Highly collaborative and conceptual in nature, nomadic label CANVAS launched in London in 2014 as an event series, and expanded into record releasing in 2018. Co-founders Lugh O’Neill and Olan Monk – now based in Berlin and Lisbon respectively – define the label as ‘a solidarity between uprooted bards in defiance of an emerging neo-feudalism.’ Through the label they have released their own solo records, as well as EPs by Michael Speers and ​Elvin Brandhi, but it was 2019 compilation Cipher that allowed them to fully realise their intentions. Made by a wide-reaching collective of artists, the tracks were created in response to a prompt about the codification of music.

On 12 February, the second CANVAS compilation Apocope is released, featuring tracks by Monk and O’Neill themselves, alongside Alpha Maid, Bashar Suleiman, Billy Bultheel, Hulubalang, Nadah El Shazly and Elvin Brandhi, who also acted as co-director on the project. The release is organised around post-apocalyptic ideas of music and the collective: “The possible drop-off point of the pop lineage. Idols falling.” Its artists use auto-tune, repetition and lyrical references as strategies to imagine a way of connecting in the wake of pop music’s destruction – ideas shared with many of the artists on the label’s mix for The Wire.

Claire Biddles: Could you tell me a bit about how CANVAS originated as an event series?

Lugh O’Neill: We're both from Galway in the West of Ireland, and we started the event series when we both ended up in London in 2014. It was very Goldsmiths-affiliated because we were studying there at the time, so we knew a lot of students who were making music, but not really getting any opportunities to perform. We ended up doing things in unconventional concert spaces, like the St Pancras Old Church. We usually had the same regulars playing, and the crowd was always the same group of people.

Olan Monk: We started the label when I moved to Portugal. The events came from a very localised experience of music in South London, and the label came out of trying to find ways of maintaining a collective practice, despite our dispersal.

Were the releases from the label sourced from the community that you'd already established with the events? Or did you reach out to other artists outside of that?

OM: Initially it was based on the community that we had. We launched the label with two of our own releases, because we felt that was a good way to test the format, and not to take such risks with other people entrusting their music to us.

LO: The drive for wanting to be a label was feeling like events were no longer possible for us to do easily, and if we made releases it turned into an archival thing in a way. We wanted to help each other release music, despite being in different places, so it was still very community minded. And obviously, by being away in different places, we ended up developing different communities as well, which we were able to link into it.

OM: I think a key moment was Lugh directing the first compilation release, which is a good example of us drawing on our immediate group of close friends and collaborators, while also extending an outward invitation to other people. There's always been an intention that the community is open.

I think it's really interesting how you use the format of the compilation to explore conceptual ideas and draw material from different people. Compilations so often use pre-existing material, but I like that yours are prompts or invitations. Can you tell me a bit about how that came about, and the idea to formulate it in that conceptual way?

LO: Obviously, we all contribute in our own ways, because we all have our own distinct practices, but we tried to create some kind of cohesive founding concept. I made a funding application to do Cipher, so from the outset there was a conceptual approach. I wanted to do something based around different speculative ideas relating to how performance and authorship would develop, with the idea to invite other people to contribute to the conversation, in order to then all contribute music, as well as text and imagery. Everyone engaged really positively; I guess it was a bit of a novel way to do it, compared to other compilations they'd been asked to do.

OM: We were very lucky with how our collaborators responded, and how open everyone was. Even though it comes together into a seemingly dense or encrypted collective work, it still has this degree of everyone taking it in their own direction. It's a bit like the way we would have tried to programme shows in the past – not really having a genre or specific kind of aesthetic or style, more just inviting people to respond to something, and somehow there's a thread through that.

LO: I guess what's interesting with this approach, which is something that we considered right from the beginning, is that having a conceptual framework allows people to work on something together.

It seems that that idea of creating something together leads really well into the concept for Apocope, which is about collective experiences in a post-pop context. Did your experience with the first compilation lead into the second in that way?

LO: The process from the first one definitely informed the second one. It's interesting to talk about this idea of the collective experience as an aesthetic thing in Apocope, because between 2018 and now we have a different vision of what the aesthetic voice of the label might be. For this compilation it really made sense to ask Freya Edmondes [who records under the name Elvin Brandhi] to take a leading voice, to ask if she would set the foundation theme. In that sense we're expanding our collective experience. Freya is now a big part of it, and a lot of people involved in this compilation are people who are especially connected to her. I guess that's the big difference between Cipher and Apocope – and it makes the experience a lot more complex, dense and distinct.

OM: It's the first time we've opened up that directorial role. It was really interesting considering how a compilation can act as a co-creation of contexts, or a community based on this kind of shared context.

Another aspect of Apocope that I find interesting is that as well as operating as the label, you are also represented as individual artists. What was it like responding to the compilation prompt yourselves?

OM: As an artist-run label, we're always moving between these roles of artist and administrator. Although it's good sometimes to keep those practices separate in your head, in reality they're constantly in flux. We weren't considering [the concepts of Apocope] totally abstractly, they're already very tied to our practices – the three of us talking about these ideas was very much as artists as well as a label. And sometimes the easiest way to share is through making, so there was a lot of sharing of materials in our discussions.

The conversational nature of it really translates to how it sounds, because there are these shared elements throughout. Then there's people working together too – Freya is on two tracks.

LO: It's funny how that came together. Freya has her own track [“FRIDGE! Ez_virus”] and she's on the track “Cekik” with Hulubalang. They'd been in dialogue, exchanging stuff, then it was this last minute thing: "By the way, I've just done vocals on this track, can we send this new version to mastering tomorrow?" These are the joys of these things, you get something in your inbox which is entirely unexpected and different to what you thought.

OM: Luckily the person who does our mastering is very flexible and understanding! Shout out to Ali Najafi.

That must be one of the best parts of being an artist-run label. I guess the joy of anybody running a small label is that you get to listen to all this new music. But for you there must be that additional layer of inspiration.

OM: We're fans of everyone who's contributed to this, and we're excited to hear their music. To receive music before it's been presented to the world, and to be a part of the context for that music to come to an audience, that feels like a privilege. As artists, feeling a part of someone else's creative process is extremely rewarding. When doing this, we will do everything we can to assist an artist's creative freedom, even if that means way more emails than necessary, or multiple versions going around. We know how it is, so it's important to us to facilitate that.

You can appreciate the processes as well as the end result.

OM: It can be a bit chaotic. But that's maybe where the best stuff is. The way I produce stuff is quite chaotic, so if people want to work in that way, I'm quite open to that!

LO: In the past, people we work with have told us that they appreciate working with label people who are also musicians. For musicians, it's sometimes hard to figure out what the vested interest is for label people. A musician will understand why they're producing work, but sometimes it's hard to understand why someone would decide to set up a small company to release it.

OM: And that is not a diss at all to anyone who chooses to work at a label! Obviously there's different ways to come into this. I think the point is that there's a degree of understanding between us when we create something together, which is that we're all in this with the same kind of investment. There isn't that degree of separation, and I think that's why we contribute tracks to the releases. It is great to have other people come in and take part in other roles, too. The roles remaining as fluid as possible is beneficial to everyone in the process. We're not a completely anarchic collective, it's important not to see everyone's role as the same – it's more about a degree of fluidity.

Going back to the event side of what you do, and connecting it to some of the ideas in Apocope – we're currently in a kind of post-pop scenario, in that we can't gather and experience music together in the way that we're used to. Have you thought about events in this new context that we find ourselves in?

OM: When the first lockdown hit, I was doing a live residency which was affiliated with CANVAS, and it's coming up to a year since that was cut short. That was one of the last times that Lugh and I were together in person, and it's definitely the last time we've collectively gathered. There was this idea that we would return to the live event, but at the same time, a degree of acceptance and reflection on what that might mean, or how to do that. As a label, as a collective, maybe it's interesting that the focus on what it is to work collectively seems to shift in reaction to these contextual shifts. So Apocope was in response to this. I think it's amazing that we managed to actually do anything in 2020, and the fact that it was this inherently collective work speaks to our desire for resilience in these situations. But it remains to be seen how we will respond to that in terms of performance events.

LO: When we start re-entering public spaces, it's going to happen in a very different way where certain formats are going to start to seem outdated, certain formats might seem weird, but then eventually, maybe the weird ones are going to stick. Which is something I'm really interested to think about and to explore.

Looking forward, what are the next steps for the label – do you have any projects underway that you can talk about?

OM: We've just signed off on our catalogue for the year, which is amazing. It looks like we'll probably do five releases, which is huge, because we've only done eight so far. Coming out of the compilation, it's been interesting to see what kinds of collaborations are continuing with individual artists. There seems to be this flow between this larger collective work, and working with people more personally on projects, and that's been really exciting. It's an interesting flow into whatever is next.

Mix tracklist:

Bashar Suleiman “Safeway”
KZLK “M6W”
Speaker Music “Super Predator”
Hulubalang X Elvin Brandhi “Cekik”
Mica Levi “Flower Bed”
Brandon Juhans “Ninety Seven”
Alpha Maid “Harry Wants To Imagine A World Without You”
Lil Asaf “El Burj”
Florian T M Zeisig “Speaking”
Billy Bultheel “The Sky Bent”
Elvin Brandhi “Fridge! Ez_Virus”
Félicia Atkinson “Shirley To Shirley”
Nadah El Shazly “Fl3Ln”
130_IVXX “Short Circuito Blob Estoria”
Actress “Lovely Muffled Tones And Beat”
Duma “Corners In Nihil”
Xao “Unreleased”
Michael Speers “Voice”
Unitedstatesof “(Nine)Woke Up”
Sean Being “Thorax”
Frog Of Earth “Newt Dub”
Ashley Paul “Lost Memories”
Lucy Railton “Lament”
Bar Italia “Mariana Trenchrock”
Polido “Sobre A Cinza”
Dean Blunt “Rejected Kelela Remix”
Dirt Mac Murt “OwnEyesInMeHead”
Like A Pisces “Forever In Debt”
Jam City “I Don’t Wanna Dream About It Anymore”
Arthur Russell “Being It”

Read Claire Biddles’ review of Apocope in The Wire 444. Subscribers can access the article via the online archive. Apocope is released by CANVAS on 12 February.