met in Melbourneâs burgeoning new music scene in the early â90s. I had come from Hobart and I think Newton had written a piece for LIBRA Contemporary Ensemble. That piece with all the click tracksâŠ
Newton Armstrong: Which will remain unnamedâŠ
Knoop: Not that it was a bad pieceâŠ
Armstrong: There was a meltdown at one of the performancesâŠ.So we knew each other then, but we lost touch for a good decade or so because we were living in different parts of the world. Mark moved here around about the same time I moved to the U.S. And then I moved here and we got in touch again and actually we started working together a lot.
Juliet Fraser: I was set up with Mark by Matthew Shlomowitz. We first worked together in 2011, with Plus-Minus Ensemble. Basically, I got sucked into the Australian mafia, courtesy of Matthew, and have been there ever since, really.
Knoop: The token non-Australian!
Fraser: Mark and I have been performing together as a duo since 2013. And Newton and I did various things together, the biggest of which was Feldmanâs âThree Voices.â
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So in a way both Feldman and Shlomowitz, whose music is featured on this first batch of CDs, are part of the story of how you came together as a group. What was it that prompted the idea of setting up a label yourselves?
Fraser: Newton and I were in the Scilly Isles. We were chewing over the issues and joys of trying to make recordings with other record labels and ended up saying, âI feel like we could do this and make a better deal for the artist.â Having been on the other side of itâall of usâwith various labels, one of the main frustrations is the time lag. Because normally you have to make the recording before you call the label. So how you pay for that is a big issue. You have to persuade a label to take it on. Then thereâs inevitably a delay of nine to 18 months before they actually release it. It can be a full two years before something actually comes out, which, for working artists, is just so slow. You never feel like youâre actually presenting the work that youâre doing at that point.
Armstrong: There are also often frustrations with choices about mixing and masteringâespecially if that is something that you already do, and itâs been handed off to a label that has their own in-house engineer and then it comes back and you listen to that master and break out in a cold sweat.
When you started, did you have a clear idea of what you wanted the identity of the label to be?
Knoop: I think we had a feeling but itâs always hard to articulate that. We know what the label isnât. There are probably types of music that we wouldnât put out. But I think thereâs quite a lot of music that we would like to release. And one of the challenges with each batch is trying to find something thatâs balanced. If you just record Feldman, then you easily become one of those labels. And we wanted to be clear that we werenât just beingâŠthat. We want to cover classics. We want to cover contemporary repertoire. We want to cover a bit of semi-improvised music. We donât want to exclude by genre.
Armstrong: And with the classics, the idea is that weâre only going to do them if we really feel like theyâre contributing something new. With the Babbitt and the Nono in particular, there are approaches that weâve taken there that werenât previously possible.
Fraser: We felt there was really room for a fresh look at thatâa cleaner look, actually, because so much has evolved since the original recordings. And to start adding a bit to the performance history, to give them new life.
Armstrong: There was an aspect of going back and really spending a lot of time cleaning up and remastering the tape parts, taking out the ground hum, putting on some pre-echo. Still trying to retain a fairly analogue sound but with a much cleaner overall mix. All this detail starts to pop out.

What about the name of the label, all that dust. Where does that come from?
Fraser: It was a private joke that was a working title when we were flirting with the idea of having a label. And then it stuck.
Knoop: It doesnât really mean anything.
It makes me think of dust on the surface of a vinyl record for instance. If youâre talking about some of these older pieces that might not have been recorded for half a century, the previous media they could be found on might itself have been quite dusty, and youâre sweeping that all away.
Fraser: Everybody thinks itâs something different, which I really like. It makes me think of the things at the edges, which is a nice image for contemporary classical music. Itâs somehow where we areâat the margins.
Armstrong: Someone was asking me the other week if it was buying into this idea of ruins that runs through a lot of contemporary German music. Thereâs the famous [Helmut] Lachenmann piece, âStaubâ [âDustâ]âŠitâs not by the way!
Fraser: Somebody asked me if it was a play on All That JazzâŠ
What is the function of a record label in an age when any artist can put their own recordings directly onto Bandcamp or Soundcloud?
Knoop: I suppose it does come back to that sense of curating something, showing people something that they might not think ofâMatthew Shlomowitz, Feldman and SĂ©verine sitting together. They inform each other. We like to see the links between those musics. If they come to it through one of those, then hopefully they might discover the others.
Armstrong: Often with record labels, you see a fairly loose wider culture emerge around it too. And that becomes part of a labelâs identity. Thereâs this constellation of activity that exists around them and you come to know the artists through that. Itâs part of what makes the scene. And I think that weâre probably doing the same thing. Having Shlomowitz alongside Feldmanâthereâs something in that. Itâs not just a statement. Itâs generative somehow.
Fraser: I do think thereâs a difference for the artist as well between putting something up on Bandcamp and having it out on a label. If I put something up on Bandcamp, nothingâs going to happen. But, for me, the impact of my âThree Voicesâ releases on Hat Hut was huge! Thereâs something about being on a record label, being supported by an entity other than the artist, that undoubtedly makes a big difference for the artist.
Knoop: There is still the validation there.
Is that also partly why you decided to do actual physical mediaâbecause it adds a certain legitimacy?
Fraser: Yes, I think so. It just makes it a bit more real. ¶
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