HPL Laboratories: Music Distribution for the Eldritch-at-Heart

November 29th, 2005

In January of 2007, HPL-Laboratories.com will finally - and I do mean FINALLY - be officially launched. I am currently in the process of designing the website, doing the necessary legal research to properly support it’s goals, and working out technical issues concerning bandwidth limits and assorted other background chores. When the website goes public, I will of course announce it here and everywhere else that’ll give me a shout-out, but in the meantime, I can give you a reasonable accounting of what to expect.

Many a long and eerie year ago (in 1993, to be exact), HPL Laboratories of Pennsylvania was born. At the time, I’d just begun to investigate the world of electronic (a.k.a. “computer”) music utilizing an ancient DOS tracker called MODEdit on a Packard Hell 286 PC with a brand new, top-of-the-line SoundBlaster 16 jammed into its uncooperative guts. I had put together a few techno-ish .mods and posted them to various BBSes around Uniontown (like the late, lamented SurfBoard, Wildcat’s Lair, and DangerBase) for the listening pleasure of fellow computer geeks. I was releasing the files under my standard BBS handle, Nyarlathotep–later expanded to Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos for no good reason whatsoever. The .mods quickly gained a lot of attention–why, I’ll never know, ’cause they were all pretty bad Skinny-Puppy-meets-LA-Style learning experiments–and the next thing I know, the musical project that would consume every following year of my life, that would eventually evolve to include virtually every fellow electronic musician I ever met, that would completely define my musical identity, was born.

Every good musician needs to name his/her/its studio, so naturally, I pondered a good name for my setup - which was basically a cruddy computer stuffed into a corner of my bedroom - and eventually hit on “HPL Laboratories of Pennsylvania,” a somewhat humorous but perfectly apropos Lovecraftian pun on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL). As time went on and I did more and more and more work under the moniker Nyarlathotep–and began to branch out an explore other musical styles and creative avenues under a number of other crazy monikers - HPL Laboratories became less and less my ever-evolving production suite: it was evolving into a general semantic umbrella under which I released music.

Thus, a sort of label was born. A vanity label, basically. An aegis under which I could release all of my own stuff.

In the course of the past three years, three CDs have been issued under the HPL Laboratories of Pennsylvania copperplate: Nyarlathotep’s Our thoughts make spirals in their world and A self-contemplating shadow, both EPs of music intended to be soundtrack accompaniments to two different works by Caitlin R. Kiernan, each distributed by Subterranean Press along with special editions of their associated works; and Illusion of Joy’s third full-length album, Division. Yes, that’s right: that last album was entirely the work of an artists who is NOT ME masquerading under any of my many guises.

You see, when I’d heard Illusion of Joy’s work, I wanted to release it - to provide the artist with a means of getting his excellent oldskool goth rock music Out There. But CDs are, honestly, too expensive and time-consuming to make (even when just burning CD-Rs). Getting wide-ranging distribution for them is difficult as well. I realized there had to be a better way of doing this…especially considering my growing loathing of the American music industry (which includes not only labels but also distributors, retailers, and the bloodthirsty legal hordes that back them).

Well, obviously, there was only one answer: the Net. I decided last year that HPL Laboratories of Pennsylvania had finally found a direction: not as a vanity sticker for my work alone (though I still unashamedly use it for such), nor as a traditional record label…but more like a production studio/label/distributor combine that would work entirely through the Internet, providing artists’ music to fans via downloads. Naturally, given my abject HATRED of Digital Rights Management and copy-protection of ANY kind, these mp3s would be offered entirely free of restrictions. But how? I’d entertained setting up a small EMusic-like pay-per-download store using DownHillBattle.org’s free BattleCart software…but that seemed like too much of a logistical nightmare. All I want to do is get artists’ work Out There for people to enjoy.

I also wanted to protect artists by giving them complete and utter control over the ownership of their own productions. No way in hell was I going to own the copyrights to their works as any major label would: if anything, HPL Laboratories would just exist as an electronic means facilitating the digital distribution of artists’ works - the artists themselves would retain total ownership of their music and would determine entirely for themselves how they would offer that music to the public. But you can’t really do that with the way United States copyright law currently exists. Enter Creative Commons, a flat-out brilliant - and 100% legal - method allowing artists to release their works under licenses that specifically state what rights those artists wish to retain for themselves and their work, and what rights they give up to the public. Creative Commons licensing allows artists alone to determine exactly how their works are being offered. HPL Laboratories, then, would facilitate the downloading and exposure of these bands.

Free of charge.

Because let’s face it, people: I know I’m never going to make Metallica-sized money from my own works, and virtually every artist I’ve approached with the HPL Labs idea realizes the same thing. We’re not in it for money. We’re in it for exposure. We’re in it to get our stuff heard because we’re proud of it and we believe there are people Out There in InternetLand who will appreciate our works and make our efforts worthwhile. What better way to do that than by just making our works available to them in the simplest, most convenient form possible: the BitTorrent download?

But, of course, if people want to give us money…there’s always PayPal donations! Each artist released via the HPL Labs website would have his/her/their/its own donation link so any money that appreciative fans may want to donate to their cause will go directly to them. Not me. The only money I plan to make from this will come from donations to my musical projects. Everyone else deserves EVERY SINGLE PENNY they make.

So here, then, is what HPL-Laboratories.com will be. Consider this a preliminary mission statement:

HPL Laboratories of Pennsylvania exists solely to provide artists working in strange musical forms (primarily, but not necessarily, electronic) a means of getting their works released through a common outlet.

HPL Labs exists to allow artists complete control of their own work via Creative Commons licensing.

HPL Labs provides fans access to DRM-free, unencumbered, everyday mp3 downloads of their favorite artists’ music, as well as convenient means to freely contact those artists concerning donations, other merchandise, and so forth.

HPL Labs is, for all intents and purposes, the musical equivalent of the amateur press circles that my greatest inspiration, H. P. Lovecraft was involved in during his heyday.

The site will be there for our enjoyment, and yours. The music industry can kiss our collective asses. Take your rootkits and your Digital Milennium Copyright Act and shove them up your colons where they belong, with the rest of the bullshit.

By Derek C. F. Pegritz on November 29th, 2005 | Scategory: Computer Nerdery, Music, Open Culture |