Philipp, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
There are a lot of different things I’m interested and involved in but when it comes to helping artists release a record it’s always the best thing that can happen and that’s what I’m aiming for with Pen Thief Records. Remember when the lockdown was in effect? Shipping from and to the United States and Canada was getting extremely expensive and took a very long time if shipments weren’t lost. Artists could not perform and lost a lot of opportunities. At that time I just joined a collective label based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, centered around DJ Chaps, Nolto, The Gumshoe Strut, Chadio and others. As I was already making my own tapes and cds at home, it was brought up more as a joke than being serious, that I could simply start making tapes for other artists as well. I thought that was a great idea as it made a lot of sense. But something was missing. I didn’t like the idea of simply having just another label that makes tapes and cds. I wanted it to stand out. It was around the same time that I started getting interested in 3d printing and so I did the one thing I enjoy a lot as well: combining things. The idea of having tapes that have a 3d cover that resembles a book cover was very intriguing to me so I went to a friend who had a 3d printer and was working on a Command & Conquer inspired piece and we designed something that would look great as a cover. In the early days, also as some kind of inside joke, I translated all album titles into german. Word for word. Those 3d prints were then hand painted by me and combined with a small photocover before being glued on the actual tapes. Using bandcamp as the main spot to offer the tapes to the public, it started out pretty slow but after word spread around it wasn’t going all too bad. This was my way of giving back to the independent hiphop scene during that time. It felt great working with my favourite artists. Still does.
Philipp, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
haha, i kind of did that in the last part already but I can be a bit more specific about how I actually got into music as this would lead to creating the label I got very late into hiphop music. Being born in east germany under communist rule, not just most of rock music but especially hiphop music was forbidden and so the first time I came into contact with someone rapping was in a 90’s dance pop song by fun factory and shortly after with this mainstream i like bling bling and don’t like your mother type of rap which absolutely did not resonate with me as I grew up on classical music and disney soundtracks. In fifth grade I started learning english and as soon as it became good enough and I started understanding what people were saying in their music I became very selective. Blink 182 was one of my favourite bands back then because they were pretty funny, told stories and used easy enough words to follow. Whenever there was something I did not understand, I would look it up in a dictionairy. Not much later I discovered Eminem, Xzibit, Dr. Dre and those guys around them. It was a similar way of story telling and as a 18 year old kid it was pretty funny. But then all of that became pretty quickly absolutely uninteresting when a friend of mine introduced me to the underlying ocean of independent music. The first album that was not on any radio or music tv station that I heard was the self titled album of cLOUDDEAD and it absolutely blew my mind. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced and from there on it only got better. I very quickly didn’t have any time for that boring formulaic music on the radio and the stuff you could buy in every major record store. a few weeks later he brought me stacks of cds of all kinds of underground music, not just hiphop, spanning the likes of fog (andrew broder, minneapolis), hood ( united kingdom) and looots and lots of canadian rap. fermented reptile, kunga219, factor, tachichi & moves, buck 65, sixtoo and many more. a few months later my friend told me that cLOUDDEAD are coming to perform in berlin. after the show I bought a few discs directly from the artists as it was nearly impossible to get those in record stores over here and the one store that did import from overseas charged a lot. the fact that it was possible to talk to your favourite artists after a show that cost 5-8€ was mindblowing. a friend of mine went to a 112€ missy elliot show in the same time and I jokingly asked her if she got her records signed and talked to missy. for that price?
having learned music theory and how to play the piano as a kid I was pretty interested in making beats as well but I had no idea where to start. I played around with fruity loops 3 and got nowhere. about 5 years later while doing my job education, I went to great britain with a group of students and one of them installed fruity loops 5 on one of the group laptops and showed me the basics of beat making. I made a few “songs” by sampling mat young (of bully records), cavemen speak and sigur ros and that’s how I got into making music myself. those tracks were incredibly bad and sounded completely wrong but I was happy with myself. That was in 2005. What still feels pretty unreal to me is that I’m working with several artists now that I’ve listened to before I even started making music and am releasing their albums.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Short answer: Giving up.
Long answer: There were a few moments when I didn’t feel like making any music anymore, went down negative thought spirals and mentally already quit music. It never took more than a few days until great things started happening. The last time this happened, Nolto from Saskatoon send me a message that my name came up when discussing favourite producers for an upcoming EP.
(Nolto & Factor’s song Loman’s Lament was one of those tracks that I heard in my first months of discovering all the great independent hiphop. There were parts of 4 Non Blondes’ What’s up in there which struck me as it kind of was my go to karaoke song for a while. Some people even called me 4 Non Blonski. If you haven’t heard Loman’s Lament, do yourself a favour and listen to it right now.)
My mind was blown especially after just having all the bad thoughts about noone even cares about my music and I could just stop releasing things and just do it for myself. Short after I was invited to a groupchat with Rob Crooks, Id Obelus, Chadio, Chaps, Nolto, The Gumshoe Strut and others. That was the beginning of working closely with them and from where Pen Thief Records was started. There was another moment after that and it made me realize that I have so many interests and things I want to pursue that I can’t focus on one thing alone. This Independent Hiphop stuff is so dear to my heart but I need a break sometimes. It usually happens in winter, this time I took a few weeks off just to make a point & click adventure (of course with a self produced soundtrack, it’s all about combining things you like.) So, yeah, if you’re having doubts about whatever it is you do, take a step back and do something else you like. If there’s nothing else you like, try something new. Your passion will always come back and if it’s in this new thing you chose, great.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My music is some kind of outlet and helps me make sense to a lot of things, especially myself. Once I realized that, I used it knowingly. A few years ago (again in the end of winter) I decided to make one track per day for a week and use the amazing paintings and drawings of my friend ze hai liu as well as my daily mood as inspiration. the way I felt led to me choosing the image and that helped choosing samples and the style of songs. the first track on the first day happened magically. at the end of the day I broke it off with this girl I was dating back then and didn’t feel too great about anything and thought about not finishing about the challenge as noone cares anyway. but then I thought why not use that energy on a song?`so i did, kept momentum and made a couple of gloomy tracks over the next couple of days. day 5 started off with a super sad violin sample and slow drums but in the middle of the song switched to an upbeat, almost happy track with jazzy drums and guitars. that was the time when i realized i was getting through it and one day later I met this other girl out of nowhere that I was with for the next year and a half. without the music I’m sure all of this would have taken a lot longer as I had something to focus on and pour all those emotions in. Eventually the week turned into two weeks and I compiled the first 10 songs into my album Waveforms and released it on 3d tape, tape, cd and later also on vinyl, which makes me very proud. So, yeah, I mostly make the music for myself and if others like it, it’s a big plus. Sure it feels amazing when people listen to or even buy it but there’s nothing better than listening to a track that is finally finished. These days I took it even further and usually send stuff out to the homies who rap or sing and they turn it into something much better. Collaboration and (again) combining the instrumental stuff with another creative person into something even better is the absolute best thing. If you wanna see it that way (and coming back to the question) the mission is to use my art to inspire others to make their art.
Contact Info:
- Website: linktr.ee/noblonski
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noblonski
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phil.blonski.1/
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1ukDVJJf0gu3lYJ0gl0rcM?si=tn0eHzwhRPSZCRUV-ZKhHw
Image Credits
Ina Grajetzki Chad Coombs Detlef Jablonski Philipp Jablonski Marina Endzhirgli-Ogly