We veer away from the dominant Western European nations to explore Belgrade’s finest bass music imprint. Because after impressing our ears with the recent BNJMN 12″, and that roster sampler Come On Let’s Go, we really had to invite the head honcho in for a chat.
Svetlana Industries doesn’t put out the kind of music you can pigeonhole. Of course it’s kind of dubstep, but then it’s a little like trip hop, albeit produced in a steel works. With just a handful of releases under their belt what those in charge lack in back catalogue they have more than made up for in terms of handpicking some truly remarkable, stand out music- from dub techno to broken glitch. Arguably the cream of Serbia’s alternative dance crop, here’s Toby Svetlana’s own thoughts on the matter.
Svetlana Industries – Serbia – Toby Svetlana
Describe your imprint’s output.
Polychromatic wonkstep, popular bass. And every release is better than the previous one.
What would you say makes it different?
We’re highly international with an Eastern European weighting. We’re funny and non-generic. We make jokes but under it all is a rock hard substrate of deep seriousness enclosing a core of molten cool. We invest money and release vinyl records like people of old. And we have some new stuff nobody has heard that I feel is basically some of the best music on Earth. We worked so hard to get to that, but it’s a case of persuading others of this fact.
What is it that makes you keep looking for new talent to expose?
We want the label to keep getting better. We want to be up there with the best.
What’s the label’s pinnacle achievement so far?
Hmmmm. After only eight releases (four vinyl & digital, four digital) I want to hold back on it. Probably the best feeling was getting played on Radio 1 by Mary Anne Hobbs. That or selling out our first two vinyl releases.
If people were going to hear one release from your camp, what would you prefer it to be?
Come On Let’s Go because everyone so far is on it.
All being well, skip forward five years, where would you like things to have got to?
We’re suffering during a massive global guitar backlash and electronic labels are universally irrelevant, but through our side business in haptic driven masturbation apps we manage to scrape a living and keep the records coming out.
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