RAGE PEACE
There is a dire need for change in the world of music. The current paradigm is broken, and has been for a long time.
2020, while tragic in so many ways, was also a year of revelation, revealing all that was not working in the old paradigm, and providing opportunities for transformation and change so that we may plant the seeds for a more sustainable future, in all aspects of the world. It is my hope that in a small way, we can plant the seeds for new sustainable paradigms in the world of music and art with Rage Peace.
The idea is to eventually create an artist-centric record label and approach it in the same playful utopian gestamtkunstwerk of multivalent culture-making as Andy Warhol’s Factory… I see the process of starting a record label as a similar exercise in performance art, community building, and social sculpture, deepening the exploration of utopia through music, and creating a new playful yet sustainable paradigm of music-making through the lens of art.
Rage Peace is a social experiment of sorts, a dream and a radical exploration of freedom. Any change first comes from a change in perception. To change the way music is released, we have to first change the way we look at music. Post-digital music has been largely viewed as immaterial objects for free and fast consumption, largely at the expense of the artists who make it. Since the pandemic’s impact on musicians and the banning of concerts, people are starting to realize how necessary it is to go back to buying records again to support the artists they love and ensure their survival.
Rage Peace seeks to return to the grassroots creative process of it all, valuing the labor of music-making and addressing the need for human intimacy and ritual objects in our current turbulent zeitgeist. The idea is to eventually create an umbrella organization that functions as both a record label and art gallery, a cross-media curatorial platform that is a safe-haven for musicians on the fringes of the mainstream who already have a strong visual art practice and actively exercise their right to free speech and free expression.
Each album release will be non-conventional, unique, and cross-media, with limited edition vinyls that double as sculptural objects, as well as a body of thematically related-visual art objects or art books that can then be exhibited and sold to help fund the release of the album and ensure that each artist gets paid living wages. This will also hopefully connect artists with collectors who can potentially continue to support them and their art through patronage. This is an artist-centric approach to music-making based on fostering creativity, reciprocity and sustainability, as opposed to the top-down, hyper-capitalist, debt-economy approach that relies on musicians as slave labor and forsakes originality in place of commercial marketability. In a fragile moment in history where concerts are banned for the foreseeable future, there has never been a more urgent time to create new avenues for musicians to continue to survive and thrive off their art.
“Welcome To Paradise Lost” is the first release on Rage Peace, and a limited hand-drawn edition of 100 albums are available here in conjunction with the Wassaic Project.
