Second Language

In an era when the ways of consuming music have profoundly changed, increasingly untethered from the consubstantiality of the physical format, launching a new record label might seem like just another sign of a market in which similar ventures are born and vanish in the blink of an eye. In the case of Second Language, though, this is something built with longevity in mind – not only the music's, but above all that of the objects that contain it – as an ideal answer to the need for something to offer those who, in a romantic gesture, refuse to give up buying records and who want something more tangible than a folder of scattered files on a hard drive to bear witness to the music they love.

Bucking the current trend in the record industry, Englishmen Glen Johnson (Piano Magic) and David Sheppard (journalist, writer, and one half of the duo Phelan Sheppard), together with the Dane Martin Holm, launch the Second Language project, a label defined by absolute artistic independence, extremely limited runs, and distinctive packaging made from hand-assembled recycled materials.

It all begins in mid-2009, when Glen Johnson announces on his Myspace page a new album from his electronic project Textile Ranch, specifying that it would be a "subscription" record, for which anyone interested could make a voluntary contribution that, above a certain amount, would entitle the donor to receive a copy of the album with their own name printed on it.

The album, "Tombola", would be released at the end of that year as a series of "unique editions", since no two copies would share an identical tracklist: each would be made up of tracks pulled at random from Johnson's computer, and every copy would feature a track titled "Sketch For…", completed each time with the name of whoever was to receive it.

Alongside this, the idea takes shape for a more structured subscription label, run on the same logic of an upfront payment guaranteeing a minimum number of releases to be delivered as they came out over the course of 2010 – all of them limited, and thus hard to find outside the label's direct distribution channel. But what sets Second Language apart isn't just its limited editions: above all, it's the genuine cult of the object tied to its releases, expressed each time through the packaging and the small extras included within it, ranging from miniature books to subway tickets, from underground maps to magnifying glasses, right up to cases where the packaging itself becomes the pretext for bundling the CDs with bound booklets styled like books, or with carefully curated fanzines featuring lengthy interviews with the artists involved in the label's releases.

A further point of great interest is the way Second Language has fostered a kind of artistic "inner circle", made up of friends and collaborators of its founders, yet open to discovering plenty of new names, as well as to musicians ready to embrace its philosophy and stylistically in tune with its extremely broad range of interests – loosely summed up under the label electro-acoustic, spanning everything from ambient-drone to modern classical, without neglecting forays into folk roots and oblique songwriting. Precisely for this reason, the label's venture appears all the more courageous and thoroughly modern, while at the same time "out of step" with the present, a thousand miles removed from the perverse logic of hit-and-run listening, from the dematerialization of music and its increasingly fragmented, solitary creation.

A little over twelve months on from its first proper release (the compilation "Music And Migration"), and coinciding with the start of its second year of releases (with the ambitious compilation of sixty sixty-second miniatures, "Minute Papillon"), the time has come to take stock of the label's activity and dig deeper into the thinking behind it. We do so through a rundown of its releases and, above all, through the words of Glen Johnson and David Sheppard.

How did the idea come about to go it alone and start your own label? And why did you choose such unusual formats?

David Sheppard: It grew out of two things coming together: the beautifully crafted packaging Glen was preparing for a limited edition of Textile Ranch, made specifically for his fans (which ended up becoming the first Second Language release), and the “Music And Migration” project — an awareness campaign in support of BirdLife International, put together by Martin Holm on MySpace with a series of gorgeous exclusive tracks. All three of us contributed recordings to that project. For both aesthetic and charitable reasons, we thought that compilation could work as a proper record in its own right, and that’s where the idea came from: a select audience and great music in beautifully crafted packaging. Second Language grew out of all that — we hadn’t planned on starting this family, but suddenly we found ourselves the parents of a small, lively record label!

In some ways it might look like an anti-commercial choice, especially for someone like Glen, who has a large and devoted fanbase: was that something you factored in when you set up the label?

DS: Glen should answer that from his own point of view, but personally I don’t see Second Language as an anti-commercial venture. Glen and I both worked in record labels for many years, and from personal experience we know all the hidden pitfalls of the business. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that in the digital age the old economic and promotional models for records are dying. New, innovative approaches are now a necessity.

People still want music, and plenty of them are still willing to pay for it rather than download it for free, provided they get something worth the money, something worth more than a ridiculous mp3 file. That’s where our ideas about elaborate packaging come from. Glen, Martin and I all buy CDs — we grew up in an era when buying music meant owning albums that were art for the eyes as well as the ears, objects to be venerated and to influence you afterwards, not throwaway, disposable things, idle entertainment.

We wanted Second Language to be the complete antithesis of downloading music: records that are once again physical objects to be kept and cared for.

Glen Johnson: As David says, I wouldn’t look at Second Language as an anti-commercial venture. Anti-conventional, maybe? I worked for an independent label for nine years and, even though it put out great music, I constantly felt frustrated because it kept looking more and more like a major: answering machines, huge offices, dull packaging, bootlicking journalists and record shops, selling off great music for next to nothing, throwing money away without the slightest respect for the essence of art. Back then, very few independent labels were even thinking about an alternative, but the internet has really thrown the doors wide open in that sense, and labels have to find a way to adapt.

The conventional music industry was doomed the moment the internet came into play.

Is it better to have a small, loyal “customer” base to whom you're guaranteed to sell records through subscription, or to aim at an undefined “market”?

DS: “Better” is a pretty subjective term here, and so is “small”. Having a number of subscribers guarantees a certain amount of liquidity, and therefore the means to put projects together. In other words, it gives us momentum. We’re not driven by profit at any cost (which might come as a shock to the venal world of the capitalist market!), but we're not starry-eyed hippy idealists either. Of course we’d love to have thousands of subscribers, and we’re steadily heading in that direction (though once we have that many supporters we’ll probably have to open some kind of craft workshop just to make our “products”. It’s a “problem” we’d be happy to deal with, though…).

Between the 150 copies of “Music For Smalls Lighthouse” and the thousand copies of “Serenades & Serinettes”, what determines the pressing run for each release?

DS: To be honest, it’s mostly determined by demand and by how much work goes into the packaging, although, of course, we have a huge marketing department that spends weeks researching focus groups and building computer models of consumer trends.

Actually, none of that is true at all!

The distinctive, handmade packaging is one of Second Language’s trademarks: whose idea was the artwork behind this year’s releases?

DS: As I was saying, we’re fascinated by the approach and aesthetic of record labels from the 70s and 80s, like Factory and Les Disques du Crepuscule, and by publishers such as Constellation, Preservation and Moteer, who treat visual presentation as an essential part of the record. We study packaging and its related graphic concepts closely and constantly.

Glen in particular has an irrepressible passion for this stuff and is always on the hunt for new materials, but we all pitch in. Sometimes it's about finding the right designer or artist to help turn a concept into an object, so we search for and maintain a dialogue with a network of professionals who take care of the visual side.

How do you choose the materials to use? And how many people, in practice, actually put together these little "objects"?

DS: We look for unique models, either taking them from existing artifacts or creating our own, but we always try to make sure the material of our packaging – whether it's paper, cardboard, fabric, fiberglass or anything else – has a certain quality and is visually and tactilely appealing. Making the packaging is a Herculean labour, which is why we rope in band members, girlfriends and friends for the grunt work, around six or seven people at a time, though credit really has to go to Glen and Angèle, who go above and beyond in the production process. We've all become pretty decent with glue guns and paper-folding and cutting gadgets… working at Second Language is basically a crash course in craftsmanship!

I'm really curious about the objects included in the packages, like the subway ticket in "Ghost Stations", the lens in "Tombola", the embroidery in "Music And Migration", etc.: where do you find all these little things?

DS: That's mostly down to Glen again, who spends a lot of time rummaging through markets and small shops looking for appealing materials. We've got a whole mountain of these objects that keeps growing. For "Music And Migration" a dear Spanish friend of ours offered to embroider the birds, and the illustrations were donated by a well-known Danish bird illustrator. We're not strict about doing everything rigorously "in house" – we're happy to commission this kind of work out to others.

GJ: I spend a lot of time thinking "how can we make this release special?". There's nothing more boring than a booklet in a jewel case or a digipack. Artists and labels should stay as far away as possible from those bloody plastic things, shops need to forget about stocking systems that only cater to anonymous formats, and labels need to stop propping up that system. You can package a record in absolutely anything, so why so much eco-unfriendly plastic packaging? So much packaging is just a way for the designer to show off, all it really says is "look how good I am at using Photoshop or InDesign"!

All this care put into the cd-as-object seems to point towards a rediscovery of the physical format, and above all the pleasure of holding something tangible and unique in your hands. Do you think there's still room today for the cd-as-object?

DS: I think I already answered that one earlier.

GJ: Will people ever get tired of something unique and tangible? Plenty would say yes, of course. Lots of people prefer eating at places like McDonald's, and in the same way, lots of people don't seem at all tired of how records get packaged. But the choice is there: McDonald's or a Michelin-starred restaurant.

Alongside plenty of fairly well-known artists in the scene, the two compilations also include some completely new names (Enderby's Room, 30Km Inland, etc.) and some welcome returns from seasoned artists (Pete Astor's, above all); how did you get in touch with them, and above all, how did you discover the new ones?

DS: A lot of these artists are friends of ours, acquaintances, or have some connection to one of the projects we've worked on over the years. Others are musicians whose work we like, and we ask them to record for us, just like any label would. We're in the fortunate position where, so far, they've always said yes.

In fact, they often come to us offering new recordings – we've already got the next six or seven releases lined up, and in the longer term we've got some really exciting things in the pipeline. We really do feel lucky in that respect.

Still on the subject of the compilations, "Vertical Integration" was conceived both as a musical collection and as a magazine, including interviews with each of the artists involved. Do you think talking or writing about music can still enhance the way people listen to it?

DS: Having written about music for almost twenty years now, I feel obliged to answer "yes!". Critical and contextual writing has long been part of art's infrastructure, and I see no reason why that should change, not least because, as some believe, the music world is full of sickly proselytizing and prepackaged assumptions. Miles Davis said: "talking about music is like dancing about architecture", a thought I've always agreed with.

GJ: I don't read English music magazines, apart from a small column in Mojo (written by David), because they don't cover the music I like, but things are better elsewhere in Europe. Wonderful, isn't it? England ought to be full of specialist music magazines. "Vertical Integration" was our attempt at that, even if only for a short while.

One of the questions in those interviews was about the interpretation of the compilation's title; now I'll ask you the same question….

DS: "Vertical Integration" is an economic term I learned back when I was studying film at college. It refers to a process where different stages in the production and distribution of a product or service are controlled by a single company, so as to increase that company's power over the market. Our intent was ironic. I think.

How did the selection of works released on Second Language in 2010 come about? Were they pieces made specifically by the individual artists, or simply finished records that ended up on your label rather than elsewhere?

DS: Generally they're records made specifically for Second Language, always as exclusives. The Plinth album was an exception because it was originally recorded for someone else, but then that project fell through, luckily for us. We were absolutely delighted to be able to release it.

Many of the artists involved in this year's releases are connected in some way to Glen or David; do you think this could give Second Language a clearly defined artistic identity? Or could it become something like a collective of musicians who share a certain style, and above all a certain production philosophy?

DS: There's a sort of collective philosophy, but above all a shared intent when it comes to approach rather than musical style. That shared spirit became tangible during our live debut in London last November, for the Second Language Night. It was moving to see the support everyone offered each other, leaving their egos at the door. We wouldn't want to come across as nepotistic, it's just that we're surrounded by talented people, and not only in London or the rest of the UK — our network extends much further than that.

Think of Second Language as a new international label.

Are you satisfied with what you've managed to achieve so far? Can you give us a rundown, artistic and financial, of your first year of activity?

DS: In a way, yes. The first year has been satisfying and productive, with a lot of great reviews and a steadily growing subscriber base. We've also made enough money to keep pushing forward and expand our creative choices, which is a sign of modest success. We're still learning, but my feeling is that if we keep taking care of the artistic side, the financial return will follow as a consequence.

GJ: Personally I'm more than satisfied with what we've achieved in such a short time, but I really hope that in 2011 we'll be able to bring more artists into the studio and put together even more elaborate packages. And, essentially, that can happen if we manage to attract more and more supporters. They're the ones who make all of this possible.

Do you have any anecdotes to share about producing the records, or about the work that goes on behind the label?

DS: Working at Second Language is a great way to investigate the full range of English tea biscuits, and a foolproof method for getting blisters, even on the fingers of long-experienced guitarists.

GJ: Tea and biscuits above all else. The water has to boil at least once an hour, otherwise none of this means anything… another thing the majors just don't get.

Coming to the more strictly musical side of things, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this year's releases. Tell me about the Second Language catalogue purely as listeners.

DS: Just listeners? We're more than that to us… of course I love everything on the label, it's exactly the kind of music I like best. If I had to bet, I'd love to see some releases with African or Asian music, maybe a record with no music at all, maybe an audiobook, a film, instructions for building a Molotov cocktail…

GJ: I'd like to hear more electronics on Second Language, as Martin and David well know. More experimental music too. But it will all come with time.

And finally, let's look to the future: what surprises and new releases can we expect from Second Language in 2011?

DS: If I told you now it wouldn't be a surprise anymore, would it?

(translation by Enrica Chimienti – English version)

DISCOGRAPHY 2010

SL01: Textile Ranch – Tombola (2009)

The first record – or rather, non-record – to bear the Second Language imprint is "Tombola", not an organic work by Glen Johnson's electronic project Textile Ranch, but a collection of liquid, glistening fragments, gathered more or less at random into a series of objects each with its own unique musical content, on a par with the little notes and mysterious serial numbers tucked inside the cardboard packaging embossed with a golden rabbit. There's little point trying to trace a coherent thread through a work that was never conceived as such, and whose value lies in the peculiarity of its presentation rather than in its "homemade" experimental content – though it is nonetheless in keeping (at least as far as one can judge from what's been heard) with the profile Textile Ranch has shown on "Bird Heart In Wool" and on the collaborative "The Rest, I Leave It To The Poor".

SL02: AA.VV. – Music And Migration

A collection of twenty-one tracks by as many artists, devoted to the theme of flight and released in support of the "Born To Travel" campaign run by environmental organisation BirdLife International. From the oblique, bucolic textures of Vashti Bunyan to the visionary drones of Leyland Kirby and Xela, from the pop cameos of Ant and Darren Hayman to the post-classical pieces of Library Tapes and siblings Heather and Peter Broderick, what's striking is the overall cohesiveness of "Music And Migration", shaped not so much by the shared theme as by the many shades that bleed from one track into the next, revealing at times unexpected stylistic affinities, from song sketches to expressive instrumental shape-shifting.

Inside the packaging: information on the environmental campaign – strongly championed by keen birdwatcher Martin Holm – and a hand-embroidered image of a bird, different on every copy.

SL03: Dollboy – Ghost Stations

Two long instrumental tracks make up this work by Oliver Cherer, aka Dollboy, who abandons the pop-folktronic leanings of "A Beard Of Bees" in favour of a desolate ambient music ranging from jazzy and post-classical elements to a more twisted, nocturnal-sounding electronics. The conceptual starting point is the abandoned stations of the London and Berlin subways. Across the half-hour "London" side of the record, faint percussive currents, barely-hinted-at swells and Richter-esque post-classical pieces unfold, shaped by piano and occasionally underscored by mournful trumpet notes. The shorter Berlin side, meanwhile, absorbs the fascinations of German music through soft synth incursions and Kraftwerk-like references.

A map of the Berlin underground and a Tube ticket accompany the release, housed in stiff white cardboard packaging.

SL04: Ghostwriter – The Continuing Adventures Of The Strange Sound Association

Bookish suggestions colour the label's fourth release, starting with the author's alias itself: Mark Brend, aka Ghostwriter, who besides trying his hand here as a musician is regarded as one of the leading experts on vintage instrumental library music. "The Continuing Adventures Of The Strange Sound Association" is, in a way, a translation of that very interest into music. The record is essentially a richly stocked gallery of fragments, tapes and sound-library snippets, layered and interwoven to conjure bizarre retro atmospheres, suspended between analogue shards and melodic hints, together forming a kind of lopsided soundtrack for some visionary French silent-film noir. It's all realised with a wide array of toy pianos, synthesizers and assorted analogue organs, including the brendonium, a device invented by Brend himself.

A red cord ties a miniature library card to the inside of the packaging, complete with a library catalogue slip.

SL04X: Piano Magic – Home Recordings

A genuine gift from Glen Johnson and co., reserved exclusively for Second Language subscribers, are the "Home Recordings" of a handful of Piano Magic songs, reworked with the minimal support of guitar, piano and electronics and an equally pared-to-the-bone line-up, in most cases limited to Glen Johnson's rearrangements and the splendid voice of Angéle David-Guillou, who proves the ideal protagonist even of pieces not originally written for her. Working by subtraction, tracks like "Incurable", "Disaffected", "Dark Ages" and the dreamy transposition of "Snowfall Soon" are stripped back to the most essential dimension of their communicative potential, in a succession of spectral, ethereal, narcoleptic and moving atmospheres that show how Glen Johnson's passionate songwriting can lightly shed the colourful sonic garments that, over the years, have completed this carefully chosen selection, while keeping its spirit and expressiveness intact.

SL05: Plinth – Music For Smalls Lighthouse

The dreams of an anguished shipwreck inspire Michael Tanner for a work realized on dulcitone, vibraphone and genuine pump organs from the late nineteenth century; these instruments are integral to the piece both musically and narratively, and even in terms of the edition's physical form, which takes the shape of a booklet bound in navy blue, a sort of antique ship's log containing, among other things, the story itself, written by Tanner together with Diane Allton.

Ghosts, strange tales and strange sounds from bygone times run faithfully through the musical side of "Music For Smalls Lighthouse", a work built on a combination of field recordings and sounds captured from antique organs, meant to evoke arcane, suspended and subtly unsettling atmospheres, matched by the vocalizations of the "siren" Autumn Grieve. Alongside the elegant book-cd's one hundred and fifty copies, each including a numbered photo of the Smalls lighthouse (the site of the shipwreck recounted in both the record and the booklet), comes a 3" cd-r titled "Flotsam", containing brief preparatory fragments for the work and therefore largely of a piece with it.

SL06: AA.VV. – Vertical Integration

The second compilation released by Second Language is not simply a musical collection, but at the same time a sort of meticulously crafted fanzine running over thirty A5 pages, which replaces the usual cardboard sleeve as the cd's housing and, above all, gathers an in-depth interview with the participants, who are among other things all asked for their own reading of the compilation's title. Among the contributors, Pete Astor, Robin Saville, Tunng and Klima stand out, alongside some more hidden gems (Autumn Grieve, Ólöf Arnalds) and a few names that are all but unknown, unearthed through passionate digging (Spain's 30km Inland, Sweden's Tula).

Despite the variety on offer across its tracks, "Vertical Integration" proves an extremely cohesive collection, held together by the slender thread of a shared sensibility uniting artists working once again across fields ranging from electroacoustic to folk, from songwriting to drone.

SL07: Brave Timbers – For Every Day You Lost

Originally from Newcastle and previously involved in numerous collaborations with Declining Winter, Last Harbour and Lanterns On The Lake, multi-instrumentalist Sarah Kemp christens her solo project Brave Timbers with the forty-five minutes of "For Every Day You Lost", steeped in a heartfelt chamber-music intimacy, improvised on violin, acoustic guitar and piano. It's a candid, instinctive work whose fragile emotion conveys a latent yet serene melancholy and impressionistic autumnal atmospheres, in which an inextricable nostalgia blends with refined pastoral enchantments, sketching sonic vignettes of crystalline perfection. Working with tempos and cadences – mostly narcoleptic, though occasionally livelier – Kemp offers eleven introspective postcards, steeped in a sense of constant rain and unbridgeable distance, which over the course of the album may seem superficially repetitive, but in fact opens up wide vistas of hazy beauty.

SL08: Klima – Serenades & Serinettes

Second Language's first year of releases closes with its most eye-catching work and, perhaps, its finest: the second record by Angèle David-Guillou, arriving three years after the debut of her project Klima, which here largely sheds the debut's Björk-inflected electronic dream-pop, rediscovering the classically trained French artist's multi-instrumental gifts and revealing a growth not only in interpretive refinement but above all in songwriting. Across the album, Angèle repeatedly changes stage costume and sonic setting, mostly ethereal, obliquely and faintly spectral, unveiling an expressive bouquet and a compositional and lyrical sharpness that mark a clear and thoroughly enjoyable leap in quality for a complete artist whom it would be truly reductive to keep regarding as merely a splendid voice.

A delightful accordion-fold package in white and pale-blue tones, with lyrics and a thaumatrope included.

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