Label Mix 011 comes to use from Toverberg, a tiny label and collective hailing from Brussels, Belgium, which they describe as “a big(-ish) city in a tiny country.” The Toverberg palette encompasses experimental folk, ambient, and deconstructed sounds.
Toverberg’s label mix is composed of friends’ demos at various states of completion. It provides a snapshot of a crew developing their collective vision and paving their own lane in the contemporary music landscape.
Where are you based?
Brussels, Belgium, big(-ish) city in a tiny country.
Can you describe your label mix?
We asked musicians close to us (of whom we release / are planning to release music or artists we already booked (or want to book / release!)) to send us some demos they’re working on and they send us some beautiful material. Some of it is almost finished, some of it is still in the early stages, which was fun to blend as it questions the status of a finished track.
What inspired you to start a label?
We had the idea for some time to start a low-key label, meaning a place where music can be released quicker and more spontaneously than is often the case with bigger labels. The idea only really took shape when we decided to release nykolaes & Daniël Paul’s debut album neofolk on it. It’s actually a bit bizarre to already talk about our label as that is still the only release we have done, but the success of it made us take it more seriously and we are now working on multiple new releases.
Does your label have a sound or a mission?
Our main idea of trying to be more accessible (for artists) is something we want to pursue in our releases. We’re trying to help artists release that weird passion project they’ve been working on for very long but is stuck on a private Soundcloud-playlist. Outside of this I think we are still very young to state big intentions and I guess time will tell what the label shapes up to be.
The term neofolk is guiding our way as well, not as a genre but as a way of adding to a new wave of twenty-first century folklore.
Tell us about your scene(s).
None of us originally lived in Brussels, but we moved here bit by bit for both practical reasons as well as the scene. Because Belgium is such a small country, a lot of artistic minds gather in the capital which creates a scene that does not really exist outside of it. We feel like the scene is very strong, very DIY, with a lot of events and artists to discover. The fun thing about the Brussels scene is that it’s small enough to feel like a family but big enough to stay exciting.
What’s your A&R process?
What’s our what?
What labels do you look up to?
Montage
Mostly Interrupted
Bonambi Records
Moving Furniture Records
Azur Editions
