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Sex is Vinyl.

hwf
Homewrecker Recordings exists on multiple levels (as label, ideology, politics and practice) in a multitude of locations (North America, Europe – the world) and amongst a multiplicity of
identities (gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class…). Born of a want, a need and a desire to include the issue of “gender” and its problematics into not only the lexicon of a certain mode of music, within a certain conceptual sphere, but also into various ways of being. Homewrecker Recordings recognizes the shifting, the unstable and the contested pronouncement of “gender” “female” “(wo)man” or “girl” or even the questions raised concerning the notion of
(cultural) identity. Yet, Homewrecker Recordings deliberately seeks out this contested terrain in order to force the issue onto the (turn)table. In a patriarchal system the politics of gender do indeed matter.

The abstractions approximated by music, the potential anonymity afforded by the technology, the means of dissemination or distribution, in some respect works to mask the function of gender and gender issues in electronic music. White or black labels do not speak of sex. But music is never sexless. Unbounded by historical circumstance, the relatively new genre of electronic music is, paradoxically, profoundly tied to patriarchal culture. The question arises, who made this record, for whom was it made, how does it circulate and within what context?

The label takes up these issues through a strict set of musical and gendered parameters within a specific context: all female producers and all electronic/digital music/noise. We aim to sex music. We participate in a politics of exclusion merely to dislodge, disrupt and displace the comfy covert politics of exclusion taking place in (some) electronic music and labels of an extreme nature. Ironically, this politics of exclusion has also fostered the dangerous practice of appropriating the female form and its connotations; the same male structure in a feminine guise. Women up front with the men in the back (and in control). The female body and voice is presented totally without agency. Put on display. Consumed. Passive. That game is old and boring.

Homewrecker Recordings is provocation…. Homewrecking…Destroy the patriarchy – Dismantle the familial structure – Demolish traditional female roles… The labels’s aim is it’s own destruction – we will work to become obsolete. We hope Homewrecker Recordings will be but an additional level in a myriad of political/musical/cooperative workings. An international grass roots approach is the means by which its artists shall come into being. Perhaps she does not yet exist, or she exists unknown in a Tokyo highrise or in a basement in Idaho – we’ll hook up eventually. The label recognizes the various manifestations of the female, the existence of feminisms. Being pro-female does not mean we are anti-male. Homewrecker Recordings functions as a discursive site. To open up debate, dialogue, and criticality around the problematics of gender and its intersection with music.

Female trouble. Evening the score. Hysteria. Resistance. Whatever you want to call it – we’ve had enough. It all starts and stops here.

Sept. 13, 1998

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