Emancypunx
Emancypunx Records was founded in Warsaw, Poland, in 1997. The project developed out of the city’s hardcore and anarchafeminist underground and became an international focal point of feminist and queer politics with straight edge sympathies. In 2003, Emancypunx released X The Sisterhood X, a seminal compilation of female straight edge bands spanning three continents.
Jenni Ramme is the founder of Emancypunx, a festival organizer, photo artist, and political activist. She lives in Warsaw and Berlin.
It all started with an anarchafeminist group called Women against Discrimination and Violence, which we had with some girls since 1994/1995. This group worked closely together with the already existing antifascist group Youth Against Racism in Europe. After a while we decided to continue as a separate women-only group. We kept on cooperating with the antifascist group, however.
Everyone in the group was into punk, and we were active in the underground scene which was quite big and still united at that time. We didn’t organize within main anarchist circles like the Polish Anarchist Federation, because part of the anarchist movement was extremely male dominated, often prejudiced and didn’t include women rights in their struggle at all.
Anarchist punks and political oriented HC folks seemed way more open to these issues. Many of them had learned a lot from listening to all kinds of political bands like Crass, Dirt, Nausea, Nations on Fire or ManLiftingBanner which all had a pro-feminist and strongly anti-sexist message. Polish bands also stepped up the plate more and more often, for example Homomilitia, 105 Lux, Cymeon X, Post Regiment or Piekło Kobiet. These bands were quite progressive compared to what was generally going on in Polish society at the time. They also really distinguished themselves from the 1980s Polish punk/HC scene where these issues weren’t discussed at all.
So as anarchist feminists we felt better in a punk, hardcore and antifascist environment where we got support. It should also be noted that the Polish feminist movement was not established yet and that the riot grrrl wave that appeared in the US and in some European countries never came to Poland. There was basically no internet and access to information was hard to come by. The situation was very different to the one we have today. People were not traveling that much either. Feminist literature was really hard to find. That’s why we started to run a distribution in the middle of the 1990s with books, zines, pamphlets and music, and were sending out packages with information about women rights to people from all over the country. This was the beginning of Emancypunx—that was the name we gave the distro. We first did it all as a side project, but it soon turned out to be a great opportunity to spread information and to communicate with people, and we also started organizing stands at shows, gatherings etc. Meeting people face to face and talking to them was important, because at that time you could hear the craziest rumors about what feminists were supposedly like—a lot of people were really scared of feminists even though they had never met one. (Image 21.1)
Image 21.1: Anette of Störenfrieda (Germany), Berlin, 2009 Jenni Ramme
The word Emancypunx is a word game and means “emancipation in punk” or “punk suffragettes” since “suffragettes” in Polish means “emancypantki.” It was already used at that time as a term to describe feminist punks—girls and boys.
When there were plans to turn Women against Discrimination and Violence into a regular NGO in 1996, Emancypunx also became the name of a new group we founded. Women against Discrimination and Violence eventually ceased to exist.
Throughout the years we, as Emancypunx, organized a lot of protests, rallies, political street performances, radical cheerleading and poster actions. For example, we were very active around Take Back The Night and the 8th of March, the International Women’s Day. We raised issues like sexual violence, abortion rights, body image, exploitation and housework, women in Afghanistan and others. We also organized protests against racist border politics, deportations and corporations like Siemens. We were active on many platforms.
Emancypunx the group dissolved around 2002. The end was related to conflicts around a sexist incident that happened within the circles of the Anarchist Federation. The incident was one of many, but this time it was more intense and direct and it was the first time when women from different cities, groups and even countries united and spoke out in public against the sexism in the libertarian movement. They had simply had enough.
A lot of anarchists responded to this with violence and tried to silence us by all possible means. The conflict grew bigger and bigger and I think it had far-reaching consequences for the whole movement. I think it made it difficult for many to even address sexism. The traumatic experience, the huge pressure and the disappointment were too much for many of us. It was really a big factor in our group dissolving. Some of us focused on our activities within the punk scene, some got more involved with the general feminist movement.
Of course there were also personal issues that were involved in the break-up of the group. Not everyone wanted to do the same things anymore and we all went into different directions. However, we all remained politically or culturally active. Some of us are part of a new anarchist feminist group called A-Fe, while others are active in Bildwechsel Warsaw, a zine archive and library, in Fundacja MaMa, a feminist NGO, or in the band Mass Kotki. I would say that most of the girls who were connected with Emancypunx the group are still very active. The name Emancypunx remained as a record label, distribution and organizer for shows or festivals.
I started Emancypunx the label around 1997/98. The first release was a licensed re-release of the all-girl compilation tape “Donna Wetter.” The tape was originally released by Rotzgore Records, a small tape-label of the band Re-Sisters from Switzerland. I heard that tape for the first time on an anti-nuclear women’s camp in Germany and was totally amazed. It was exciting to see so many new European all-girl bands play really angry punk rock with a radical feminist message. It was finally a loud voice resisting the traditional role of the subordinated, sweet, nice female. At the end of the tape was a melodic girl sugar-punk band and the producers just put a machine gun voice over the whole song. I could identify with that a lot.
After that the label slowly developed and more releases were done in the next years in different formats (CD, vinyl and tape) for international, mostly all-girl and female fronted bands. So far, we’ve put out about twenty releases, with bands from Europe, North and South America. We also booked shows, tours, and festivals like Noc Walpurgii (Walpurgis Night), the second Straight Edge Fest or the first Open Hardcore Fest.
From 1998 to 2001, Emancypunx was involved in the W-wa Hardcore Force collective. This was created as a joint project of hardcore initiatives from Warsaw in order to organize shows for foreign and local HC bands. Not that many foreign bands were touring in Poland at this time, so we wanted to change that. We also wanted to join forces to develop the scene.
This was a short version of the story around Emancypunx. We tried to be active and visible in order to change the situation of women: in society, in the hardcore punk scene and in radical movements.
Emancypunx Records was always pretty much a separate project and never run by the entire group. Of course we had many friends helping out. From the Emancypunx group, Aga was probably involved in the label the longest—well, apart from me.
I still can’t say that Emancypunx Records is a collective effort. It would be great if it was a project of more people, which was the original idea. But I have kind of given up on that idea. I made several attempts to involve others, but none of them really worked out. The way a label or a distribution works is very different from the way that an informal group works. A label needs regular work. For an informal political group like Emancypunx, regular work was not necessary. You can sometimes focus intensively on a particular action or campaign, and then take a break or turn to another issue. For a label this would be disastrous. Another thing is that running a label means that you need money to release records. Political activism can be done with almost no money. In my personal experience, the money that you invest in records hardly ever comes back. I think this also keeps many people from getting involved in a label.
In the sense that I’m straight edge and try to promote a straight edge and a drug-free life style. It means that in addition to promoting women and feminism in hardcore punk I mainly release straight edge bands or bands where some members are straight edge. I also organize shows for straight edge bands and promoted straight edge in the zine I did.
Straight edge is not an end in itself for me. I’ve always seen it as something broader—let’s say as a positive opportunity within the DIY punk/hardcore/feminist/anarchist movement. This might sound trivial, but at the time Emancypunx started, straight edge and drug-free living were met with a lot of suspicion in punk circles.
A big part of my feminist and hardcore friends are straight edge. And there are also many who might drink on occasion but who do not use alcohol as the sole means of socializing.
Yes, we can say that, if we consider projects done by straight edge people as straight edge, even if not every single project they do is focused on straight edge.
Hardcore and straight edge always had a strong focus on the idea of brotherhood and of male friends supporting male friends. Women were often seen as separate and not on equal footing with the guys. In fact, I think it was often enough reminiscent of the skinhead movement, which is also very male-dominated and where guys hang out with other guys. In order to achieve equality it is important that men change their attitudes, but it is also important that women are supportive of one another. So if we have brotherhood, we should have sisterhood too.
In the 1990s, straight edge sisterhood groups were formed by girls in Sweden, Germany and Portugal. Michaela Böhm, for example, formed an initiative called the International Straight Edge Sisterhood. I did an interview with her for my zine, but then the initiative disappeared and I lost contact. But I really felt the need to spread the idea of worldwide straight edge sisterhood and to support and unite with other sXe girls.
At the 2000 Ieperfest, a hardcore festival in Belgium, it was the first time that me and Aga, who was also straight edge, got to meet many straight edge girls from different countries and even continents. It was a time when straight edge became more international and when it became easier and easier for people from everywhere to stay in touch. Point of No Return was the first South American straight edge band that came to tour Europe. In this context we got to know girls from Brazil and found out about this great all-female band called Infect. We talked with girls from Belgium, Italy and other countries and thought it would be great to bring straight edge girls together and to do a joint project. This is how I got the idea for a sXe sisterhood compilation.
For many months I searched for everything I could find on girl straight edge activists, zine makers, websites and all-girl straight edge bands—anyone who would like to join the project. I guess the basic intention was to say: “Hey! We are here!” We hoped that this would help us to promote the different activities of women within sXe, to make them more visible, and to inspire other girls to become active. The responses I received were all very positive and in the end we had bands from Brazil, Argentina, the US, Serbia, Belgium, Germany, Poland and Belarus. The compilation was released on 7” vinyl with a thirty-page booklet. It got great feedback and reviews. Today, all the copies are sold.
With some. For example, a band called Trust from Argentina released a 7” EP on Emancypunx Records, and one of the band members used to play in Venus Genetrixxx, a band that was featured on the compilation. Flopi, who was in the same band, recently came to the Walpurgis Night festival as a D-Jane and organized a workshop together with Laura from Synthesis. Tatiana from Infect was visiting Europe with her other band I Shot Cyrus.
I’m in touch sometimes with other girls from Infect too. Asia Bordowa, who made the drawings for the booklet, now sings in The Fight and does a zine called Chaos Grrlz. I also run Bildwechsel Warsaw, the zine library and archive with her. I don’t have much contact with Geraldine from Uneven, but she is still involved in music projects. Ljuba is still active in her band Lets Grow and has her own label, Ha-Ko Bastards, in Serbia. Dasha from Belarus was the singer in the country’s first sXe band called Jiheart and is now in a band called I Know. Two members of To See You Broken are in a vegan sXe band called This Time Tomorrow, but somehow I lost contact.
Some people are not part of the scene anymore. There have been a lot of general changes and new generations have come. And even if it’s relatively easy for us to stay in contact now, it’s still not necessarily easy to meet if you’re not a constant traveler, as we are from different countries and continents.
Cultivating independent women culture in general and specifically working for the emancipation of women in punk can go together. What we mean by “independent culture” is a DIY culture with punk ethics. There doesn’t necessarily have to be punk music. At the same time, an “independent women culture” is certainly needed within the punk/hardcore scene as well. Although there are obvious connections between the struggle within the scene and outside of it, there are also differences of course; as there are always differences when crossing the line between the underground and the mainstream. While within the underground there are always specific scene aspects you have to address, within mainstream society you address fundamental issues that affect everyone. Emancypunx the group was active on both levels: we fought for internal changes within punk/hardcore, and we were engaged in political activism within mainstream society, also working together with mainstream feminists. As far as my personal focus goes, as a feminist punk I’m mostly interested in forming a counterculture that can avoid integration into the mainstream. Something that remains an oppositional force.
I think we were successful concerning the promotion of women’s DIY culture, but not necessarily in the form I had envisioned. In particular, parts of mainstream culture caught on to our ideas and various clubs and organizers started to organize events or dance parties including the word “grrrl” or promoting female performers, DJs etc. The press caught on too and started publishing more and more articles on female artists. We definitely triggered something.
It’s a double-edged sword of course. On the one hand, it all appeared more than a fad than anything else often enough, and the political message was left behind almost completely. On the other hand, women are without doubt more present in Polish culture now than they were fifteen years ago. They are no longer reduced to mere objects but actually have possibilities to create culture by themselves. Their perspectives and ideas are more present. (Image 21.2)
Image 21.2
What I see as the main problem with the mainstream adaptation of our ideas is that the social frames are still intact. Men still make all the important decisions, set up norms and handle profits. Just because we induce some of our ideas into mainstream culture, the system itself will not disappear. I think it is dangerous to believe otherwise. Some people are able to use the creativity and the ideas that come out of DIY culture to make money and establish personal careers. The community aspect is left behind. For me, the willingness to communally create and share a culture that is not for profit is the very base of our movement and the reason why I am a part of it. This is why I consider a division between mainstream culture and a DIY underground culture really important.
Of course such a division is not always easy to maintain. For example, there was a lot of media interest in Emancypunx. How do you deal with that? At first, we tried to stay undercover and ignore them. But that made us even more interesting and they were reporting on us anyway. At one point, there was even a fake interview published in a magazine like Bravo Girl or some shit like that. Eventually, some of us “went public” and agreed to do personal interviews and photo shootings. However, this didn’t solve our problems either. Now we had girls who were portrayed as “leaders” and a new media-prescribed image: childlike, cute, sexy—with radical and punkish overtones. Our political intentions were completely lost.
All in all, these experiences made me really skeptical of mainstream media and even though I compromise sometimes, I generally think that mainstream newspapers and TV are not the right places to share information about underground culture. People must learn to find out about underground culture in other, more direct ways. Mainstream media will never see underground culture as anything but new, fresh meat to make profits. They are part of a capitalist and consumerist culture of bloodsucking zombies. They take without giving anything back. This is not a base to build radical movements on.
This is also where we differ from mainstream feminists who accept capitalism and make integration into the system their main goal. As anarchafeminists we don’t want integration into capitalism or the state, we want to create a space that goes beyond that. I think that it is alright to get involved in mainstream campaigns when it means that our living conditions within the system improve at least a little, but to me it is mandatory to pursue radical social transformation at the same time and to attempt creating utopian societies right here and now.
Another issue that separates us from mainstream feminists is our complete rejection of hierarchies. Mainstream feminists put a lot of effort into making powerful social positions accessible to women. The often hierarchical structure of their organizations reflects this “leader” principle too. This often means that community aspects are lost and that most of the support goes to women who already are relatively privileged and who come from the intellectual upper classes. This is not my idea of equality. Equality must be more than this.
There has been success, but I also had to realize that no success is forever. The constant flow of people entering and leaving the scene also means that the education about basic issues constantly needs to begin anew. This does not only concern feminism, but also animal rights issues and others. It is tiring to repeat the same things over and over again, but I think it is really necessary.
Of course there are big individual differences. As feminism has become increasingly accepted in Poland, you have access to books, can attend genders studies classes at university, etc. So when people join the punk/hardcore scene with this background, they are already conscious as far as these issues go. But overall, I would actually say that the focus within the scene on music, fashion and parties is stronger than ever today. A lot of people are not interested in anything else.
An example is the Walpurgis Night festival. It used to be a big festival embedded in the DIY punk scene. I think it had a big influence and really helped create a positive atmosphere toward women. But the DIY scene is shrinking and the ones who are really behind this idea are getting older. When there used to be 1000 people attending, now it’s barely 500. In the beginning, gender equality and fighting homophobia were really important aspects of the festival. But now the scenes are all split. Everything is fragmentized. It seems like a lot of people can no longer be bothered defending their ideas within certain scenes; when they encounter problems, they just leave the scene and form a new one or do their own thing.
So, all in all, we have seen huge progress on certain levels, but we are also confronted with regressive tendencies because there’s a lack of communication between the divided scenes.
I would say that it has a lot to do with general social roles. The way hardcore expresses itself is rather aggressive and powerful. It doesn’t take a victim’s position, it’s more about reclaiming space. The way that hardcore bands perform, their presence, their lyrics etc. are not “feminine” according to general social norms. Women are not expected to be like that. Women are expected to be nice, sweet and obedient. So any female who wants to be part of the scene has to break these rules. Men can to a large degree live out their “manliness” in hardcore culture without making any such step. In fact, many men within hardcore culture are so tied to stereotypical gender roles that they have a problem with women who act like them. They feel uncomfortable when women stage dive, are confrontational, sing with a strong, aggressive voice, or use “bad” words. A lot of guys have a very “romantic” notion about what a girl should be like and they see all these things as a kind of “loss of femininity.” That’s why you see all these women at hardcore shows taking pictures of guys in the pit or on stage—much more so than you’d see them in the pit or on stage themselves. It’s as if their main role is to be shy, silent and good-looking—just like in mainstream society.
It took a while for people to get used to women singing and playing in hardcore bands. I still hear guys saying that they can’t stand female voices. I think with the growing amount of women singing in hardcore we can see a clear progress, but women still try not to break too many rules at once. Many retain a very feminine look and make an effort to “behave.” It is also still true that most women are involved in the less visible and spectacular parts of the scene, like in organizing shows, making zines, cooking at shows etc. Women certainly provide a lot of the scene’s infrastructure.
In terms of overall gender relations within the scene, one also has to make local distinctions of course. It differs from town to town and from country to country. It also differs from genre to genre, if you will. Like modern hardcore, tough guy or metalcore are extremely male-dominated I would say. To the point where it seems really hard to change those patterns. I mean, if you go to a show as a female and you are one out of three women in a crowd of 300 guys, it is simply alienating. Even for me—if I attend a show like that, I simply feel like being at the wrong place and I certainly won’t come back. I’m not desperate to belong to a male club.
DIY-oriented punk and hardcore punk scenes, on the other hand, have a fair amount of women involved. For example, here in Warsaw I would say the DIY punk scene is not male-dominated at all. Women are an active part in creating the scene, they are involved in bands, they book shows, run distros, live in squats and form a big part of any audience. As far as I remember, Warsaw has always had a bigger involvement of women than most other Polish towns.
Local and genre differences set aside, however, ridiculous macho attitudes are still prevalent in the hardcore scene. You just have to check our local hardcore forum. This is the only place where people from all the different hardcore scenes get in touch. There you can read stuff where some guys organize “hardcore soccer games,” but without women, as “their bodies are different.” Of course this example is so pathetic that it’s easy to just laugh at it, but I think it also reflects a deeper problem: many guys try to compensate for their lack of confidence and their low position in a male hierarchy by putting down women. It’s a common feature in mainstream society and it’s frequently reproduced within hardcore culture.
Fortunately enough, there is an increasing number of males who are involved in hardcore who are annoyed by the tough guy bullshit too. Violent dancing has become a much discussed issue, as it’s often enough to have two or three disrespectful people in the crowd to spoil the fun for the other seventy or so who are there. It just sucks when some idiots take over the place and start to define rules for everyone else. The values that tough guy wannabes promote are not only oppressing women, they oppress guys too.
I want to say one more thing about the reasons behind the general male dominance of the scene though. I think a big factor is how history is written. A lot depends on the power of definition. Many guys simply ignore or deny the presence of women and their contributions to the scene. This can be very demotivating for women who put a lot of energy into hardcore. It also means that there is a lack of role models for women in the “official” representations of the scene. I mean, look at the movie American Hardcore. The first thing I thought after seeing it was that I don’t wanna have anything to do with hardcore anymore if it’s really all just about guys and for guys. I actually felt ashamed that I had anything to do with hardcore and with the guys who were so excited about the movie. It was an irrational reaction, because the hardcore scene I’m involved in is completely different and really has nothing to do with what was presented in that movie. But it’s just that movies—and to a certain degree also discussion forums like the one mentioned before—have such a powerful influence on the images we, and others, have of our scenes. So whether they represent the truth or not, they may still define tomorrow’s scene.
It’s difficult to give you a general answer because, as I already said, there isn’t just one scene. New scenes are coming and going and there are a lot of trends that are constantly changing.
Again, if we talk about the modern hardcore scene, and parts of the metalcore scene, I have the impression that things are actually getting worse. Not just because there are only few females at the shows, but also because these scenes have moved away further and further from underground and DIY culture. There are parts of the hardcore scene that have become very commercialized. People accept sponsorship, they are obsessed with buying from big corporations like Nike, and they love hyped and neatly packaged festivals like the Vans Warped Tours. Considering the MTV-like character of these scenes, I’m not sure which values we still share. Especially since the consumerist attitude seems to go hand in hand with a lack of awareness concerning human and animal rights.
On the other hand, I do have the impression that the DIY hardcore punk scene is changing for the better—however, I also see it shrink. I hope it will get stronger again; not least because that’s where I feel I belong and where I think definite progress has been made with respect to the involvement of women and an understanding of the importance to support women’s rights.
Female straight edge has always been very diverse. As I mentioned before, there were groups in Europe who called themselves straight edge sisterhoods in the 1990s. Recently, the Portuguese XsisterhoodX was apparently reactivated. Generally, though, it seems that the concept has disappeared in Europe.
I have the impression that the sXe scene is getting smaller and becoming less important overall. This also means that less girls are involved than a few years ago. There are almost no all-girl sXe bands left. Like, I think today it’d be almost impossible to do another X The Sisterhood X compilation. At the same time, we can see more girls singing or playing in sXe bands. This has definitely become much more accepted and is not sensational or threatening anymore. I can name a number of projects that sXe girls are involved in: the bands Reaching Hand and Together, as well as the zines X Cute and Off The Map in Portugal; the band Drama and the zine Strength&Courage in Spain; bands like The Tangled Lines, Sugar Crash, Lipkick, Ex Best Friends in Germany, Beyond Pink in Sweden, I Know in Belarus, Fight For Fun in Russia; XSpeciesTraitorX is a queeredge band from Finland; in Poland there are the bands The Fight, Audre, Slowa We Krwi, and the zines Chaos Grrlz, Kiss My Edge and In Full Swing; in the US there are bands like Gather, This Time Tomorrow, Socialized Crucifixion, Kingdom, Sentient or Look Back And Laugh, and there is Kelly’s xsisterhoodx website; in South America there is Trust in Argentina, or Justica and Arma Laranja in Brazil; and in Asia you have Choke Cocoi in the Philippines, or Last Minute in Malaysia.
Yes, that was always the plan, but, as I said, I’m not sure whether it will work out at this point. It’s just become really hard to find any all-female straight edge bands. But if there are any interested bands and possible contributors out there, get in touch! I would definitely love to put out a second volume!
Together with Robert from Refuse Records we came up with the idea to organize a small show dedicated to the fight against sexism and homophobia. Since we all had a lot of energy to share, the small show turned into a big festival. The first Walpurgis Night was held in 1996, and it remains an annual festival to this day. We invite bands with female members, bands who support the ideas of the festival, and bands that address the issues we want to draw attention too. Every year we have more women participating, as they start to reclaim their space as D-Janes, bands or performers. Our intention was to create an event where punks, gays, lesbians, hardcore kids, queers, feminists and straight edgers would have fun together. It was meant to be a day of celebration for all people who are usually excluded, and for everyone who wants to support them. One of the things we do is to have all-girl bands, feminist male bands and drag queens perform together in order to challenge sexism and homophobia. It hasn’t always been easy. There has certainly been a lot of tension at times, and on occasion we had to kick people out who would behave in an offensive way; but all in all I think the mix is working out well. The festival has never been limited to music, by the way. There are also films, workshops and political actions. Over the years the festival has turned into one of the biggest and most important events of the DIY hardcore and anarchist feminist scene.
Yes, there have been homophobic tendencies if we consider hardliners a part of the movement. There have also been strong pro-life and some religious (Catholic, Islamic, Krishna) tendencies in straight edge, not only in the US but in Poland too. These have fortunately almost all disappeared. On the other hand, there have been very clear anti-homophobic messages from bands like Seein Red, Good Clean Fun or Saidiwas, and there has been the great Give Me Back compilation on Ebullition Records. I think that most of the blatant homophobia—or pro-life advocacy—has pretty much been left behind. Or at least people no longer voice such opinions openly. An interesting aspect is of course that an all-male pit with shirtless sweaty guys bumping into each other can easily have the air of a gay event, so I think it’s great when bands like Limp Wrist expose this by taking it to the extreme and turning the macho attitudes against themselves.
In general, though, I think that queer messages are too much for most straight edgers and hardcore scenesters. Most of them just can’t relate to the concept. Of course there exist bands where queer and straight edge elements mingle, like in the already mentioned Limp Wrist or XSpeciesTraitorX, the US band GO!, or the girl band Stoerenfrieda and the hip-hop act C.B.A. from Germany. I guess Beyond Pink could be mentioned here as well. But, all in all, combining straight edge with queercore or homocore is really rare.
I would say that Walpurgis Night is a pretty unique event in that sense, even though we have recently been able to bring together hardcore punk and queer culture at other events too, for example at Klir Szyft—which kinda translates as “Queer Shift” into English—a four-day queer festival we’ve started to organize in Warsaw. Unfortunately, the queer and hardcore projects at these events often co-exist more than they’d actually overlap, but I think it’s a step in the right direction. Over the last two years I’ve also been involved in establishing a queer cultural center. I’m not active right now, but after I had organized some hardcore shows there, other people from the hardcore scene started to do the same, and they feel comfortable in the space, which is cool.
All in all, though, most of my queer activism is not really related to hardcore or straight edge. It’s difficult to create more links, although I’d love to. Drugs and “partying” play a big role in queer culture, and musically a lot revolves around electronic or pop music, disco, and maybe hip-hop. Although I like these genres and think that a DIY scene should be as diverse as possible, the truth is that my heart beats faster when I hear hardcore punk!
Things are going slowly as running a label is not easy nowadays and I don’t have that much time anymore because of work. But I’m still at it and there is always something happening. I remain committed to supporting bands that I like and that fit into the label’s philosophy. As far as the future goes, I think it’s best not to talk about plans too much but to make things happen! Maybe when I’m eighty years old, though, and arthritis won’t be too much of a problem, I’ll fulfill my dream and play drums in a straight edge, grandma positive power violence band!