{"id":1696,"date":"2011-04-22T12:17:31","date_gmt":"2011-04-22T18:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=1696"},"modified":"2011-04-22T12:17:31","modified_gmt":"2011-04-22T18:17:31","slug":"balanced-records-complex-yet-simple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2011\/04\/22\/balanced-records-complex-yet-simple\/","title":{"rendered":"Balanced Records: Complex yet Simple"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Photo by Jerry Grajewski<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Victoria King<\/strong>
\n2011 marks the ten-year anniversary for Balanced Records, the Winnipeg-based mega-project. Starting off as an informal collective of local DJs as an outlet for just getting their stuff out there, Balanced now ranges from electronic to world, dubstep to R \u2019n\u2019 B. Stylus enjoyed a great vegan lunch at Mondragon with manager Adam Hannibal and president Spencer Kuziw to talk about the past, the present and downloading.<\/em><\/p>\n

Stylus: Right off the bat, the ten-year is now. What was the goal when you started off?
\nAdam Hannibal:<\/strong> Well, the ten-year mark is something we\u2019re very proud of. Originally, we just wanted to put out music and we didn\u2019t have any specific direction, just to release Winnipeg artists, promote parties and our own music. No one really had a background in the business side of music. Initially, the goal was just to get our music out there and see how it went. That was the first couple years. We only released local music. In the last five years we\u2019ve broadened to reach a lot of artists from all over the world and from different genres. Now, we\u2019re actively trying to get our music distributed and land as many deals as we can for our artists.
\nStylus: As far as competition in opposing markets, how do you guys see yourselves measuring up to major labels in Canada and internationally?
\nAH:<\/strong> We\u2019ve found a lot of partnerships with other labels that haven\u2019t been so much competitive as much as \u2018win-win\u2019 situations. In electronic music there is a big remix culture, meaning that artists are getting together and collaborating to remix their music or vice versa. They might release some of our music and we\u2019ll release some of theirs. It\u2019s a healthy cooperative direction. Part of it might be that we are in Winnipeg and not necessarily in their \u2018territory.\u2019 Or, they might recognize that we are unique and so are they, so we may as well collaborate.
\nSpencer Kuziw:<\/strong> Agreed. We\u2019re still releasing physical media and a lot of people come to us because they want to be released that way. Five years ago, for example, there were a lot of labels that Adam and I worked with where we might think, \u201cWow, that\u2019s a crazy label. I can\u2019t believe we\u2019re dealing with them.\u201d Yet now, I think releasing vinyl has definitely elevated our stature for sure \u2013 for example, our 7\u201d vinyl Juno record. Those are still near the top of vinyl just because that\u2019s something we\u2019re doing that a lot of people haven\u2019t done. It has certainly elevated our stature.Stylus: Why choose to stay in Winnipeg rather than shipping out to Toronto or Vancouver?
\nAH:<\/strong> We\u2019ve always found a big advantage to being in Winnipeg because we stand out so much in the music scene. When we first got started, Toronto and Montreal were just so saturated that we probably wouldn\u2019t get recognized as much. There are also creative advantages to living through our long winters and spending so much time in the studio. Our output is its own thing \u2013 it\u2019s different from the kind of music you hear from those bigger cities. It keeps us unique culturally and musically.
\nSK:<\/strong> Winnipeg definitely adds to our sound, even the sound of artists that are not from Winnipeg. Aside from playing more gigs, that would probably be the one thing that we might get in a larger city that we don\u2019t get in Winnipeg in this era with the internet. Ten years ago, that was not the case \u2013 when we were just doing it because we were 20 years old or 19 years old and couldn\u2019t afford to leave. There are cities that we love and there\u2019s probably a chance that we could move eventually. But Winnipeg is our home, and that\u2019s probably our sound.
\nStylus: What\u2019s your opinion of downloading\/ \u201cmusic piracy\u201d vs. going into an actual record store?
\nAH:<\/strong> I think piracy can be kind of a bittersweet thing. There are advantages for us as a relatively small label. It can have some promotional legs that we might not have in terms of outreach. I think it is more so affecting big labels in a big way. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s hindering us \u2013 its just spreading our artistry a bit. It\u2019s just some extra promotion. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a serious level where we have to worry about it.
\nSK:<\/strong> We give away a lot of music anyways.
\nAH:<\/strong> There are advantages to just giving away music. I do think the erosion of the \u201cvinyl era\u201d is a unfortunate because there was a real culture of going into record stores and buying records all over the world that\u2019s been lost. I think its harder to stumble on music the way you use to at least. But, for us we take a multi-pronged approach \u2013 we are doing vinyl, we\u2019re doing digital and just trying to tap as many of those different areas as we can.
\nSK:<\/strong> I guess the change for us is we\u2019ve been able to let go of the CD which has been our mainstay for the first seven years of our business. With digital, you can do a two-song release and with vinyl you can do a two or four song release and that\u2019s accepted. It has allowed us to be more prolific in that respect. I think that\u2019s been a big thing for us with the digital revolution.
\nStylus: As far as a Winnipeg\/Balanced sound goes, how would you describe it?
\nAH:<\/strong> Our sounds are fairly complex ones. We promote ourselves as being a mixture of organic and electronic. We try to use a mixture of natural music sounds with more synthetic, technical, digital and urban sounds. Mood wise, it\u2019s a mixture of chill with high-energy tension \u2013 we add a lot of tension. In the end it creates something pretty complex \u2013 something you may have to listen to a few times to wrap your head around.
\nSK:<\/strong> We are a collective and we\u2019ve got great variety. When we have our meetings, we all have our agendas yet we all steer the sound and I think that\u2019s what gives us our sound. We have five guys who all, at least for the most part, agree on what we think is crap as well as things we love. We all bring something to the label. As far as a Winnipeg sound, I don\u2019t think Balanced sounds anything like anything else in Winnipeg or a \u201cWinnipeg Sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

Balanced Records will be celebrating its anniversary party<\/a> on Satruday, April 30, at Studios In The Exchange, 313 Pacific Avenue.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Victoria King 2011 marks the ten-year anniversary for Balanced Records, the Winnipeg-based mega-project. Starting off as an informal collective of local DJs as an outlet for just getting their stuff out there, Balanced now ranges from electronic to world, dubstep to R \u2019n\u2019 B. Stylus enjoyed a great vegan lunch at Mondragon with manager […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-1696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-balanced-records"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}