Tell us about the start of Daylight:
Daylight was created in 1989 by me and Danny Amsler, i was producing aerobic music and the client you gave me the job to do two full albums with instrumental music came up with an idea to do a kind of italo-instrumental.(Of course i had known projects like Koto, Laserdance and Ciber People) we did not have those projects in our mind when we started, basicly we wanted to create our own sound. We had so much fun doing that that we produced a couple of tracks extra. „Music“ and „You make me feel so good“ were the track’s „leftover“
At that time i was doing lot’s of jobs like mastering (on ¼ inch track) for different record companies, it so happend that on one compilation they did not have enough track’s to fill the album
so i was asked if i have a track or two to fill up and that’s where Daylight was born. The first track called „Relax“ was released on a sampler called Italo Dance Music serie. a mix of Italo house, italo dance, some some techno style tracks. A lot of that music came from the famous Disco Magic label.
The first two track’s were released in 1989/90 and a year later the first album was released on Hotsound that included the up to then unreleased tracks „Music“ and „You Make Me Feel So Good“.
What kind of Equipment was used on the first Daylight albums:
The first three albums were recorded on 24 track.
I had infact a very impressive studio back then, (D-Line Recording Studio) with lot’s of vintage gear. A 24 track machine Tascam with dolby S, an Atari running with a Notator sequenzer and samplers like Roland S-550 / S-50, Emax SE HD, Akai S1000, PPG Wave 2.3 etc and a wonderful sounding inline 32 track mixing consol Tascam M-3500. I masterered on a Revox 2 track ¼ inch tape. The DAT came a little later into action.
Today i work with this kind of gear again, i did change to digital mixing but the digitalization distroyed too much, and felt the loss of the warm sound and results were not as i wanted them to be.
What impact did Hotsound have on Daylight:
In 1991 when i met for the first time with Erik van Vliet at the music meeting in Cannes (France), i had just finished production for the Man Machine album of Daylight and he liked the approach to
Synthesizer Dance as it sounded differert to his other releases like Laserdance but still had that magic feeling that would attract the customers of Hotsound. So he asked to release the album
on his label Hotsound. This gave the project Daylight an incredible boost due to the fact that Laserdance was on that label, the fans made the way for the future. Although time has gone by i have managed to keep the Daylight fans happy with new material for many years. In fact Daylight is still a very good brand, we still have outstanding sales.
Humphrey Robertson 1992 in his studio D-Line Where Projects like Daylight, Hypnosis, Ciber People were made and many more...
Tell us about your work with Zyx Records:
Well i had already worked for them in 1985 when we released Fresh Color, i actualy knew the founder Bernhard Mikulski quite well, and was signed to the zyx label with a producer agreement in 1992. That ment they had an option on my music productions, and also gave me work like the project Hypnosis that i produced for them. This was a very good and successfull time. After that agreement ran out in 1994 i was free to choose and that’s when i came up with the idea to start my own label Hypersound.
Tell us about Hypersound and how it all started:
Hypersound was created in 1995, i had the idea in 1994 but i took some time to get everything going. That was when techno/house and other styles were dominateing the market, the music synthesizer dance was no longer a sellable item or even ordered by shops.
As i had been doing so much successfull synthesizer music in the past my fanclub (with lot’s of members) was still active and people were writing me letters and asking if we have plans to release anything new.
That’s when i decided to create a label for this kind of music. In those days 1993/94 there was no internet, we could only comunicate through regular mail and we had to send out news letters to the fans about new releases. Actualy we still do that in some cases nowadays, we still have many clients who order by phone/fax or send a letters, it’s still not 100 % internet.
After some releases of my own i found over the internet some guys from Sweden,
What impact did the Internet have:
It sure has become a strong part of the Business, especially for independent labels. You can reach so many people „just a click away“ you would be surprized in what parts of the world we get orders.
Not only for selling but also for musicians it’s a great way to find contacts.( I remember in the past how hard it was to get contacts and addresses to A&R departments at record labels)
As a independent label you no longer need a distribution partner in every country. There are no barriers for online sales and you can reach the point of breakeven quicker with direct sales.
Negitive part is mp3 downloading and music sharing and stuff like that, this does also apply for our releases maybe not necessarily on a large scale but it does happen, but still most of our FANS
want to buy the cd’s as collectors, but in some parts of the music industry it has been fatel to sales, and don’t leave much money over for expermenting on new unknown artist’s which is a shame.
Tell us about your future plans with Daylight and your other Projects:
I hope to make a new album for Daylight this year, i already have some titels, the same goes for the project Based On Bass that album should be finshed soon.
There are some other nice productions on the way, almost finished, i won't go into too much detail now but in the future we will concentrate on more own productions as to signing more and more new artist’s.Our test with selling other items than only Hypersound products in our online shop has been very successfull, and we will expand this in the future as well.
What do you think of the music Industry today:
Many of the good indi labels have gone or changed there policy, but mostly then driven out of business due to market changes and lack of sales and then taken over from the major labels. There seem to be a lot of new labels coming out of nowhere, mostly it’s just a website, with no background or even correctly registered labels with Publishing agreements with author rights society. That makes it very difficult for an artist to choose,
How do you see the future for Hypersound:
Sometimes my "hopes" for Hypersound have wavered or changed, but the "mission" has remained basically the same since the beginning, to release Synthesizer Dance music. It’s an exciting job.
And in the last 11 years I've been doing this with passion, and i’m happy to say we now have reached a certain success in terms of making the products refinance themselfs. I doubt as if either me or any of our artist’s will get rich from sales, but we sure have made a difference.
I get so many emails from customers telling us to keep our releases coming and how it has made a difference in their lives, then I feel and that we are doing the right thing, even if it’s a few hundred or a thousand people buying them. I enjoy doing this and making my part of „Music History“ we have kept this music alive for so many years.
How do you choose the music for Hypersound:
Well at first i invest my own money in the company, and feel free to choose what i want and what i won't release. It's not censorship, it's simply a choice of what I want to sell.
I know on some forums there have been large debates about censorship and how we handle these things. But not everybody will or can wait untill we know how and where we will market them, there seem to be a kind of competition ( not from our side ) as how fast someone get a „so called deal“ or are promised one or whatever.
We plan a release and then choose the artist’s like on our Synthesizer Dance series. Some of the artist’s that sent us demo’s would have already been released on cd, but did not have the patience to wait or were suddenly contacted by an other label (but have never been released on a official cd ). We don’t collect artist’s for fun we think that when a artist get’s a agreement with Hypersound it should be planned and a fix release date is made. So far all artist’s that have signed agreements with Hypersound have been released on an official cd.
About being "signed as an artist" is also a fact that should be mentioned. As we have become aware that an artist of Hypersound with two album released (with a valid written contract and with option on follow up) has changed label without even telling us, not even a email asking if he could leave. This info reached us through some fans… That’s just unacceptable a written contract is binding ! but we have taken this to notice. Any artist that feel they should leave us can, will stick by a artist as long as they are willing to work with us.
We won’t force anybody to work with us. But for me that’s a matter of style. We invested in the artist and get a kick in the a..! This is not professional .That’s also where a label start to think should we invest in unknown artist’s.
Luckly we still have many more signed artist’s that have sent us new material so we don’t have any problems with new material. This situation with finding new artist’s have forced us to hire scout’s that are looking out for new material that would fit in out catalogue, there are some smashing productions coming up.
Thanks for this Interview Humphrey and your time:
Your Welcome
Interview by Marcel (Daylight Fan Club)
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