Folding / Dial honcho Mike Donovan
questions asked
by George Chen via email October
2004
I interviewed Mike for a piece in the Guardian about tape labels. I was only able to use a few quotes from that, but I thought Mike's eloquent responses belonged on the interweb for general educational purposes. I first saw Church Steps in 1998, Donovan's collaboration with Chris Douglass aka OST. Before that even, I knew of Mike's label, Dial, which put out the pop band Mondo Crescendo fka Juniper. He's been on top of the nascent late '90s SF underground releasing limited lathe cut records from bands like Rocket Science and the Nigger Loving Faggots (feat. Kyp Malone), Blectum From Blechdom, and Hot Fucking Jets (Topher Lafata and Chris Dixon). Between putting out records and driving taxis, Donovan has played in The Ropers, Sounds of the Barbary Coast, Mesh/Meths, and Nam. He is currently playing in Sic Alps with Adam Stonehouse (Hospitals) and playing drums in Big Techno Werewolves. This renaissance man took some time from his trip to Turkey to write me back:
October 7th - george i just got to my brothers in london....hella very tired no sleep last night cause it was my bday in amsterdam and to celebrate i smoked weed for the first time in 1 month and it gave me the dutch courage to stay up all night walking before my noon flight which i missed cause i was sleeping inside my sweatshirt hood across from my gate under a tv broadcasting cnn....so as you can see im in no condition to write...will have answers after sleep
zum: What made you decide to start Folding? 
Mike Donovan: I decided to start Folding after a year of disaster
with Dial Records....5 records got canned due to a
lack of money and/or my inability to hold on to it at
the time. I decided to call it Folding since is was
like a business folding or going out of business...but
instead there was this option to keep going on this
'cassette level'. It turns out anyway that it's a
level that I'm really comfortable being at. For a
while I
was struggling with trying to get Dial more and more
off the ground and found that there were certain
aspects of running a label in the traditional sense
that i just couldn’t get comfortable with. Things
like advertising seemed to me more like a chance to
pay to get some art in a magazine than a chance to
tell people about what they should want. But that
leaves a
real gap in the representation of the music, or in a
sense i felt like i could be letting the artists
down.
So eventually all my hesitation could be laid to rest
but my desire to work with people at making and
packaging music could continue unabated. In fact,
things could be sped up. I found that the only
reason
I was putting out music at all was just to get down
with my friends and make something cool. Everyone
who has done a release on Folding, with exception of
one or two artists, are close friends. I asked Mammal
to do a tape when I'd only met him once but I was
really
over-listening to his album and he also releases
tapes so it made sense. Otherwise it’s a 'great idea'
that I come up with- 'I'm going to ask my friend to do
a tape!' I can usually ride the high of such an idea
for at least 48 hours. The subsequent high of
getting a 'yes' from the friend can last even longer.
zum: was this a conscious move to replace dial or is Dial still a dormant label?
Mike Donovan: Dial still exists. I still support it and sell records through the website. There's a fully updated and re-designed website on the way. There will be more from Dial in the future but for the moment it really only exists as a web presence and for the moment I'm happy that the music that the artists released is represented there and in that way. Nine of the records were limited and are now out of print so the jpegs and the free mp3s have become the art for anyone who didn't get one when it was available. I'm actually really into this cause its kind of like a story about a label instead of a proper label. Part of me will be exited when the whole Dial catalog sells out. Maybe at that point I wont repress and just rely on the website to tell the old story. It would be like a book report of a label instead of a label and I think that would be pretty rad.
zum: how do you see them in relation to each other?
MD: The two are definitely linked. Folding is the extension of Dial and it follows my line of thinking. But it took doing Dial for five years to get me where I am now with Folding. Dial was full of hope but was also full of frustration and anxiety. There was a point where I figured out that I wasn't actually interested in a lot of what Dial was trying to be. And at the moment for me Dial is the place where one sheets, advertisements and contact lists go to die. Maybe I should wake them back up one day and get on the phone and start selling some records.
zum: what is appealing to you about the cassette format? as opposed to mp3s, which you also have on your site, as a cheap and efficient way to deliver music?
MD: The cassette format is appealing initially in its
immediacy and its cheap cost. Immediate in the sense
that the can go from an idea to a finished tape in a
day or two. This rarely happens but it can. Many of
the releases on Folding are 'single length' at under
10 minutes and so they are very cheap in bulk even
though they are cut to length. A short run of a short
tape that will stay available for up to six months
only costs me something like $10. For an old format
It’s amazing how durable and competitive it is with
established and pretty fully developed CD-R
technology. You can burn some cheap CD-Rs your
computer with cracked programs but still, considering
my affinity for short releases, its still cheaper to
do a run of tapes. As for mp3s, you can't hold them
in your hand and its not really the same as a CD in
terms of sound quality due to the compression. You
can hold them on your iPod but personally I'm amazed
that iPods have taken off like they have. People seem
unaware that they've traded a sizable amount of sound
quality for convenience and, of course, a little bit
of status. Actually on second thought this isn't
really surprising at all. I don't believe in
fetishizing format but the cassette has its charms.
Maybe foremost- its an analog format which means its
going to carry its own sound. This also means that
there are some unique things that can be done in the
mastering and duplication in terms of 'going into the
red' which on some of the louder or 'noise' cassettes
has come into play. They also come in colors, are very
portable, durable and really I don't think this can be
overlooked- they've got screws! It’s true, there are
four, go check it out.
So yeah, I'm glad to have mp3s on my site (Dialrecords.com) and the new
website will have quite a lot more but one thing that
really makes these tapes worth having is that they're
handmade one at a time. I think that in the future I'm
going to go a little further with this- I mean I've
always tried to make each tape look the same even
though they're made by hand. But this year I'm
thinking I'll be using more paint and ink and less
toner. But really, above all these selling points,
the real reason people should check these tapes out is
because the music is some of the best and most
challenging music being made today, period.
zum: what are future releases you have planned?
MD: At the moment new releases are in the works by NOEL VON HARMONSON, OCTIS, EELIO ESTEVEZ, METHS, BIG TECHNO WEREWOLVES, CHILD ABUSE, PATRICK MULLINS, DEATH SENTENCE: PANDA!, METALUX, OCS, BLOOD STOOL, AJ/ABK and SIC ALPS...plus a lot of stuff that’s been out of print is coming back like the BEAR KLAWZ cassette and the much asked for MURDER MURDER tape. Also, Zing Magazine will include a CD version of the 'Solo Show Solo Soul Sounds Of Soul Share' compilation cassette that Chris Johanson and I compiled for an art exhibition he organized in Chicago earlier this year. Another 20 song 'part two' of this compilation is forthcoming as well. And maybe, by the time this gets printed Folding will have snuck something else out under the radar.
POSTSCRIPT in September 2005, Mike announced that Dial was done. Big Techno Werewolves also played their last show. Mike continues on with Folding.
END
Last updated October 7, 2005. [ edit this page ]