Ravers slinging ice at warehouse raiders in East London. Queens runaways finding solace in the clubs of neighboring boroughs. Practicing patience beside experimental heroes in Palestine. Knocking on doors from Burbank to Beijing for a false prophet. Bowing at Salem’s altar. Going Tumblr famous with Almost Famous dreams at LaGuardia. Becoming alt rock stars with a penchant for media scheming. These are some of the moments and memories that shape Briana Cheng, founder of b4, and Milo Cordell, founder of Merok and head of A&R at Young.
Bri and Milo first met in a Brooklyn venue lost to overdevelopment, back when an under-21 Bri needed help slipping past the bouncers. In the decade since crossing paths, the music heads and longtime indie label A&Rs have sustained their friendship, united by an appetite for sonic chaos and enormous care. Their collaborators (and, often enough, chosen family) range from the internationally renowned (Erika de Casier, FKA twigs, Nicolas Jaar, Dylan Brady, Arca) to those who have a shot at the same, if they seek it (Thoom, CARLIÁN).
We got together to yap about the sands of time, hard work, and having fun! Thanks for reading, watching, listening, and supporting… Show love to Bri and the artists and releases of b4. Learn more about the history of Young. Enjoy Milo’s incredible eye for furniture design. Stay safe and inspired out there. Ta!
Milo: This is gonna be a loose one. I smoked a doobie, I just drank half a bottle of whisky. I’m ready.
Bri: Really?!
Milo: Not at all. I had a coffee about an hour ago.
Bri: Well, I just got my period and I’m getting rocked by it, so. [Laughs]
Milo: I’ve got this stoner friend who got really into cannabis competitions. He won the High Times Cup! Now he’s into CBD. He invented these patches with CBD, ginseng, and lion’s mane that’s apparently really helpful for menstruation. Bri, next time you’re in London, they’ll be waiting for you.
Siber: Bri, do you wanna reschedule? There’s this Livia device I have too that might be worth looking into. It allegedly shocks the pain away…
Bri: Wait, Siber, why do you have one? [Laughs]
Milo: Yeah, Siber! Why!
Siber: [Laughs] Thank you both for gathering here today to celebrate this thing called life, and each other! Let’s start with your respective auras? With some mutual appreciation...
Bri: Milo’s just a music legend with the best taste. I think we get along because we care about seeing ahead, about believing in artists before they might believe in themselves. Also: Milo’s a big, big softie.
Milo: What! Yeah, okay. [Laughs] Bri and I met when I was living in New York for a few years, about 10 years ago. I’d go to all these underground shows and hang out. I met Bri on the way to something, somewhere in Brooklyn. I instantly saw her as a kindred spirit. In a lot of friendships, people don’t possess the same qualities as you do, and that’s what’s engrossing about it. Bri’s own version of I-don’t-give-a-fuck energy was that for me. At the time, we were seeing so many baby bands, and it’s a rare thing to meet people in that environment.
Siber: Easy to take for granted.
Milo: You’re in these rooms where there’s only 20 or 30 people. It’s this embryonic thing, artists being the earliest versions of themselves. I didn’t take much from my time in New York apart from meeting people like Bri.
Bri: Were you working with Arca at that point?
Milo: Arca and I had just started working together. A catalyst for me moving to New York was this early mixtape Arca made for DIS Magazine there, which I became obsessed with. I just had to meet them.
Siber: Bri, was this right after you had left home?
Bri: Yes, the only era I wasn’t giving I-don’t-give-a-fuck energy was before I ran away from home. [Laughs] Milo and I met when I was working at the venue 285 Kent, which was my first job after leaving the Jehovah’s Witness life. It simply had to work out for me, and I was great at rejection after knocking on doors for 60 hours in Wisconsin, Upstate New York, China… I think I may have actually been trying to interview one of Milo’s acts at Glasslands and my fake ID didn’t work. Milo helped me in. [Laughs]
Milo: I got you in? That’s amazing. If that’s not the truth, it is now.
Bri: This happened at Piano’s too, when Billy Jones was there. He got me in. Charles Damga did the same at UNO Rave. My brothers. My godfathers. All looking out for me when I was young and dumb.
Milo: Godbrothers.
Bri: I always had that issue, getting carded. Eventually, they stopped caring and just let me in.
Siber: Real kinship between you and the bouncers of New York.
Bri: We all became friends after the first couple years. I got to New York just before I turned 18. Now I’m 31.
Milo: And I was about 30 at that time, or at least approaching it. So my days of breaking into empty warehouses had happened 10 years before that, back in London. I’d just go to parties the regular way in New York. Ableton was ripe. You had Arca, Oneohtrix Point Never mastering that software. There’s still a distinct New York energy. Fires die out and the embers spark something new. For the first time in my life, I’m romanticizing what’s happening now. Like, Eastern Margins raves in Manila. The music’s hyper-localized, made for speakers in tuk-tuks.
Siber: Tuk-tuk music is the people’s music. How old were you both when you started your labels?
Bri: I think I was 22 or 23 when I started b4 with 4AD. Almost six years ago. And I had no idea what I was doing! I don’t know if 4AD knew either. [Laughs] To keep it light, I was hired to make 4AD more relevant to younger people, during a time when labels had just started competing with music distributors who offered label services with crazy exclusivity terms or masters ownership. I wanted to be an incubator: before 4AD.
Milo: I was about the same age starting Merok in London. I remember working on the Alice Practice EP artwork with Crystal Castles. I saw that shot of Madonna with a black eye and just knew it was iconic, no question. Although I didn’t clear it, and nearly got sued, we worked something out in the end. It was all worth the stress. [Laughs]
Bri: When Milo and I were in New York, traditional indie music was cool. Then people got computers and made it weird. Grimes and Pictureplane were doing parties. There were literally “weird nights” at clubs.
Milo: Warp was flying. Uncut Gems came out, what, five years ago? But the movie was set in that era, when everyone was wearing Hood By Air t-shirts.
Bri: Listening to witch house…
Siber: Our precious Salem...
Milo: Salem were like The Beatles. Maybe the most important band of my life.
Siber: Did you both have any kind of support system waiting for you in New York?
Milo: My dad used to live in New York in the ’80s and ’90s, and my brother lived there in the ’90s and early 2000s, so I’ve always been back and forth, had that familiarity.
Bri: We moved around every year as a family, so I turned to music, and the internet. I had a MySpace and a Tumblr, banacrisp, that had a following, and that helped me become an editor for Earmilk, which I was not qualified for. My parents deleted my pages as soon as they found out I was living a double life. Music blogging led to music connections. I had a column at Dazed that led to every A&R internship I got, even at XL, when Julia Willinger was still there.
Siber: Milo, you came from a musical family, and Briana, you were ostracized for music’s role in your life.
Bri: Yeah, we didn’t speak for a few years after I left. My stepdad would email my former boss at Earmilk, like, “You’re supporting a minor going to these clubs. You’re going to get in trouble!” But Earmilk never yelled at me. They didn’t even tell me about my stepdad’s messages until later. I was also working at LaGuardia Airport because I saw Almost Famous once. The thought was: “What if I became a flight attendant and wrote about music also…” [Laughs] I was a ticketing girl at a Canadian airline, and I met this lady that was older with a car, and she helped me move from Queens to Bushwick. I wish I remembered her name.
Siber: This city really does have its guardian angels. The internet, too. The writer-to-A&R pipeline seemed to widen during that time. I’m wondering what “discovery” has meant to you both over the years?
Bri: One thing I love about Milo is that he’s never showed me something because it has “streaming history.” He’s been doing this for two decades, I’ve known him for 10 years, and he’s still as excited about hearing music. Like, Milo, how did you find Ethan P. Flynn? And why does he look like a younger version of you? [Laughs]
Milo: [Laughs] When you’re at the first-ever shows, listening to the first-ever songs, and you have that fascination, it’s something you can’t learn. You have it as well, Siber. It’s an intrinsic thing, craving that particular, visceral feeling of finding and falling in love with something early on. Sometimes that love only lasts three minutes and 30 seconds, the length of a song. Sometimes it lasts an artist’s entire career. Back then, campaigns were a little less about content, a little less saturated. The internet still felt pretty pure. I can still remember Salem’s MySpace page, and their custom coding, these big JPEGs all over the page.
Bri: I think because I was such a loner, enrolled in different schools every year and then becoming homeschooled, that online connection to music was the only thing I knew, and it let me escape. The way the music I learned about during that era, at 285, made me feel... I want everyone to have that feeling.
Milo: Discovery isn’t management, or A&R. It’s internal. I’m gonna get corny, but it’s spiritual. It’s really fun and really easy to find music you love. It’s also totally dumb. I’ll never forget being online at 2 a.m. like 20 years ago, finding an unbelievable band, calling my friend James, like, “Dude, I found this band. I think they might be the next Beatles.” I sent it to him, he listened to it on the phone with me, and he was like, “Oh, that’s Sparks.” Some DJ page had used this Sparks track from 1974, "This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us." I had never heard it, but they were this massive act that sold millions of records. Even now, the tune sounds like it could have been recorded today. Operatic dance music. Do you both know Sparks?
Bri: No. [Laughs]
Siber: Now I do! I see no distinction anymore, between old and new, when it comes to discovery.
Milo: That’s gone away, hasn’t it? People are on NTS playing music from every decade I’ve never heard. Anyway, discovery’s easy. Management and A&R are really fucking hard. [Laughs]
Siber: Between, or because of, the challenges of those roles, where have you found lessons or inspiration?
Milo: Nicolas Jaar taught me about patience and purpose in art. I was DIY / punk / move fast, break things, whereas I consider Nico to be more considered. I think we admired that difference between us, and it made us a good team. Watching him work, especially in Palestine, taught me how important intent can be when making music. It’s something I think about all the time now. He’s the most considerate person I know. I love him to bits.
Bri: I love learning how different people’s brains work. Being the label manager reporting directly to an artist, to Dylan Brady, at Dog Show Records, just brought constant surprises. He’s so open-minded. We were very close for a year, and I’ve been an A&R person for 10 years now, but I still can’t tell you whether he’d like a project or not in advance...
Milo: One of the most inspiring bits to me is seeing and hearing projects form. Watching [FKA] twigs and Lewis [Koreless] work together is mesmerizing. Their attention to detail is so granular, so meticulous. Twigs has the most unbelievable instincts for melody, for making you feel her feeling, and an incredible memory for what’s been put down in a track. She can dial back in internal memory a snare sound from an earlier version, without trying… while Lewis brings an almost architectural precision to every texture. He studied naval shape building or something like that.
Bri: A big lesson not just from b4 during its 4AD era, but also from signing Erika de Casier, Tkay Maidza, and Cumgirl8 directly to 4AD, was that signing singles and one-off projects to a record label is really hard and expensive. You are basically asking for the entire international ecosystem of a label group to prioritize one track when they have been working years on building an artist's career on their third or fourth album. It’s like having a one-night stand that you hope turns into a relationship versus getting to know someone with the same intentions of growing together.
Siber: And then on the flipside, at so many other labels since then, it’s of course the opposite. Hyper-attention on catching lightning singles in a bottle, which usually looks like a very different thing, be it intentions or contracts, than b4’s approach to short-term deals. I imagine now that b4 is on its own, it can feel inspiring to move unencumbered by a bigger system, and also challenging to move without more support.
Bri: I do feel inspired by everyone at Young. At UNO, whoever’s in charge of 2Hollis because I am OBSESSED. Rusia IDK, too. I really wanted to sign Ralphie Choo to 4AD when he first came out with "Bulerías," and it has been really cool to watch that whole scene grow and completely take over :)
Siber: Do you feel any distinction between your younger selves and your current selves, in the context of working with indie labels?
Bri: Staying curious, always, has been my priority, but I’ve gotten to honor that more, with more independence. Younger me, working at labels, felt lots of pressure. Being able to do that J Ludvig remix project through b4, which is sonically so all over the place, would have been a lot harder as an A&R in most label systems. It would have required a lot of convincing. I don’t want to poop on Beggars Group too much, but making money makes music harder, less fun. Signing Erika de Casier...
Milo: Woop woop!
Bri: [Laughs] I was no longer formally working with Erika for the "Bikini" track that did so well last year, but I had introduced her and Nick León. Nick and I talk about this all the time, so you can write about it: Nick was a pretty unknown producer when he started emailing me edits of Erika’s music. Younger me might have been afraid to trust my gut and recommend him to her, but after running b4, I felt more confident. And now they’re real friends! I think they’re both at Lisbon Fashion Week right now. What about you, Milo?
Milo: I think I’m constantly trying to find my younger self. Experience can get in the way sometimes. Younger me would fall in love every five minutes with different music. I was into the chaos of it all, and I’ve been trying to embrace that a little more again. I trusted my judgment way more because I was just in it, literally living with the people upsetting the rhythms of culture. That’s a blessing. Getting older, having a family, it brings a different energy. But I’m obsessed, still, with chaos. Embrace the chaos!!!
Siber: Unless you’re with Nico… then patience takes the wheel.
Bri: Doing stuff on my own now with Carlián, Thoom, J Ludvig, Paul Maxwell, Flirty800, Tama Gucci… it means having no parents, no rules. Or maybe it’s my house, my rules. I feel like I’m looking for that same thing again. Being obnoxious with the experience to justify it. [Laughs] Can we also add that I’m being obnoxious with intention here?
Siber: Of course.
Milo: Yeahhh! Hell yeah!
Bri: Music should be fun. Not a content factory. Let people be weird.
Milo: Music should be fun. Music is fun.
Siber: Music. Is. Fun!
Milo: Goodbye!
Bri: Bye!!
