Satellite Voices

Rome / Italiano

Perseo Records

August 16

Talking to the well known Italian producer Bottin about the mysterious Perseo Project

• Text by Riccardo Lionello

The myth of Perseus is one of the most articulate of Greek literature whereone finds the many feelings churning up our mortal days. Perseus is the hero who fights chaos and offers positive values, like the label that not for a casuality took his name, and we'll discuss in this post. Perseo Records is focusing mainly on edits and remixes without indulge in the compulsive promotion that characterises this peculiar sector of music business. The first Perseo releases are a re-vamp of Steve Miller Band’s classic "Fly Like An Eagle" by Bottin ("Eagle"), a re-edit of Bruce Springsteen’s "Tougher Than the Rest" by Martin Vogel ("Tough" – the one that started it all two years ago) and three 90s house re-edits by label owner Mike Simonetti ("That Look"). And the myth continues. Here.

Italy's William Bottin is known as a production wonder with remixes on labels like Italians Do It Better and with his slick, glossy album "Horror Disco". We talk to him about Perseo and his relationship with music networks.

Satellite Voices: Hi William. Can you define the Perseo project? In the Perseo SoundCloud is shown Rome as the city of origin. Can we therefore speak of a Roman label?
William Bottin: Perseo is an offshoot of the Italian Do It Better, the label founded by Mike Simonetti and Johnny Jewel (Glass Candy, Chromatics, Desire). It's definitely a stateless label, cause there isn't a physical location (Mike lives in New Jersey, Johnny in Montreal) and we used from time to time different factories to print vinyl, also to avoid some copyright issues related to the unauthorised re-edit.

SV: Your re-edit of the "Fly Like An Eagle" came out with Perseo. What do you think of the phenomenon widely promoted by blogs as Aor Disco of the re-editing of rock songs in the key of disco music?
William Bottin: "Eagle" is a remix. In my version, as well as re-editing the track and speeding up the original, I added drums, a new bassline and a sprinkling of synths. I admit that I knew few things about the song by Steve Miller. The idea was born walking the streets of San Francisco a couple of years ago. There were some homeless people who listened to the song in a ghettoblaster, dancing in a totally exaggerated way. So, back in Italy, I tried to get their hands on the original and then I released a remix that I've played for many months, without ever thinking of it out. After hearing it in my set, Mike and Johnny asked me for Perseo. In truth, the label did not exist yet, we all had re-edits and remixes not authorised that we wanted to release on vinyl, and so Perseo was born. We needed a different label by Italians.

SV: With Soundcloud, for a period you allowed the download of tracks, and that they would not be on iTunes. Do you think sites like Soundcloud may be a better channel of promotion?
William Bottin: The force in Soundclond is the community that it has created. SoundCloud is not a general platform like Facebook or Twitter, but mostly used by DJs, musicians or would-bes, therefore, more suited to the movement of tracks between insiders. With free downloads, the songs are not ours and it would be very unelegant (and not legal) to distribute on Beatport or iTunes a re-edit to obtain money. The output on vinyl, as well as being illegal, is a limited run of few hundred copies, and has a printing cost that is barely recovered from the sales.

This is tolerated by the original artists and labels just because they can regenerate a significant interest around songs that were forgotten. The digital doesn't have costs of production or distribution. Recently, some producers that I admire have started to sell re-edits in MP3 format.

I find it controversial and damages the market of small labels offering new artist material. It is obviously easier to sell a MP3 with a re-edit of a song by Michael Jackson or Sheila B (especially if revenues are not then paid to the beneficiaries) rather than a new original song (on which you must then pay a royalty to the artist).