Once a month, our friends from the tplt collective, make us discover the universe of an artist through a mix and an interview.
Co-runner of the Music From Memory label with Jamie Tiller, Tako is world renowned has being one of the most adventurous, demanding and sensational record collectors. Traveling through countries to find the rarest electronisms, Tako gives them a life through release (on MFM or Into The Light, his other label dedicated to Greek productions). Very honored that he agreed to record a journey between spoken word, ambient, minimalism and rare electronic.
tplt : Hello Tako, first of all thank you for your time. Can you introduce yourself and tell us more about you ?
Tako Reyenga : Hi, you are welcome and thanks for the invite for doing the podcast. Together with my partner Jamie Tiller I run the labels Music From Memory and Second Circle. I also founded Red Light Records (the shop) in 2012 together with Abel Nagengast and later on James Pole joined us. My life for the most part has revolved around music and I feel very happy and grateful that I can get by doing what I love doing and following my passions. Choosing for ‘music’ has gotten me in touch with a lot of amazing, beautiful people around the globe and have brought me in wonderful and sometimes grazy situations and places. It’s a true force in my life.
tplt : You are co-runner of Music From Memory with Jamie Tiller. What was at the beginning of this adventure, and why does it began ?
Tako Reyenga : For me releasing music began in 2012 with the ‘Into The Light’ label , which Idid together with Ilias Pitsios who now still runs it along with his Echovolt imprint. Around the same time i had met Jamie here in Amsterdam and we found that we had a similar interest in music which connected us. It was a time of intense digging and exploring and sharing music with a close group of likeminded friends. One of the things we did was to try and contact artists who’s records we were after and see whether they still had copies themselves to which we found that many of them did but it also turned out to be that these artists would have unreleased music that never saw the light of day … So we then decided to start releasing this (unreleased) music we got offered and Music From Memory was born.
tplt : How did you pick the music that you want to release on Music From Memory ?
Tako Reyenga : Most of the (older) music we release comes from contacting those artists who’s music we are really into and who’s albums we love and cherish records we found in the past 15 years or so. But in recent years, with the advent of so many reissue labels… a lot of those (now more obvious) discoveries got released by other labels left and right so we started focussing also on releasing new music from people we know. We also like to keep working with the artists we have already released as most of them still make really great music so in this way becoming a kind of label family . And then things come on our path in nice ways so that it makes sense to release it ..stuff that is presented or passed onto us via people we know, meet or proposing collaborations between people we have already worked with.
tplt : You’re also co-owner of Red Light Records, can you tell us more about the shop ?
Tako Reyenga: Since the beginning of this year I stepped out of Red Light Records to focus fully on Music From Memory, for me the journey of the shop was a very special one with numerous highlights amazing times, experiences and with meeting many special people, it was a great period which now came to a close.
tplt : Have you got main genres or influences that guide you in your musical research ?
Tako Reyenga : Not really, I guide myself with curiosity and through emotions or have fascinations with music I find in whatever kind of genre I like to explore cross genre and keep an open mind.
tplt : How did you think this podcast? What did you want to say / make us discover with this one ?
Tako Reyenga : This podcast was made with only cassettes, and those unfortunately don’t sound very great. It also might not be a very pleasurable listen but it does however display my current mood, that in which you can feel the winter arriving.
tplt : Which records do you recommend to discover your universe, except for MusicFrom Memory of course ?
Tako Reyenga : Well since the podcast was made with tapes and I’m immersing myself listening to them at the moment I could recommend a few tapes i’m into…
Tourist Kid - A Circulation
Minoy - 100 % Noise
Atman - Personal Forest
Die Sonne Satan - Metaphora
Moisture - A freak Is Born
Cyrnai - To Subtle Drive
Psychic Warriors Of Gaia
Adam Oko - Diet Of Germs
The Ghostwriters - Remote Dreaming
tplt : Have you got any future projects you can talk about ?
Tako Reyenga : Well we are working on quiet a few releases at the moment but I’m very excited to say we will be releasing an album by Jonny Nash early 2019, Jonny is my best friend and with this release we feel we’ve come around full circle he has worked diligently on this album for a year now and it will be a very special release. Then also John Gomez is currently working on a second volume of ‘Outro Tempo’ which is also a very exciting project in the making.
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Interview by Lucas Perrot.