2L, A New Norwegian Label that Aims to Bring Down Barriers
BY MARTIN ANDERSON Copyright ©2002 - Fanfare, Inc.
2L, A New Norwegian Label that Aims to
Bring Down Barriers
BY MARTIN ANDERSON Copyright
©2002 - Fanfare, Inc.
“There are many models when you start building a label,” Lindberg explains. “You have Naxos at one end, mainly concerned with building a repertoire within rather narrow genres. What we try to focus on is that you can have a musical experience and the feeling of a musical mood independent of what kind of genre we’re talking about. Let’s take it a little further back. We started up as a production company back in 1992, doing recording and editing for classical labels, mainly in Norway but also for Naxos in Sweden. Then we worked it up and have evolved the tools that we saw were needed around production—not only recording and editing, but also graphic design, a CD agency for a CD factory, presentation, and marketing. These are services we’ve provided, in the ten years we’ve been working, for the existing labels, mainly in Norway. We felt a need to do something with our own minds, as a sort of mental hygienics; when you’re working very hard to serve other people, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day just to fulfil the needs of others, then you feel the need to do something on your own. So we started up the label 2L.”
Where
did the name come from? “It’s our company name, Lindberg Lyd [Lindberg
Sound], double L. Easy enough, and since we use a digit at the front, we end up
at the top of all the lists! Anyway, we took a closer look: OK, what do we want
to do? We decided that the frame for the label should be the craftsmanship we
have the competence for, and that’s acoustic recording and acoustic production.
We have two mobile recording rigs and an editing and mastering studio, and we do
not want to work in a studio environment but to go out to churches, concert
halls, and do acoustic recordings. The frames are exactly those; within them we
feel we can do folk music, acoustic jazz, crossings between pop and jazz and
folk music—and classical repertoire, of course. We feel that this label could
hold all of these musical experiences; we don’t feel the need to tell the
listener what to hear.”
The first eight releases from 2L prove that Lindberg means what he says about
repertoire. One or two are relatively orthodox: 2L1, entitled Melankoli, is a
recital of music for viola and piano by Kodály, Britten, Pärt, Joplin, Kvandal,
Bloch, and Liszt, beautifully played by Morten Carlsen and Sergej Osadchuk,
joined in Dowland and Brahms (op. 91) by the mezzo Marianne Beate Kielland; and
2L2 brings Vol. 1 of what promises to be a complete violin-and-piano Wieniawski
from Piotr Janowski and Wolfgang Plagge. Then things begin to get less
predictable. Vintermåne (“Winter Moon”, on 2L3) is a jazz-tinged album of
Norwegian folksongs from Anne Gravir Klykken, variously accompanied by
saxophones, keyboards, with percussion and flute; and 2L4 is an excellent
recital from the violinist (and hardanger fiddler) Tron Steffen Westberg, joined
on the last two tracks by Magne Haugom and Jan Frostvoll. 2L5 and 2L6 contain
classical music inspired by the Middle Ages from the composer Wolfgang Plagge
(b. 1960), ranging in style from the new-agey to the stiffly contrapuntal; the
first disc features two of Norway’s most highly esteemed musicians, the
soprano Solveig Kringelborn and trumpeter Ole Edvard Antonsen and includes
Plagge’s Trumpet Sonata and a couple of song-cycles, and the second has his
Concerto Grosso II for two pianos, brass quintet, and timpani, and the Music for
Two Pianos. Three Beethoven cello sonatas (op. 5, No. 1, op. 69, and op. 102,
No. 2) are given alert and communicative performances by Bjørn Solum and
Kristin Fossheim (playing on a fortepiano) on 2L7; and 2L8 is an album, Spill
(“Play”), by a folk-trio called Flukt (“Flight”)—an instantly catchy
blend of Norwegian, Scots, Irish, and other influences.
What governed the choice of material for those first releases? “We are very
concerned with building a product from the bottom, and that means not just
finding a repertoire and a musician, and hiring the musician to do the
repertoire—that’s not our way of working. All the products on 2L are the
result of a situation where we had started to work with musicians on another
project and then evolved a common sense of what a musical experience is and what
it takes. And then, as you see on the label, we have also done a lot of work
together with the composer, as we have with the pieces of Wolfgang Plagge, where
we start from the bottom, when this is composed, shaping a product together with
the composer and the musician. So we have a situation where no musician is just
hired by the hour to deliver a job. As I said, it’s a kind of mental hygiene.
As a production company you have a budget: You have to finish in six sessions,
within thirty or forty hours of editing, and that’s it. We are not aiming to
do more recordings for 2L per year than that we can afford to use all the time
needed to reach the result we think is optimal. And that goes for the musicians
also—they are into the project with a spirit of ‘We’re coming to do the
job and we don’t leave until it’s done; we’re not counting hours for the
work.’ That’s the philosophy behind 2L.”
Doesn’t that sheer catholicity of approach present 2L with marketing
difficulties? “Marketing wise, it’s been shown up as a genius thing to do,
because you can aim at a lot of different people. The marketing difficulty is
created only by a lot of genre-narrow magazines—like Fanfare! That’s where
there’s the difficulty in marketing. But as long as we use open media as
marketing channels, then it’s rather a strength. We find them on the Internet,
in general music magazines; radio and TV are very open media.” But that’s
not where 2L will find the buyers for its Wieniawski or Beethoven recordings,
surely, and doesn’t that make life difficult for 2L’s distributors? “The
distributing of a label like this is a challenge in itself. Our main distributor
is Musikkoperatorene [in Oslo], and we began using them in a kind of exclusive
deal. What we experienced is that they had good coverage in the Norwegian
market, but the Norwegian market is too small. We had a choice when we were
starting out: Are we going to make the kind of products we believe in, or are we
going to make the products we think the audience wants. If we make the product
that we believe in, we have a smaller percentage area who are interested in it,
and then we have to expand the area. That’s the way we have chosen, and the
solution was the webshop. For example, we had a very good review of the
Wieniawski CD in The Strad. The strength of a small label is that we can turn
around quite quickly. We had started to get in the e-mails from the Strad review
and people were saying ‘Oh, we can’t get the CDs here in Australia’ and
things like that. And so we turned around and the webshop with credit cards was
up and running within a week. And then within fourteen days we sold 500 copies
through the website, just of the Wieniawski, and that was because of the review
in The Strad. So we have to work on that direct line with our customers. Of
course, we will keep the traditional distribution, and in the USA it’s
Qualiton that’s handling the import.”
Can one find a unifying philosophy underlying the apparent diversity of 2L’s
first releases? “We have no main philosophy that we are going to do this or
that. Our only concern is that, when you go into a project, that specific
project is going to contain its own values, without looking to the whole shape
of 2L. The shape of 2L will then be that the listener can pick out a 2L
recording and expect a musical experience. That’s the only criterion; we
don’t want to set any other frames on the label. So each volume from 2L should
be an individual experience, independent of the other 2L editions.” I’m
still not convinced that Lindberg’s stylistic openness won’t create
practical difficulties: Doesn’t he run the risk of failing to establish a
readily recognised profile for 2L? His answer is straightforward enough: “No.
Everybody else has that, and you can identify most international labels from
their profile. If a company goes off that track, normally it makes a different
label again. No, we would like the listener to be surprised by what he finds.
Actually, we’ve had two independent feedbacks from shops in Norway. When I
spoke to them, I asked: ‘What kind of labels do you bring in?’ ‘Oh, it’s
only jazz labels—and 2L, because that’s a total experience.’”
How, then, does Lindberg expect to get potential listeners to make that leap of
faith? The average Fanfare reader, for example, might well enjoy, say, the Flukt
folk-album Spill enormously (I certainly did), but how is he or she ever going
to come across it? “What we have experienced—especially on the web-shop,
where we can read directly what individuals buy—is that a classical buyer
normally buys two classical CDs and then adds a test of one of the others. Then
he comes back with a fantastic report and wants some more of that other stuff.
Of course, we have sound samples of all the tracks on all our editions on our
website [www.2l.no], so people
can go in and listen to the stuff before they decide whether to buy it. And also
we have tried to make a small description on the cover of what kind of mood and
experience people can expect.” Hold on: take the Tron Steffen Westberg CD—it’s
entirely in Norwegian. Obviously the major market is in Norway, but if there’s
nothing in English how is someone in Arizona going to be enticed to acquire it?
“You have spotted a weak link! [Laughter] As we’ve started to build 2L,
we’ve discovered a lot of things during the editions we’ve made over the
last ten months. Tron Steffen was originally intended mainly for the Norwegian
market, but then it turned totally around and in Finland and, especially,
Australia that recording has been very well taken up. So we’ve made an English
translation of the whole booklet which is available on the website as a download.
And Tadaaki Tsuda at Nordic Sound Hiroshima has translated all the booklet
entries of our entire catalogue into Japanese [to be found at http://home9.highway.ne.jp/nordic/].”
But then take Vintermåne (2L3)—there isn’t even an explanation for the
potential Norwegian buyer. “But it is explained on the website—‘The
magnificent steel-blue of a winter moon—an eerie warm light on the cold snow.’”
I’m not sure that helps much, but let’s carry on.
Assuming that 2L sees much of its trade coming over the Web, how is Lindberg
going to drive potential customers towards his site in the first place?
“That’s the challenge! That’s why we’re putting an ad in Fanfare
magazine. The whole music industry is turning over enormously, and has been for
the last five years. We have started a label in the middle of this upheaval, and
that means we have to explore different channels for distribution and for
marketing. We don’t have any guarantees for what will work and what won’t,
but we have the ability to turn around quite fast, combined with the patience to
see what works. So we have the possibility of putting quite a lot of measures
into action, to see what we can do to market this. Of course, the distribution
and the marketing is our main concern—in addition to making good products.
Fanfare is the first tool we use in the American market. As we’re based on a
Web presentation, it’s very easy, when we come to November and December and
Fanfare magazine hits the streets, to measure the statistics of our visitors to
the website and the webshop, and then we’ll have an immediate feedback on
whether this measure is working or not. One thing that we have not yet solved is
how to reach the audience that is not a part of the Web society, and if you, or
anybody you know, or the readers of Fanfare, have any good ideas, please come
with them—we are very open. Actually, as a small label we are very open to a
lot of thoughts on how to reach a genuinely interested audience with these
products.”
Is Lindberg also open to repertoire suggestions? “Definitely.” He has a
stable of Norwegian artists at the moment, but if someone approached him with a
fantastic blue-grass fiddler from Kentucky, would he be interested in that?
“Yep—because, as I said, what we are interested in is a musical experience
within an acoustic world, and there is no limit, we don’t have any limits.”
Nov/Dec 2002
