17 Years – Some Praxis History

FROM SCAREMONGER TO LA PESTE – THE ASSAULT CONTINUES!
The first 2 releases on Praxis came out towards the end of 1992 in London. Taking an approach of uncompromising hardcore techno, the sound of the label soon radicalized as the new underground scene tried to create an escape velocity against the commercialisation of techno. Many alliances were forged with like-minded musicians and cultural provocateurs world-wide, seeking a cross-pollination of ideas and concepts, always pushing things further, always experimenting.
With an average of 3 releases per year we never flooded the market, but were always concerned with quality and close relations between producers and label. At the same time other projects such as the organisation of the legendary Dead By Dawn parties at 121 Railton Road in Brixton between 1994-96, and from 1997 Sub/Version, the sister label to Praxis dedicated to hard drum’n’bass and epic breakcore, as well as Datacide, the magazine for Noise & Politics radicalized the subversive potentials further.
Praxis has released records by such diverse cutting edge artists as Bourbonese Qualk, Metatron, Disciples of Belial, Lorenz Attractor, Deadly Buda, Test Tube Kid, Pure, Somatic Responses, The Wirebug, Base Force One, Hecate, Kovert, Nihil Fist, and La Peste along with other projects and collaborations.
Sub/Version in turn came out with massive tracks by Pure & Christoph Fringeli, Crisis Theory, Kovert, Hecate, Vile Enginez, DJ Scud, DJ Hidden, and Amboss.
With Datacide a carrier of countercultural ideas was created in print, “heterogenous theory for the invisible insurrection of a million minds”, combining critical articles with news and reviews. Another focus became the development of an independent international distribution network, and also the manufacturing and distribution of labels such as Zhark International and its subsidiaries, Dirty Needles, Low Res, Darkmatter Soundsystem and others, after having been involved with Subnet, New Skin, Stormcore on a different level … Recently we have opened an international online shop as well as a “real” record store in Berlin at Mainzer Str. 8 in berlin Friedrichshain.
More than a decade and a half is impossible to sum up in such short a space, all the discussions, ideas, parties, excesses… all the excitement, all the frustrations and all the noise… But why go on about the past when there are countless new projects on the way?:
The 10th issue of Datacide came out in october 2008 and we held a conference in Berlin on Oct.31 with talks by Hans-Christian Psaar, Lauren Graber, Neil Transpontine, John Eden, Alexis Wolton, Stewart Home and Christoph Fringeli, and a party with Mario D’Andreta, Line Destruction, Circuit Parallele, The Wirebug, DJ Controlled Weirdness, Blackmass Plastics, Kovert, El Gusano Rojo.
A new Datacide is being produced and will see the light of day in the next few months and there will be a second conference later in 2010. The Datacide site has been online for about a year and most of the articles published in the first 10 issues are now available online.
After the recent release of Sub/Version 014 by Amboss, his second release for the label, there are more releases planned, including a remix project where Sub/Version artists are remixing each other.
On Praxis we recently mastered and cut number 15 – which had never been used – as a triple album with unreleased material from (mainly) 1993-2003 which has some amazing stuff on it. Folowing up Praxis 44 – an anonymous compilation with 4 powerful tracks – the first in a series of 3 anonymous comps to emphasize that “What Is Heard In Sound Is The Non-Face” – we are preparing the second and third release in the series. Mastered and ready for release are also Praxis 47 by Crisis Theory and Praxis 48 by Cortex (ex-16-17)
The first 17 years have passed and we’re gearing up for another Decade of Disorder….