Interview with JPN Founder Byron Kalet

Last Month, the Journal of Popular Noise released its Winter/Fall edition for 2008, featuring Pwrfl Power, Linda & Ron’s Dad and Climax Golden Twins. Equal parts periodical, record and art d’objet, the Journal of Popular Noise is an intelligent take on music as a historical document–especially as music’s physicality and aesthetic appears to be fading.
Byron Kalet, JPN’s founder and editor, was kind enough to answer a few questions about the history of the publication, and its plans for expansion in the future.
What’s the mission of popular noise?
First and foremost, I wanted to challenge the conventions of how recorded sound is produced and consumed. When I started the JPN in 2007 things were really starting to come to a head with big labels freaking out about digital distribution. I thought that in light of those changes we needed to take a step back and really think about why someone would still want to buy a physical version of a record. I drew a lot of inspiration from magazines, because at that point they were looking a lot stronger than CD sales, but of course now things are a bit different. So we might make some changes to accommodate that, I think its important not to get stuck in the conventions of ‘how things are done.’

What void do you feel it fills?
As a designer and a musician, I think having a physical manifestation of music is a really important part of the experience. It helps tell the story. I’m convinced the reason people don’t seem to place much value on records isn’t because they can get them for free as much as that they are disembodied. When you have 50,000 songs on your tiny little iPod they just don’t seem that important. I don’t feel like the experience is worth as much, but maybe it’s generational. I’m getting old.
Did you model it after anyone?
Well, there were a lot of things I was thinking about in terms of translating a magazine into songs. The diagrams I drew to direct the compositions definitely drew a lot from John Cage scores but I tried to make them look less abstract, even though they’re probably more arbitrarily drawn than Cage’s were. Brian Eno’s ideas about generative music were also an inspiration. The logic there led me to think about the templates and structure of magazines as a generative system that could be applied to the way songs are written, or a record is arranged.
Who have you worked with and why?
Most of the people I’ve worked with so far are artists I’ve known and respected for a long time (Foscil/Truckasauras, Past Lives, Dutch Dub). If anyone’s paying attention, they’ll notice most of these artists are from Seattle, where I grew up. There are a few people (Bora Yoon, Ben Frost, Climax Golden Twins, Pwrfl Power) that I have a more serendipitous relationship to. There are some bigger names I have coming up, but in general, I like to work with more obscure people, I try to look at the selections as ‘news’, I’m sort of trying to report on cool underground music and sound art that most people may not have heard of.
What types of artists do you want to work with in the future?
I’m doing an edition of all spoken word records with some very interesting people this summer. Most of the artists I’ve been working with so far are very musical; I’d like to branch out into some other more unusual sound recordings. I’d love to work with writers and actors. I’ve been listening to a lot of talk radio lately and I think it would be great, again in reference to the magazine format, to do some stuff like that on vinyl. I think I have more things I want to do than I’ll ever have the time or money to produce.
Are there any plans for expansion?
Yes, for sure. I’d like at some point to do releases quarterly instead of semi-annual. But that’s 12 7″ a year, it’s amazing that I can get three artists to write and record exclusive material for me at all, let alone on a tight schedule. I’m also doing some other releases as a more normal record label. Last year I co-released the debut record from Truckasauras, and this spring I’m putting out an E.P. from Flexions, which I’m really excited about. I’d like to start doing more stuff like that.

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