Interview: Siste Sukke Records And Tapes

Label Profile

Name: Siste Sukk Records And Tapes

Location: Oslo, Norway 

Founded: 2012

Current Roster: Montpelier, Caust, Choirs, Lord Snow, REDD, Youth Pictures Of Florence Henderson, Oswald, iampsyencefiction

Contact Them: Facebook, Official Site, Tumblr

How did Siste Sukk Records And Tapes come about and what's the story so far?

Siste Sukk (Norwegian for "last sigh") came about in February of 2012, and it was a really spur of the moment thing. I used to be involved in a label that my friend started, but releasing vinyl is just such an financial suicide that means that when you are a small operation you can only release stuff fairly seldom. I love the cassette format, first of all because it looks damn sexy, but also because it's not rather inexpensive and quick to produce.

In a little under a year I've done 8 releases, which has been loads of fun.

What are your plans for the label in 2013?

2. In 2013 I'm going to continue to act as a distro and a label, but perhaps the releases will not come just as frequently as they did last year due to a hectic year at school. I'm planning to do a 7" by a Norwegian band that I can't wait to announce the details of, I think people will love them. Other than that I hope labels continues to approach me about trading tapes and co-releasing tapes, that's a really fun part of being involved in such a creative and great DIY community.

What's important in the bands that you work with? How do you choose bands to work with?

3. To be honest, I think that everyone releasing music on a modest DIY scale is looking for the same thing when they decide to put out stuff: that they simply love it themselves. I know I just really want to back bands that I love and feel like deserve to have a physical release out there. For me it's been important to try and show people how many good Norwegian bands we have over here, which is why I'm really happy that I got to put out tapes by iampspyencefiction, REDD, Wits End and a 10" by Youth Pictures of Florence Henderson - they are all friends of mine that I greatly admire. On the other hand, there is no other music that I'm a bigger sucker for than american emo, so I'm trying to reach out to twinklecore 
bands (yes, I'm using that term ironically) too.

What's your overall aim for the label?

Sometimes it can feel like a pretty hopless task trying to explain to people why I would even consider releasing cassette tapes. Inferior sound and really inconvenient, right? It seems to me that we've all grown a little too accustomed to the convenience that music supposedly should be these days.
I started Siste Sukk as a convulsive attempt at keeping people's interest in the physical and tactile joys of the dead format that is the cassette tape. The most important thing should be to support the bands and the label, so if you haven't got a tape player, go to a garage sale, a thrift shop or search eBay - they're like 3 bucks.