Other People is a record label started in New York City in 2013 by Nicolás Jaar. In its 10 years of existence, it has featured the sonic work of over 70 music releases, highlights include Terepa (2015), a "telepathic" collaboration helmed by Kohei Matsunaga (aka NHK’Koyxen) featuring Rashad Becker, Charlotte Collin, Lucrecia Dalt, Laurel Halo, Julia Holter, Grégoire Simon and Kohei himself, Caves (2021), a compilation of silences featuring Laraaji, Aho Ssan, Ana Quiroga and more, Weavings (2022), a collaborative live piece with Juliana Huxtable, Ellen Fullman, Wukir Suryadi and Rully Shabara of Senyawa, Angel Bat Dawid and others. The label has also put out the 1990 spoken word piece "Conspiracy of Women" (2015) by Lydia Lunch, as well as Tomaga & Pierre Bastien's collaborative album entitled Bandiera di Carta (2019) and Lucrecia Dalt's Esotro / Veta release (2014) with remixes by William Basinski and John Wall. It has also featured the likes of Magdalena Dàugosz, Barbara Zawadzka, Bernadetta Matuszczak, Krzysztof Knittel, Bogusław Shaeffer, Saint Abdullah, Eomac, Dienne, Charbel Haber, Okokon, Against All Logic, FKA Twigs, Darkside, Nicolás Jaar and others.  It has featured the visual work of Maziyar Pahlevan, Africanus Okokon, Zofia Kulik, Jena Myung, Charbel Haber, Abeera Kamran and Somnath Bhatt among others. The label’s current contract states that an artist on the label owns all their rights and decides the full percentage of the revenue they wish to make from their releases on the label, after recoupment. Any of the label’s profit gets given out to artists in forms of grants, workshop and educational initiatives. The label has collaborated in this form with more than three dozen exceptional organizations and individuals in the past three years. Although the label works not-for-profit, it is not a registered non-profit.

A series about what it's really like to start a business.

A show about the internet, hosted by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman.  From Gimlet.

GIDEÖN
HOMO-CENTRIC RECORDS / NYC DOWNLOW / ADONIS / R3 SOUNDSYSTEM / BLOCK9

GIDEÖN has a background in music spanning 33 years. In addition to his studio practice as a recording artist, his work as a creative director, stage designer and curator, he is also a touring DJ and an avid collector of vinyl. Since his first set of turntables in 1990, GIDEÖN has devoted his life to collecting vinyl from the US, Jamaica, Latin America, Africa, and the UK. He specialises in Northern Soul, Latin, Reggae, Gospel, and Disco rarities. House Music, above all else, is his first and greatest love. 

He is currently Creative Director of a new opera being developed in partnership with English National Opera. He has a degree in Music with Visual Practice (BA Hons) and was guest Creative Director of Music for London Borough of Culture 2022. Recent projects have seen Gideon head up Creative Direction for Dua Lipa’s record breaking Studio 2054, winning the MVA’s Music Video of The Year award. He was production designer for lead artists at Live at Worthy Farm, Glastonbury’s virtual festival livestream. 

As a curator, he programmed two events for Chaka Khan’s Meltdown Festival in summer 2024 and is currently Head of Music at The Roof Gardens in London. Other projects include work with Anohni, Banksy, Imperial War Museum, Finnish Opera House, Hercules & Love Affair, Lana Del Ray, Skrillex, Brian Eno, Roisin Murphey, The Blessed Madonna, Honey Dijon, and Jorja Smith.

GIDEÖN co-founded, co-directs and curates Block9’s festival nightlife institutions The NYC Downlow, Genosys, Maceo’s and IICON at Glastonbury Festival. He is also resident and co-booker at London’s hottest queer club night Adonis. As a radio DJ, GIDEÖN has been actively involved in broadcasting for over three decades. Since cutting his teeth on London’s pirate stations in the late nineties, he hosted a weekly show on London’s Soho Radio for 3 years. Recent guest appearances include New York’s Beats In Space, London’s Rinse FM, NTS Radio and BBC 6 Music. He recently held a residency at BBC Radio 1.

GIDEÖN has been involved in political activism his entire life and is now increasingly focussed on organising hybrid cultural-political events partnering music and protest, often under the banner of R3 Soundsystem. Together with charities Love Music Hate Racism & Stand Up To Racism, GIDEÖN has organised major sound system interventions on many of the Stop Brexit and Stop Trump and Anti-Fascism protests. He is actively involved with fundraising for several LGBTQ+, human rights and social justice organisations including AllOut, Medical Aid For Palestinians, Prepster, Human Dignity Trust and Refugee Community Kitchen. GIDEÖN sits on the advisory committee for The Right to Dance, part of War Child’s NGO Network.

R3 Soundsystem is a consortium of DJs, musicians, producers, record labels, festivals, nightclubs, sound systems, activists, and cultural organisations, all united by love of music and the rejection of right-wing nationalist values. R3’s three Rs stand for RESIST/REJECT/REVOLT.

GIDEÖN’s House Music label HOMO-CENTRIC RECORDS launched to showcase both his solo productions and collaborations with close queer comrades. The label focusses on the LGBTQ+ heritage of House and attempts to pay homage to its lost heroes. Its manifesto states the intent to re-establish the lines of queer musical tradition at the heart of House, lost to AIDS and the capitalist desecration of dance music itself.

Channelled madness – the sound Dawn of Midi spent years shaping, culminating into their most mesmerising work yet

With Dysnomia, the Brooklyn-based group Dawn of Midi abandons improvisation in favour of composition, utilising sophisticated rhythmic structures from North and West African folk traditions to weave a sonic tapestry of trance-inducing grooves. From close up one may see only dots, but when stepping back an undulating image reveals itself. “We didn’t want to create anything cerebral,” says Belyamani, “we wanted something visceral, something that would awaken our instinctive dance impulses.”
Having met at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles in 2006, bassist Aakaash Israni, pianist Amino Belyamani and drummer Qasim Naqvi found their original rapport through late night tennis matches on the campus court. The chemistry they founded there eventually led them back indoors to improvise together; something they did in total darkness to deprive themselves of all their senses except the crucial one – their hearing.
The manner, by which a trio of solely acoustic instruments ends up sounding like electronic music, has to do with the unconventional ways the group play their instruments on Dysnomia. The record comes to life in the trio’s critically acclaimed live shows, a test of endurance and trust that involves performing their hand-looped acoustic minimalism note for note, just as the compositions were recorded. Dawn of Midi’s sets are as energetic and rhythmic as a seamlessly mixed DJ-set, mesmerising fans in the same way the group’s favourite experimental and electronic acts have for decades.
The album was recorded to 2-inch tape at Waterfront Studios in Hudson, New York - a former church that was purchased and transformed into an analogue recording playground by the great engineer Henry Hirsch. Once the band visited the studio and met Henry, an expert in analogue recording equipped with a vintage Helios console, 16 and 24-track tape machines and a superb collection of microphones, it was obvious they had to record there; it was miles ahead of anywhere else they had visited. Rusty Santos then mixed the album to make sure it would hit as hard as the group’s favourite electronic albums do in spite of it being entirely acoustic.
“We wanted to make a record that sounded both musically futuristic and sonically vintage,” explains Israni, “and since the album never saw a proper international release, it is very exciting to see what might happen when more people are exposed to it. And to be aligned with Erased Tapes, whose enthusiasm for the music they release has done a lot for exposing unique instrumental and electronic music, makes it that much more interesting.”

Dysnomia will be released worldwide on June 1st, 2015 through Erased Tapes – available on 2x LP, CD and Download.

DARKSIDE is the collaborative duo of Dave Harrington and Nicolas Jaar.

Amy Basil is following