When the conversation touched upon publishing, Raphael Rodriguez and Julien Gremaud from Think Tank joined the chat. The result is a not-to-miss exchange on a topic that’s too often limited to pro- or anti-digital publishing positions. During the conversation Joe’s thoughts on publishing resemble his music: expressive, nuanced and yet unassuming.

Remo Bitzi We were just talking about magazines. Let’s stick to the topic.

Julien Gremaud Sure. Were you guys talking about online or print magazines?

Joe Seaton Both. I was saying that in terms of the kind of magazines you’re doing, I think we live in a golden age. There are lots of fantastic publications that look great and are full of really interesting stuff. What happens online… Maybe there are more people reading stuff, but it’s more ephemeral in a way — here one day, gone the next. It doesn’t really document anything. The point with physical magazines is that they’re documenting a time and a place. Online magazines can’t do that. We were talking previously about the time I was living in Glasgow, and the guy from the flat opposite mine was moving out. He said to us kids playing techno, “Hey guys, I’m throwing out magazines, I guess you might be interested.” He gave us this box full of all the magazines on electronic music that he had. Magazines from way back. I was going through them, and there were artists on the cover like Jeff Mills, Derrick May, Laurent Garnier. There was a lot of attitude in the interviews, a lot of confrontation. There were artists basically saying, “This is amazing and this is shit.” Nowadays there’s a lot more content, but none is matched to any particular time. No one is really engaged. You drink a cup of tea and then forget what you just read.

Raphael Rodriguez Generally I agree, but there are a bunch of people, even in online journalism, who write about things they don’t like. If you’re confronted by this as a reader it can lead to a strange situation. You end up reading interviews with people that neither you nor the journalist like.

JS My point was less about journalism. There’s a difference between the economies of producing this kind of stuff and the amount of content that online publications have to create to sustain themselves. It means that, for the most part, journalists aren’t paid per word anymore. They have to produce this many reviews to pay their rent. I wouldn’t blame the journalists so much as the artists who don’t seem to be as opinionated or who all converge in their opinions. I used to read a lot, and I don’t that much anymore. Life is short and if I read stuff online I won’t read as many books. There are some great magazines I like to read — like The New Yorker or LRB — but in my position as a musician, there are lots where I’m not quite sure what their point of view is… Anyway, let’s move on! [Laughs]

JG There are a lot of so-called “creative content media” which are in fact just generating a ton of content and trying to link it all together. How can these blogs or webzines publish twelve news pieces an hour and at the same time be critical? It’s hard to disengage from the short format when you only post about new tracks or album covers rather than write essays.

JS Do you know about content farms? They have these algorithms generate texts that are made to be clicked on, in order to boost Google rankings. These content farms are really fascinating, especially for artists. Do you know this Twitter account called Horse_ebooks? It was a spam Twitter account that posted nonsense clips from eBooks. This account got massive over the last three years and no one could work out what it was. People thought it was a bot just cutting out things from eBooks, but originally it was a guy from Russia who was publishing things and used this account for promotion. And then there was an American guy who saw it and decided to take this over and use it as an art piece. He would pretend to be a bot. So you have a machine pretending to be a human and a human pretending to be a machine, which makes a simple loop. Every three hours this guy would wake up and post something to make you think it was a machine. No one could figure out what it was about and if Horse_ebooks really existed.

JG It would be interesting to read this kind of anecdote on blogs, because if you look precisely at the blog landscape you’ll find that the majority of them are very conservative. Blogs often aren’t that contemporary in their editorial practices.

JS People don’t use these things in a creative way.

JG They just count their links, the amount of posts and what’s incoming via AdWords.

JS I don’t use Twitter in a creative way myself, for instance. I don’t really bother to put thought into it. But I could. You can change the name of your Twitter account all the time — it’s something that could morph every day in an interesting way. So I think it’s… [Joe is slightly distracted] You know… Those… [Pause] Sorry, I’m half-listening to the track next door. [Laughs] I wanted to play that record! However, things like Twitter are really easy places to generate slightly dadaesque narratives, these things that can comment on aspects of the web because they’re on the web themselves. You know, Facebook is something with which you can never really do those things. Although, there is a guy who did a project called Facebook Metronomics, or something like that — don’t quote me on the exact title. He invented this algorithm which removes every number from your Facebook account. People using Facebook depend on the number of likes or comments. It’s all about these kind of interactions. This guy removed that element of interaction. Maybe that’s not a piece of art. Of course people are doing art, and try to do art on Facebook, but it’s quite a closed thing, it’s not something you can fuck up in that kind of fluid, slightly situationist manner.

JG Do you ever get lost when you try to advertise your music? And at the same time, do you think your music gets lost online?

JS Yes, I mean being online is a monumental loss of time. But it’s also fun, and a lot of people have time to waste. To answer your second question: The stuff I post, I don’t expect anyone to really give a fuck. Of course my posts get lost — they’re online! Therefore, the narcissistic me would rather give interviews to the physical press than to online press because you would think, “Shit, here are my words, actually printed.” It’s like putting out a record as opposed to just putting out things on Beatport. Also the books and magazines I’ve got, I spent money on them. I go back and look at them six months later. They mean something to me. On the other hand, when I read something online, by lunchtime I will have forgotten what I was looking at in the morning. And I don’t really care about it anyway.

RR Because it lacks the emotional value that you have when buying something.

JS You spent money on it and you’ll have it for a long time.

JG To keep this analog versus digital dimension in the conversation — you release your tracks on vinyl…

JS Yes, but I don’t really care about these oppositions. I’m not that fetishistic but I like having an artwork and I play records myself — that’s important to me.

RB Earlier on you were saying you went to art school. This is interesting to me because I always wonder what the influence of an education like this is on someone who produces electronic music.

JS Making music’s not necessarily always to do with music. It can have much more to do with art terms and processes — the way things are sculpted, the way things are layered. Pretty much all of my work is process-based. The interface between the machines I have and the way I can mould things is easier to understand in terms of what I did in paintings or made in prints. When I left art school I just felt like, “Why have I done something I would do anyway therapeutically?” The cost for such an education is unreal in the UK. I wanted to express myself better. I wanted to know more about how things work. I don’t know. I don’t remember making any decent music in art school. My incubator time was after I finished school.

RB Doing a magazine we have to put something out on a regular basis. People with a background in music or fine art don’t have to release pieces regularly. So they can put more thought into their work. How do you see that?

JS There is so much to be said for just not worrying too much about what people think and just going on. I’ve met so many people that are slightly paralyzed by the final stages of a process, by thoughts and introspections, and neuroses about how people would take it. Whereas I want to just be throwing out stuff that I believe in. Of course I try to make it as good as I can, but I try to not get lost in that “Can I make it better?” Of course it could be better! But I could have done two really good things in the time I made one. When you look back at all the records that we fetishize today, many of these things were done in a day! Some of them were good, some of them were fucking brilliant. That’s human.

RB By now people have produced so much electronic dance music. Why add to that?

JS Since I decided that this is what I’m gonna do, I don’t really think about that. It’s just my life. I think I have a voice and I believe in my motivations. I don’t trouble myself with those thoughts. You need to believe in what you do otherwise you just pile on further neuroses.

JG To what degree do you consider DJing as part of your musical practice?

JS I started collecting records really young; I love playing records. I don’t ever want to play live… There might be certain ways I could play my tracks live, but I am not interested in that medium of performance and presentation. I don’t like that kind of elevation from an audience. Its better to be able to use the opportunities for earning money to engage with other people’s music, and present it in the way you believe to be most successful.

JG Is this position a way to not take your productions seriously?

JS I take my productions seriously because I get up every morning and I work on them. I hope the way I present my releases doesn’t feel too forced. There has to be a slight effortlessness to the presentation. With making music it’s like this: You try to get a plane off the ground. Once you get it off the ground, you are immediately ejected and you have to watch if fly over you. It becomes something you can’t control. The take-off should be as fluid, as effortlessness as possible.

RR It’s always painful to see an artist trying too hard. An artist may have tried very hard, but I just don’t want to know about it.

JS You’ll always need a slightly longer time frame to be able to judge these things. We’ll see in a few years what worked.

RB Big question! What will be remembered from our time?

JS This comes back to the beginning: It’s a journalist’s job to say, “This is a monumental piece of work that we’re gonna remember in years.” I remember before I went to dance music, I was playing piano and guitar with friends and there were magazines like Melody Maker and NME. The journalists who would write for them were so opinionated. As a reader, it was a lot of fun because they were saying things like, “This is honestly the worst thing I’ve ever heard, it’s so shit!” They would even name the manager and ask what he was thinking. It was amazing! That vehemence is sometimes lacking these days.

RB Personally speaking, if I don’t like something I try to avoid it.

JS You could tell yourself, “I hate it so much, I’m gonna review it!”

RR It’s easier to shit on things you hate.

JG In a way that’s how you can categorize magazines: There are critical and news publications. The former review pieces of work whether they like them or not, the latter will just review stuff they like. You’ll find tons of magazines that would never destroy an album.

RB Yup, too many records get 4 out of 5.

JS The scoring system is problematic. The good points of this system aren’t really used. We were talking about the publishing business earlier on — you’ve got a lot of independence in a magazine like yours. You aren’t beholden to anyone. You don’t need to keep this PR company happy, or worry about pissing on too many artists. You guys can say whatever the fuck you want…