Interview with Gigantic Monster Records: "Most people have a tendency to look at art without a commercial element as garbage..."

I first discovered Gigantic Monster Records through Bangor Media Collective's previous online social network. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this independent music label, with its eclectic mix of underground artists of multiple genres, is based in Bangor, on Essex Street. Their website, Cellarseer Media, is the locus of their distribution efforts. It's also where to go if you have an album you'd like submit for consideration or review. Here I speak with Nate and Shawn, the founders and masterminds of GMR about how they got their start, what it means to be 'ultra-underground' and their newest Godzilla-inspired release.

RR: Thanks so much for agreeing to be interviewed for Razzle Rose. How did Gigantic Monster Records get started?

Nate: Back in 1997, Shawn and I were active members of a Bangor media collective of our own. Everyone in our circle of friends was an artist, a musician, or a writer.

Shawn: We decided to unite under the same banner as we shared complimentary aesthetics and methodology.

Nate: Shawn was already recording and releasing original music. Some others in our circle started recording songs as well. Shawn and I organized those songs into albums and released them. Gigantic Monster Records was born.


RR: On your website you say that you are interested in giving coverage to "ultra-underground art" - what does this mean to you?

Shawn: I suppose that's mostly about redundancy and repeating yourself artistically. If everyone caters to that 95% coverage demographic, then there's a subset of people starved for something emotionally / intellectually stimulating. Why keep rehashing what works, and what sells? There are plenty of entities producing that kind of thing, and that's valid in itself, but we're trying to fill a void. Being ultra-underground fulfills a certain niche that would otherwise be neglected. It sometimes may be unrewarding, but that's in its nature. Most people have a tendency to look at art without a commercial element as garbage. Stockhausen and Cage would be categorized as unlistenable by most, yet are still lauded. Not that we're comparing ourselves, but the mechanic is the same.


RR: On your site you also say that you don't promote artists of one particular genre. Nonetheless do you find some genres represented more than others among your artists? What styles of music are represented?

Nate: Our first ever release was by Ares Mayhem and their blend of techno, industrial, and metal definitely set the tone for our future releases. Other genres are well represented, though. We have everything from hip hop to straight up metal. Many of our artists blend styles in such a manner as to make categorization nearly impossible, yet each of these bands has something in their sound which Shawn and I found interesting and / or edgy.


RR: You have mp3s of many of your artists online for instant listening, which is great. I'm listening to Ares Mayhem - "We are Rot" right now, from The Best of the Gigantic Monster Demos. Can you tell me more about them?

Shawn: Ares Mayhem was mostly an exercise in early sampling technology. A large portion of current musicians would be familiar with the concept of making an entire album with nothing more than GarageBand installed on a Macbook and then distributing it through ReverbNation or iLike. But 14 years ago, when Ares Mayhem first started, things weren't so simple. Computers were mostly limited to MIDI sequencing at the time and digital audio was mostly impractical. So Ares Mayhem was an attempt to take limited digital audio capabilities and stretch that as far as it could go. You couldn't buy or download multi-gigabyte instrumental samples at the time, and even if you could, the hardware to play it back just wasn't available. Are Mayhem died as a project when high-quality sampling became little to no challenge, and as a consequence the project started to stray from its origins.


RR: Tell me about GMR's latest release, from Mothra.

Nate: Mothra is the brainchild of our own Shawn Timms. The idea was to record an album of brutal metal tracks, all of which would be based on Godzilla movies. We took inspiration from bands like Slayer, At the Gates, Sepultura, and Mastodon. I for one think it’s one of the best albums we’ve ever released.

Shawn: An interesting footnote is that it was originally going to be an entirely off-the-cuff impromptu 15-20 minute EP, and ended up being in post-production for five years.


RR: What's next?

Nate: We currently have albums in the works by eclectic metal rockers Circle of Thirteen, trip hop tricksters Alternative 3, and underground DJ Max Rebo. Our next release will be a second volume of The Best of the Gigantic Monster Demos.

Shawn: In the future, Gigantic Monster Records will be integrated with its other sister media distros. Everything falling under the Cellarseer Media umbrella will be gradually combined and revamped. Our goal is to create a comprehensive, unified, multi-media brand with a solid cast of known contributors. We are aiming to be cohesive, with a stylized output, yet never predictable.

We're also shifting to an extremely limited run format. Most of our future releases will be Net Release only. Special upcoming projects may be released as low quantity hand-numbered CDs. All titles currently in the catalog are going out-of-print. This is part of our new transition. Communication has changed, and we speak a different language. Art needs to be translated.