‘I’d had a few beers and I said to the band, “Wow, that was a great gig, do you have a tape? Would you like to have an album out on a label?”,’ says Marcel Hermans, recalling the humble beginnings of Amsterdam independent record label Transformed Dreams. ‘And suddenly, without thinking twice about it, I had just offered to put a record out.’ He bursts out laughing at his own naïve innocence. ‘So they said, “Yeah, sure, that sounds great to us,” and I quickly replied, “Okay, let’s do that then. I just have to find out what it takes to be a label.”’
The band that had impressed Hermans so much that evening was The Gluemen, a Maastricht rock act described as a cross between the sophisticated indie-rock of Pavement and the raw excitement of Jon Spencer’s Blues Explosion, which he ‘thought was really incredible for a Dutch band’. So they sorted out some paperwork and rough plans for financing and eventually got together to record the album. In March of 1998 the debut collection, Shanghaied, was ready and the label was in business--almost. ‘Suddenly we had a pressing of 500 and they were right here in the room. I thought, my God! What’s the next step?’
Hermans’s Amsterdam apartment, which doubles as the label’s office, is living proof of his dedication to music. The walls are weighed down by shelves of CDs. There are stacks of hundreds of vinyl records and stacks of label merchandise all around. What free wall space there is, is filled with photos of musical idols, among them Mark E Smith of The Fall. I’ve been in record shops with less on display. While we talk a John Peel radio show is playing in the background.
Hermans admits to playing in bands as a youth. ‘I don’t think the world profited from them. I would start something, then move onto another new thing in a few weeks.’ He also worked at Get Records in Amsterdam. But he was always looking for something more, too. ‘I wanted to be involved with music, but I didn’t want to do something that had already been done. So I asked myself what was lacking in the Dutch music scene. I came to the conclusion that good bands here didn’t get any attention.’
A few small labels were active, and they weren’t getting any publicity, says Hermans. ‘These days it’s totally different. Dutch music gets media attention, and local labels like Silent Minority in Groningen or Living Room Records in Wageningen are attracting attention as well. With all this going on, it’s hard to imagine what it was like in those days.’
Over the past six years, Transformed Dreams’ small runs of ‘self-released albums’ have built up an excellent reputation in Holland. More recently, the label has started getting attention in the US and England—largely because of the success of Amsterdam alternative-pop act Seedling, which first secured the label distribution in the UK. This in turn has opened up new avenues for the bands that have followed, like the electro-rock duos Zea and Persil, both from Amsterdam. Both groups have recorded BBC John Peel sessions and toured internationally.
Like its beginning, the name of the company came in a random moment of inspiration,
after Hermans saw a photo of de Chirico’s painting ‘The Transformed Dream’.
‘There is no business plan. The label is just something that we do naturally,’
Hermans says. ‘It’s an organic thing. Three years ago my expectations and
the way I was dealing with the whole thing were totally different from the
way I work now. I don’t change things just for the sake of change. We all
change when we meet different people with new ideas.’
Hermans says he doesn’t want ever want to find himself listening to a demo tape and wondering how much money he can make from it. What’s most important, he says, is whether he likes the music or not. He admits that there were some moments of temptation and danger when Seedling first started getting some real attention. ‘I saw I was drifting in a direction I didn’t want to go. It happens and you don’t even notice it. Seedling were doing so well, and I started thinking things like, “Yeah, maybe if I just push it a little bit more…” It’s crazy: there’s no way I want to push things. But I walked around for a while with the idea that I could aim for something bigger. I hated myself for that.’
Running the label has required a steep learning curve for Hermans who takes care of the administration and management, although he works especially closely with Zea’s Arnold de Boer on the day-to-day management of the label. He is also keen to communicate regularly with the other artists signed with Transformed Dreams to offer help and ensure they feel at home within the label’s ideals.
Some Amsterdam concert-goers may already be familiar with the label’s Transformed Dreams evenings on the second Tuesday of each month at the Paradiso. The event started in April 2002, and it has featured countless smaller Dutch bands such as The Raving Bonkers, Templo Diez, and Boy Ler, as well as a large number of international bands, including The Ghost Mice, Mochipet and Fern Night.
‘The idea has always been to present challenging artists, to revive the idea that the known is boring and the unknown is exciting. We always have a wide range of different musical styles on stage. The common thread is that none of them is a “magazine band” or one of those “I will change my guitar sound to whatever the corporation magazine wants” bands. Even the records that we spin between the acts are to prove that there is so much more available than you’d ever know from the established media.’
Regarding future releases, Zea and Persil are both considering new material, and Amsterdam acoustic-pop band Zoppo is in the studio. ‘I’m not pushing anyone,’ says Hermans. ‘I never work with deadlines. The distributor always wants to know what’s going on, but I just announce things as they happen and when they are ready.’
Hermans says that he never signs a band on the basis of a demo only. If a demo is interesting, he’ll go to hear the band live, and if they’re good he’ll go see them again before he makes up his mind about approaching them. ‘I think bands have to be really good live, so they can sell CDs at gigs,’ he says. ‘It would make my work easier if I didn’t have to do it this way. I could sign studio-wise musicians who get their recordings done faster and save money. But no matter how great the record, if the band can’t perform it well live, I’m not interested.’
Steven McCarron
This interview which was originally published in the Amsterdam Weekly on September 8, 2004.
:: back to top ::