The story of post-rock isn’t sexy. This is something Bruce Adams manages to overcome in his book You’re With Stupid, his account of Chicago music in the 1990s and, more specifically, of cofounding the independent record label Kranky in 1993. Adams’ story describes the growth of Chicago as a hub for new music during this time, spurred by the usual factors of cheap rent, accessible venues, and, of course, its very geography. Cargo Records was one of many distribution companies that rose during the indie boom of that period, and it was where he and co-worker Joel Leoschke met and started scheming to create their own label, one that focused on smart, which these days is another form of sexy.
The more typical high / low rock stories of the period are touched upon through the tribulations of Smashing Pumpkins, Urge Overkill, and Liz Phair, but Adams concentrates primarily on the layers beneath this upper crust, where absurdly rich veins of ever-evolving musical culture were thriving. The book’s roll call of artists like Tortoise, Flying Saucer Attack, and Stereolab acts as a memory prompt to visit the back covers of your record collection. For Adams and Leoschke, the real gold for Kranky was in deeper veins. The true starting point was a 1992 seven-inch single titled “Everlast / Preserve the Sound Outside” that Leoschke received in his capacity as indie buyer for Cargo. The group behind the single, Labradford, was a duo from Virginia that Adams describes as “[reminiscent of] 1970s German albums that were coming into vogue, but also the obscure proto-industrial collective Zoviet France and also the moody post-punk band Felt.” The heady keyboards and guitar sound of Prazision LP (KRANK 001) set the initial tone for Kranky, as well as marking the label as a progenitor of the post-rock movement.
This period may seem like an unheralded golden age of new music, but Adams hesitates to agree. “Old people concoct the notion of a golden age to make young people feel inferior,” he tells me in an interview. “I had to deal with condescension from my elders who wanted me to think Woodstock was the peak achievement of musical culture … I have no desire to pass that attitude along.” Kranky never overtly heralded the next big thing. It was and remains a label that avoids ego, and is governed instead by a list of ten Kranky Kommandments that include: “Thou shalt not make decisions based on commercial rather than artistic concerns,” and “Thou shalt not put pictures of bands on album artwork.” These deliberate choices helped build a discography that avoided trends and retained a timeless quality.
While other Chicago-based labels built a core of geographically adjacent acts, Kranky looked everywhere. Important early signings came from Texas (Stars of the Lid), New Zealand (Dadamah), and Ottawa (The Spiny Anteaters). Contact with another Canadian group, Montreal’s Godspeed You! Black Emperor, gave the label its first big boost. “For Joel, myself, and Kranky, the band’s success brought financial security,” Adams says. “I found the band delightful to work with—they knew exactly what they wanted and didn’t want to do. From the first time I saw them play at the Lounge Ax in Chicago, I knew that Godspeed was a tremendous live band dedicated to live performance.” The release of F# A# ∞ (KRANK 027) was a widely celebrated event. A year later, the label signed the respected Minnesota duo Low, after the Virgin Records-associated label they were on was shuttered. The band’s already sizable audience gave Kranky another pillar of support.
By the early 2000s, the label’s reputation and profile were fully established. Labradford broke up, and guitarist Mark Nelson shifted focus to a new electronics-based project called Pan American. Meanwhile, Vancouver-based artist Scott Morgan, who played in an early incarnation of Dan Bejar’s band Destroyer, sent Kranky music from his solo project, loscil. “By the time we got his demo,” Adams recalls, “Scott had homed in on what he wanted to do. Having loscil on Kranky broadened the label’s aesthetic range—loscil albums had a rhythmic element that fans of dub techno, for example, could identify with.” After twenty years and eleven albums, loscil remains a Kranky mainstay.
The final third of a strong Canadian trifecta came just as Adams was pondering his exit from the label. Around 2005, Keith Whitman—another Kranky artist, recommended to the label by Labradford—told Adams about the difficulties that Tim Hecker was having with his current label. Adams strongly encouraged Hecker to get in touch. Though Hecker’s artistic trajectory was already well underway, Kranky became a stable home base that allowed him to expand the spectrum of his ambient sound and explore other avenues. He too remains a regular fixture, with a new album, No Highs (KRANK 239), reviewed in this issue.
With respect to his decision to sell his share of the label to his partner, Adams explains, “Many partnerships have a natural lifespan, and the partnership Joel and I had reached the end of its lifespan. I was coming to realize that I didn’t want to promote music for much longer.” The label remains a vital entity, both as a home for legacy artists and as a launch pad for new ones.
More than fifteen years after his departure, Adams still felt that the label’s artists and this moment in the greater music scene should be documented: “You either write your history down or watch it be misrepresented or ignored.”
ERIC HILL has written about music and culture for over two decades, primarily for Exclaim! His biweekly podcast, Surgery Radio, has been exploring the soft boundaries of experimental, ambient, and pop music since 2004. He has managed Backstreet Records in Fredericton for most of his adult life.