In Conversation: Ouvo Records

Ouvo Records are a new label founded by German dancefloor jazz trio Triorität and DJ Ion that are quickly making a name for themselves in the burgeoning German jazz scene. In addition to releasing ALG0, Triorität’s transfixingly groovy debut LP, the imprint recently dropped Zentral Heizung, a circuitous representation of their label’s mutual-shared musical vision.

Recently, the quartet of Luca Christakopoulos, Gerrit Ebeling, Alexander Hoffmann and Grégoire Pignède sat down with The Eisenberg Review for a conversation about their label and music.

What lead to the decision to form your own label?

We started out working together a couple of years ago, releasing our first EP with a friend. Through [that experience], we realized how releasing music worked and organically thought, with all the contacts we had, why make amends with someone else’s vision of the music? And then we had a label!

Luckily, all of us had different skills… finances, taxes, design, communication. That allowed all the most important factors to come together. And, most importantly, we are independent. 100%, no compromises.

Most labels aren’t lucky enough to have individuals with diverse skillsets starting out to whom they can delegate.

It’s a learning process. A lot of other musicians we know might just be interested in doing music, which is perfectly fine, but we’ve always been into the organization behind everything. We like it, we sort of know how to do some stuff, and the rest we’re learning to do along the way. Also, we have enough friends who do their own musical stuff which we can then support. Some of us are also producing, for example, so it’s also a means of having the possibility to use this organizational skill and share it with others as well as for our own benefit.

Looking at where the music industry is, so many artists find themselves doing so much of this anyway, so why not formalize it and do it in a way that can be scaled, help others and continue to build those contacts? Do you struggle to balance the business and creative aspects?

*Laughs*

During COVID, it’s hard. [None of us] live in the same city. We saw each other basically only on Skype for months talking about business, meeting with agendas about promo dates and press release plans. As with everything else, we would have been way happier to see each other and then [let things] go along organically, because that’s where the ideas really come in and start to flourish into something we’re all happy with.

You are part of a new burgeoning German scene that weave together Kraut rock, electronica and jazz into something new and very groove-centric. What draws you to make the kind of music that you do? What do you think makes the German jazz scene unique?

The first question is easy to answer: elderly influence. Some of our dads played in a band together back in the day, so we grew up with fusion music from the '70s, [namely] Herbie Hancock and Billy Cobham. We went to clubs a lot too, although not so much jazz clubs, more raves. Our sound came out very organically.

As for the German jazz scene, [we’d] say we’re definitely more inspired by international stuff. [We] don’t even really even see us as part of the framework that is the German jazz scene really. Most of our modern influences come from the UK and the LA scene as well. We’ve all been really into the Future Beats, Flying Lotus-type stuff and everything in that jazz corner coming from Mndsgn and Kiefer.

It’s more like a surprise right now to notice how many bands suddenly are cropping up that have a similar background, a lot of whom are now featured on the new Mathias Modica Kraut Jazz Futurism album.

Berlin is very international… I guess the way the club scene in Berlin works is a bit different than in other places… It’s more like finding out “Oh, there are other people who are on a similar journey that we didn’t really know.” We come from a smaller place and we didn’t really have many friends who were musicians to be honest. There was a small jazz scene in Darmstadt, but nothing that really blew our minds.

If you could waive a magic wand and change one thing about the industry, what would it be?

Being not capitalistic. *Laughs*

I think that’s it. Everything right now that we can think of is connected to that. The thing we do doesn’t really get valued as much as it should, at least monetarily. People are like “Oh, that’s awesome that you’re a musician” and then people think: “It’s awesome that I don’t have to pay for it because it’s so nice.” It feels sometimes the things that are really nice, people think can be for free. It would be perfect if we could do everything for free. (We) would love to not have people pay for tickets to come see our shows, that’s true too… Just seeing the value in something which you can’t live in or eat, but it’s somehow what makes life worth it. [The problem is people not accepting music] as an equally valuable thing.

Where do we go from a capitalist system? What is it replaced by?

We need to make an economy that gives us the ability to live longer than 20-30 years on this planet without all having to run somewhere… we need an ecologic revolution that allows us to prevail with whatever we want to do.

Is that something that ultimately gets incorporated into the label and Triorität do? What’s next?

We have a lot of stuff in store. Probably the next EP is going to be Marshall Anderson, a very multi-talented instrumentalist and producer. He’s written a two-tracker that’s hopefully going to come out at the end of May.

Triorität also recently went into the recording studio and recorded a follow up project of some different stuff. Just keep your eyes and ears open!

In closing, what are three records that you’d recommend to the audience? (Answers aggregated from all Ouvo Records members)

Weather Report’s 8:30, the most important influence we’ve had in our lives.

Donny Hathaway’s Live.

Noisia’s Outer Edges, because we’re producers too. Noisia are these three stoned guys from the Netherlands… they are crazy and they influenced us definitely in a way. [It’s] the best drum and bass music worldwide currently.

The new Iglooghost album… It’s beyond comprehension. It’s a producer album that’s so musical that it searches for anything to be compared with. It’s like neo-classic, ambient, future bass, pop, trap, D'n'B… It’s amazing. I couldn’t recommend it more.

Ratgrave’s self-titled album.

The Colours That Rise’s Grey Doubt. If you haven’t checked that one out, go!

Shoutout to our good friend Knowsum. He did this one record called Lush Space Daze. He’s actually more known as a hip hop producer and rapper, where he’s called Nepumuk, but he did this one record where he’s singing and playing guitar. It’s like kind of a psychedelia, ‘80s thing. It’s the most underrated of his records… it should be huge.