Daily Discovery is a feature that will highlight a new or recently discovered artist that we’re excited about. See the rest of our Daily Discoveries here.
Normally, our Daily Discovery focuses on an artist who we’re especially excited about, but since New York independent label GODMODE just keeps throwing gems up on their Soundcloud and releasing music by incredibly exciting artists, it made sense to focus on the label as a whole.
Run by Nick Sylvester and Talya Elitzer, in the past months the label has put out an album by Fasano and a fantastic compilation called COMMON INTERESTS WERE NOT ENOUGH TO KEEP US TOGETHER, which not only keeps the quality consistently high throughout but is also wildly eclectic.
As Nick Sylvester told us, “The ‘every artist on the label sounds the same’ thing never made sense to me. Talya and I like personalities, and we like playing personalities off each other. Shamir, Yvette, Soft Lit, and Fasano on the same label is interesting to us. That’s a party I want to be at. Besides that, I produce every record we put out, so we try not to work with assholes.”
I produce every record we put out, so we try not to work with assholes.
Although the label’s releases are all strong, one artist has been catching a lot of people’s attention lately, and that’s Shamir, a 19-year-old with a stunning voice whose two debut tracks were on the compilation. But how did an unknown kid from Vegas end up on a NY-based label’s compilation?
“Shamir reached out to us last winter. He dug the Yvette record, that’s how he found out about GODMODE. He sent me a few super rough demos and the most unassuming email imaginable: “I’m a 19 year old kid from Las Vegas,” it started. I knew I wanted to work with him the second I heard that voice. He came to New York for the first time in January, and that’s when we made “If It Wasn’t True.” Now, we’re finishing up a new tune called “Sometimes a Man.”
A quick look at GODMODE’s Soundcloud or website shows that they have an incredibly active and vibrant release schedule, but when asked what it takes to run an independent label these days, Nick doesn’t pretend to have all the answers.
There are a lot of people with a lot of opinions about how all this works or could work. There are a million middlemen who swear they’re necessary to “taking it to the next level.” It’s all noise. GODMODE is our attempt at keeping things simple. A bunch of friends making music, trying to keep things interesting.
