Alec Hanley Bemis, writer and manager of cultural projects, co-founded the Brassland record label in 2001 along with his friends Aaron and Bryce Dessner of the band The National. Over the years, the label has become home to a community of like minded creative musicians who defy category.

Last month Alec published a piece in Creative Independent called 19 things I’d tell people contemplating starting a record label (after running one for 19 years).

Here we discuss what happened in between. 

Although this conversation was recorded in the before times of 2019, listening back I am struck by a few particularly interesting ideas that emerge in the talk: the distinction between culture and subculture; that we are now in an era of “constant content”; the shift over time from the taste maker as an institution to the taste maker as an individual personality; and what he describes as “the economy of cool”.

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