Syntactic

[The following comes from an e-mail from Walter Robotka (March 27, 2001) edited by simplea.]

I started Syntactic in 1993 when I'd had enough of being a music recipient and wanted a more active role. In the beginning, I had no idea whether it would be possible to get some attention from Vienna, so I tried carefully, with small editions of only 50 -- mistakenly 60 were pressed and this is how the special editions of 10 were born.

I soon discovered that people loved the idea of having something exclusive and kept the concept, making just a little more to ensure the people who wanted copies surely received them.

The visual concept for the label was to be as special and colourful as possible with most sleeves designed or even handmade by Lisa Neukirchner who was responsible for Syntactic's look until 1998 (now most of the designs are now made by my wife, Katharina Robotka-Svejkovsky). Artists who wanted to make their own covers were welcome to do so, too.

The musical choice for the releases on the label was always and will always be very subjective; whatever I like and whoever I find interesting enough will be released on Syntactic. There's a wide range from noise (like Merzbow or The Haters), abstract electronica (like Fennesz or Scanner) to synth pop (a la Bliane L. Reininger or Paul Haig).

What made the start for me easier was the fact that I had already been friends with most of our musicians. Robin Storey [Rapoon] is one of my best friends, David Jackman was a regular host at london trips, the Konstruktivist people became buddies more and more and Lagowski, for example, sold Whitehouse records to me years before the label had started. This might be also the reason why all these great artists decided to do these very limited records with me, which is a great honour and makes me very happy.

Over the years, I ended up producing sixty releases and I'm still releasing music on Syntactic to this day. The concept of handmade packaging continues ... the latest example being the live cassette from Frenk Lebel which is wrapped in special papers with a piece of cord around it.

Enjoy!